Pemex's First Private Competitor

The collapse of international oil prices has not discouraged Mexico’s tycoons from taking advantage of last year’s historic energy overhaul that allows private capital into the country’s State-owned oil sector for the first time in nearly 80 years.

Mining mogul Alberto Bailleres González, president of Grupo Bal, a conglomerate that owns the world’s largest silver producer, launched Petrobal last week, a new oil and gas exploration and production company, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

Petrobal, Mexico’s first private oil company in decades, is poised to compete with state-owned oil monopoly Pemex.

Bailleres recruited former Pemex executive Carlos Morales Gil to become Petrobal’s new CEO. Morales recently resigned as head of Pemex’s key Exploration and Production subsidiary.

The move could signal the beginning of a potential exodus of highly-skilled professionals from Pemex into the private sector. Business Intelligence, an on-line oil and gas publication, said that there seems to be a “lack of clarity in the flow of talent schemes” which were not defined in the energy reform. Pemex, which has long been the only company with experience in the oil industry in Mexico, “could face a brain drain,” the publication warned.

Source: Dolia Estevez - Forbes.

amlangle's Note: AS you can read and see, the mexican energetic reform is moving Mexico... just the richest as always.