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The Mexican Dilemma: are we seeing a failed state?

 Last Friday, the President of Mexico inaugurated the  Dos Bocas, a refinery that is being built in his home state.  This is a gasoline-only refinery, the rest of the petrol will be distilled elsewhere.  In fact, for the foreseeable future oil, will be distilled elsewhere because the main contractor to the project, FONATUR, the government's own department has recognized that the facilities will not be able to process any oil for at least 18 months.  In "Mexican" that means within the next five years!

It gets worse because there is no pipeline that goes to that refinery. None have been built and none are planned, I guess everything will be delivered by trucks!

I am reasonably certain that by the middle of 2023, AMLO, the president of Mexico will inaugurate the Maya train, which will not be completed for several years.  Both projects, two of the three that the President announced at the beginning of his term are severely over budget.  The Maya train's building costs will exceed 200 billion Mexican pesos, and this figure is from FONATUR, not some banker.  It's from the horse's mouth.  In the modern age, the building of railways is a very well-known quantity, and the average is usually around 2 or 3 million dollars per kilometer, which includes everything but rolling stock (stations too), and yet so far the Mexican government has recognized that the cost will exceed 6 million dollars per kilometer announced.  That's expensive.

When the president announced the building of the Dos Bocas refinery a total bill of 8 billion dollars was assumed, in fact, these were the bid prices from Bechtel one of the world's largest builders of refineries, and now FONATUR has indicated that the total cost will be near 14 billion dollars.  

The massive waste of resources is dramatic, if you add the cancelled airport in Mexico City and the building of the new airport, you can realize that the total amount "invested" by the Mexican government is nearer to 50 billion dollars on projects that are of dubious use.

Corruption, murders continue to rise.  

Pemex has ceased maintaining its oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, CFE doesn't have the resources to build new power plants and will not consider private investment.  In the Yucatan, which has been growing by more than 3% per annum there has been no new powerplant in over a decade, but it doesn't matter because there is no available energy to power these needed powerplants, the natural gas pipelines that exist are already operating at full capacity.

And this is the best part, DESPITE all this the president is more popular than he has ever been!

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