Until changes are made in the mexican constitution

until changes are made in the Mexican constitution), important niches in both fields were opened to private
investors -- even including foreigners.
Energy interdependence need not concern itself with questions of private vs. public ownership at all. It requires
only market access. That is part of what makes it workable for all three countries -- where ownership is actually
mixed, to varying degrees. But it was important (for the sake of more-or-less free-market competition) to end
government dictation of prices, to disaggregate activities into production, transmission, and distribution, and to
lower barriers to the entry of new "players." By and large, all three countries have been moving along their
individually chosen pathways toward these same objectives.
This set the stage for fuller exploitation of the combined-cycle combustion turbine -- a compact, highly efficient
electricity generating system that can be ordered and installed quickly in a variety of sizes and is fuelable by
natural gas. It happens that all three countries have adopted national energy policies to focus on gas, in part
because it burns far more cleanly than either coal or many types of oil and at the same time produces far less
carbon dioxide (considered the major culprit in worldwide climate change). In addition, there are the energy
marketers, intermediaries who offer to buy or sell (depending on the supply and demand outlook at any given place
or time) natural gas, electricity, delivery capacity between two given points on a gas pipeline, or comparable long-
distance transmission capacity for electricity. For obvious reasons, many such entrepreneurs (some small, some
very large) also maintain gas-storage facilities -- either for their own use or for lease to others.
And so, finally, we come to the fourth vital factor -- the possibility of instantaneous sales. No longer limited by less
adequate forms of communication such as phones and faxes, they can be handled today by "electronic bulletin
boards" that conduct continuing energy auctions. Long-term contracts have not disappeared, but their importance
in current price-determination is waning.
PEMEX demonstrated some years ago that it could buy gas from Alberta and have it "delivered" in a timely fashion
over a period of weeks, entering Mexico through a Valero pipeline in Texas.(f.8) As I explained earlier, it wasn't the
very molecules of gas coming across the Canadian-U.S. border that were eventually used somewhere in northern
Mexico. Arrangements were made to redirect gas flows in between. Transportation costs had to be calculated and
imputed somehow. But the deal went through and a precedent was established. This does not mean that Mexico
will soon (or ever) become a major direct purchaser of Canadian gas -- or electricity. But as a vice-president of
Mexico said some years ago, "Arbitrage works!"(f.9) Both gas and electricity are fungible commodities -- to a far
greater extent than oil, which is sold around the world in something like 200 different categories, at varying prices.