Natural Gas Transmission Opening Trade in Mexico: Energy and Environmental Benefits

This paper provides a summary of some management-technical changes and Pemex’s actions to face challenges derived from transportation, distribution, storage and marketing natural gas liberalization. Since natural gas consumption hasn’t shown uniform growth for all consumer sectors, the Mexican Government decided to change the “rules of the game” to guarantee that such operations could attain the efficiency levels planned for 1995–2000. Thus, Constitutional Article 27 was reformed in 1995, the Energy Regulatory Commission and Natural Gas Regulation were created. This opened the doors to domestic and international investors to participate in transportation and distribution projects. So, to face this challenges and new missions, PGPB started working on new programs and projects to update it’s pipeline transmission system, such as risk management, operational reliability, quality systems, scada operation, reengineering business procedures and strategic planning to improve benefits and reduce incident/accidents. Finally, the energetic and environmental advantages of natural gas are addressed.