ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses Mexico’s oil boom of the mid-1970s and the use of hydrocarbon as an instrument of foreign policy towards the United States and the Third World during the governments of Luis Echeverria Alvarez and Jose Lopez Portillo. However, the use of oil was not necessarily consistent with the position of Mexico abroad at a time when the oil-producing countries organized in OPEC were radicalizing their demands. Mexico’s relationship with Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) remained ambiguous until January 1975, when Kuwait’s minister of finance and petroleum announced that ‘Mexico has asked to be admitted to OPEC’. The chapter reviews the way in which the Mexican oil industry sustained growth from 1974, when the country achieved energy self-sufficiency due to the discovery of large hydrocarbon reserves in the southeast. Thereafter, oil production surpluses began to sell on the export market and debate arose regarding Mexico’s position towards OPEC.
