Mexico may double nuclear plant output

Mexico may become the latest oil-rich country looking seriously at nuclear power as a hedge against declining energy reserves. Mexico's state-run oil company Pemex produces about 3.2 million barrels of oil per day, about 80,000 per day less than last year due to declining reserves.

Energy Minister Canales Clariond said Mexico's nuclear energy output could be doubled by building a second nuclear power plant as soon as possible. He was quoted as saying that a new plant would cost up to $3 billion and could take five years to build.

Mexico's first nuclear plant, the Laguna Verde dual-reactor plant in the gulf state of Veracruz, is being expanded by General Electric to increase output by 20%. Laguna Verde, which went into operation in 1990, produces about 5% of Mexico's energy.

- Let's see. Mexico, home to the world's second largest oil-field, plans to double its nuclear power capacity? The same Mexico which has already started importing LNG? And note that the Arabs of the Middle East, home to the world's largest oil reserves, also wish to develop nuclear energy.

All these, at the same time that oil prices seem to be falling and falling, and the media seems to be busy trying hard to debunk peak oil. Makes you go, "hmmm ..." doesn't it?

Russia tightens grip on energy

peakoil.com -> fin24.co.za :

A decision by Russia to scrap environmental permits for the country's largest foreign investment project is further evidence of Kremlin policy to extend state control over the energy sector, analysts said. The move by Russia's natural resources ministry to cancel an environmental permit necessary for work at Sakhalin-2 effectively suspends the energy project, which is being developed by a Western consortium led by Shell off Russia's Pacific coast.

Analysts said Sakhalin-2 is particularly resented by Russian authorities as it falls under one of three production sharing agreements (PSAs) concluded between Western oil majors and the Russian government in the 1990s. "The pressure is very serious," said Valery Nesterov, an oil and gas analyst at the Troika Dialog investment house in Moscow. Nesterov said the government's tactics to influence the PSAs were "alarming" foreign investors and pointed to a "volatile" energy policy in Russia that cannot be sustained.

Russia's energy sector was almost fully privatised in a period of economic turmoil after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990s and control over the country's resources effectively slipped away from government control. President Vladimir Putin has reversed this policy, presiding over the dismemberment of Yukos, which was once the country's largest oil producer, and promoting two huge state-controlled energy firms, Rosneft and Gazprom.

(2006-09-20 00:00:51 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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