[Eli]

Thanks Dantes you are the man.

Someone should build a bunch of holding facilities along the US border just in case.

[shortonoil]

ElijahJones said:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou better believe it is significant. A Mexican meltdown scenario looks alot like 30 million refugees streaming across the southern border. Have to keep an eye on this thing. Thanks.

[benbrangwyn]

I may be missing something here, but as the US economy tanks why would anyone want to move from Mexico to USA?

*jobs - all those people who were pushing pixels around a screen or building cars are now taking up the work that yer traditional south of the border fellas were doing
*food - can't see the problems south of the border being worse than those north of it
*money - dollar will not be strong for much longer
*real estate - mmm, mebbe with all those repos...
*education - yeah right
*water - US will probably be better off
*security - mmm, fascist state with those huge Blackwater "camps" doesn't sound too good to me
*guns - too many of those
*tolerance of ethnic "others" - likely to get worse, judging by some of the posts I've seen, even on this generally enlightened forum
*lifestyle - well, I'm from the UK and I've worked in the US for several years and it was pretty good. But I was pushing pixels, if I'd been scratching the earth in an oil depleted society, it may have been rather a different story...

Nah, I can't see this mass exodus. Mebbe the other way to escape the rat race gone bad, to live with people who can handle living with less, to avoid the privatised police/security forces.

My brother lives in San Diego, and I've been encouraging him to get the hell back to the UK. He ignored my advice about his dollar investments and got nailed with a 50% drop in value vs Sterling (equivalent of several $100k). And it's going to get worse, particularly with the wealth he's got tied up in real estate.

Mebbe I'm wrong, mebbe I should be encouraging him to move to Mexico :¬)

Ben.

[jeffvail]

Nice pictures Dante... I think I'll steal them for a last minute update to the TOD bit.

While I agree with the comment above that the impact of THESE particular attacks is probably minor, the shift in strategy/targeting by disaffected groups within Mexico is hugely significant. There is very little structurally to keep these Mexican groups (of which there are many with decent capabilities) from continuing this kind of infrastructure insurgency. In both Nigeria and Iraq, it is not the size of any single attack that is the core of the problem, but rather the fact that groups have identified an effective point of leverage (energy infrastructure) and continue to apply force at that point.

[Eli]

Ben I think you are underestimating how crappy Mexico will become.

There will be a mass exodus, once the US tourist no longer are able to travel down to spend their money. The problem is already that the US is buying up their corn for ethanol and that will continue to happen.

Without the income from Cantarell Mexico is toast, there goes their excellent school system that takes kids all the way up to the third grade. And if they have no oil to send north, their isn't going to be any fuel for Americans to fly south.

It is an ugly picture.

[seahorse]

Maybe the disruption will be minor, but I also agree it demonstrates a major shift in the Peak Oil creep. Many PO advocates have long said that Mexico was destined for a collapse, a collapse that would be caused by the collapse of their oil production. Just a few years ago the optimists were saying Cantarell wouldn't go into decline, and that the pessimist were just a bunch of chicken littles. Well, the pessimists were right, and now everyone has been forced to acknowledge the decline of Cantarell, the second largest producing field in the world. Those same pessimists, on this board and elsewhere, also predicted that the decline of Mexican oil production would bring about the collapse of the existing Mexican government, which, this attack on their oil infrastructure shows is beginning to occur. So, it confirms what many pessimist have been saying for a long time. Why people (optimists) can't acknowledge certain basic facts and make the reasonable deductions based on those facts, I'll never understand.

[NEOPO]

F*ck your unsustainable lifestyle's...

Viva
la

[DantesPeak]

Rebels plan further attacks until "political prisoners" in the southern state of Oaxaca are released; PEMEX says repairs won't be finsihed until Friday at the earliest:


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')ttack On Mexico Key Natural Gas Pipeline Causes Cos To Shut

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
July 11, 2007 11:55 a.m.

MEXICO CITY (AP)--National and international corporations were shut down Wednesday in Mexico and faced millions of dollars in losses following rebel attacks on a key natural gas pipeline running from Mexico City to Guadalajara.

The small, left-wing guerrilla group that claimed responsibility for the explosions issued a follow-up statement late Tuesday vowing to continue the attacks, while the Mexican government scrambled to increase security at "strategic installations" across Mexico.

Honda (HMC), Kellogg's (K), Hershey's (HSY), Nissan (NSANY) and Grupo Modelo (GPMCY) are just some of an estimated dozen companies that have had to shut down or cut back operations because of the sudden loss of natural gas, the daily newspaper Excelsior reported Wednesday.

Vitro SAB (VTO), a Mexican company that makes glass containers, issued a statement saying the forced shutdown of two plants due to the explosions would cost it about $800,000 a day. Vitro said it was attempting to minimize effects on customers with the support of its other container plants in the country.

Total business losses are being estimated at more than 70 million pesos ($6.4 million) a day, Excelsior reported, citing unidentified sources. The association representing Mexican industry said Wednesday it was looking into the extent of the explosions' financial impact.

Officials from Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said Tuesday's explosion and two explosions last week affected different sections of the same pipeline.

[jeffvail]

Article on Mexico now up at The Oil Drum:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2752

[DantesPeak]

Thanks jeffvail, it looks like a very interesting article.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')exico's Pemex Says Natural Gas Supplies To Queretaro Resumed

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
July 12, 2007 11:35 a.m.

MEXICO CITY (Dow Jones)--Mexican state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos said Thursday it has resumed natural gas deliveries to the city of Queretaro after supplies were cut off by an attack early Tuesday on a gas pipeline in central Mexico.

A Pemex spokeswoman said the state company has resumed supplies to the local gas distributor in Queretaro, and expects to start sending gas further west to Guadalajara and other cities in the region on Friday.

Hundreds of companies were reported to be affected by a series of attacks on the 36-inch pipeline that runs from Mexico City to Guadalajara. The pipeline was hit by two explosions last Thursday and another, in Queretaro, in the early hours Tuesday.

Two other pipelines, an oil pipeline and a liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, pipeline were also damaged by Tuesday's explosion, which occurred at a valve station.

Pemex said it expects to begin tests on the oil pipeline Thursday afternoon, with supplies to be resumed several hours later.

The pipeline attacks had no effect on oil production or exports. Pemex currently produces about 3.15 million barrels a day of crude oil, of which it exports about 1.7 million barrels a day, mostly to the U.S. The impact of the disruption in the LPG line was lessened as private distributors helped to increase tanker truck deliveries. The oil pipeline damage caused a drop in gasoline and diesel production at the Salamanca refinery, however, and supplies of those fuels were brought in from other facilities.

[eXpat]

Army to guard oil industry inMexico link

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')What we are doing is reinforcing this presence, particularly in our network of pipelines," a spokesman said.

Mexico is the world's No. 9 exporter of crude oil and valued by the United States as a politically stable supplier.

"The army is guarding the (oil and gas) installations and, logically, we are on alert," said Andres Granier, governor of oil-rich Tabasco state where newly arrived soldiers were visible at gas processing and petrochemical plants.

[BigTex]

I'm a Texan, and there are a lot of Mexicans here. Does that count?

What will happen when Mexico runs out of oil? The same thing that has happened in the absence of economic opportunity for workers in Mexico for a long time, only on a larger scale.

Better get busy on that border fence.

[mmasters]

Look at the bright side, lots of slave labor, hot blooded warriors to fight our resource wars and we can outsource our transport services to them! Viva la Mexico!

[Alcassin]

I think Zapatistas will have their 5 minutes

[dsula]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gideon', 'T')he effect on Mexico will be devastating - no doubt.
But, given their impoverished status and their dependence on oil revenue for social welfare, it's shocking to me that there does not seem to be a hue and a cry that things are about to go loco.

[grink1tt3n]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dsula', 'W')ell, what does th US do to avert the crisis, given their dependence on oil and dependence on cheap chinese imports? It's shocking to me that there does not seem to be a hue and a cry that things are about to go crazy.

[leduck]

I’m Hispanic. My family was originally from Mexico. They fled the revolution. I live in Los Angeles. What a mess that'll be....

In the fall of 2003 I wanted to write a paper on ending all immigration into the U.S. I wanted to use depletion to back up my argument. You can see this information (U.S. oil production through time) in the world almanac. So, I typed depletion into the computer at the library and stumbled onto a book from Kenneth Deffeyes called "hubbert's peak." perfect. That’s my argument for shutting down the boarder completely.

To answer the question... the only difference between Mexico and U.S. is degree. Mexico has a white invader upper class (mostly from Spain), Meztiso masses and a large Indian poor population. In Mexico if you're not part of the upper class, you don't count. So who cares if the masses are poor? So what? It’s nice that some are so willing to leave.
The Mexican ruling class is well educated. Even if in the old days, they didn't do anything. They still went to the best colleges throughout the world.

As a result of depletion, Mexico will probably collapse and have another revolution. Most of it is not tropical. Most live in the central plateau. So it's not likely to end up like Cuba.
What will Mexico do? Continue to grow as long as it can. Its ruling class is greedy. Just like the U.S., they don’t think more then a few years ahead. The masses are probably ignorant of what's about to happen.

I doubt Mexico will invade Bahrain.
During revolution of 1910 its population was only 10-15 million. Now it's around 100 million.
Mexico is in the same boat as most of the rest of the world. It’s overpopulated and obsessed with growth.
Population is a problem
Depletion a problem
Dropping water tables
Loss of top soil
But..., these problems are all symptoms of the bigger problem
exponential growth

What is Mexico going to do?
What is the U.S. going to do? (besides iraq)
iraq solves nothing, it just delays the inivatble.

[dsula]

that's why I'm so excited about this peak oil. It get's ugly no doubt but after the dust settles there's hopefully some air to breath and the overpopulation taken care of.
When does it start? I can't wait.