This week, the Forum: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Hydraulic Fracturing (or Fracking) was held at the Chamber of Deputies. Geological, environmental, social, water-related, economic, and regulatory arguments were presented and, although there was no consensus, it is worth understanding the main opposing positions.
The first argues that Mexico can do without the development of gas and replace it through an accelerated expansion of renewable energies. The second argues that dependence on imports constitutes, in itself, a vulnerability incompatible with energy sovereignty.
Renewable energies must grow, but their expansion depends on conditions that Mexico has not yet built. In Mexico, the current electricity policy has limited private investment, maintains lags in transmission and distribution, and concentrates expansion decisions in public companies with financial restrictions.
Banning fracking under the assumption that renewables will cover the difference does not resolve those institutional limitations nor does it automatically turn solar and wind potential into available electricity. The objective is the right one, but the period of time is not necessarily the appropriate one. For example, China, which is by far the largest producer of renewable energy in the world, still depends on coal for 54% of its electricity generation, although, certainly, 20 years ago it was almost 80%.
The argument of sovereignty also requires greater precision. The trade of natural gas with Texas has been an economic advantage for Mexico, because it allows access through pipelines to one of the markets with the highest production and lowest prices in the world. Other countries depend on liquefied natural gas transported by LNG carriers, subject to higher costs and more volatile international prices. Although dependence may imply operational and geopolitical risks, replacing cheap gas from Texas with a more expensive source in Mexico does not strengthen the national economy, much less contribute to energy sovereignty.
But, beyond these arguments, there is indeed a fundamental difference between importing gas and producing it in Mexico. The gas that arrives from the United States through pipelines is mainly dry gas, used as fuel in power plants and industrial processes. National production of wet gas, on the other hand, can also generate liquids such as ethane, propane, and butane, essential inputs for different areas of the petrochemical industry. Intermediate products used in plastics, resins, adhesives, solvents and numerous industrial goods, ammonia, and fertilizers depend on them.
The decline in national production, therefore, has not only increased imports of the fuel used to generate electricity, but has also reduced the availability of petrochemical raw materials, weakened the operation of industrial complexes, and expanded dependence on products with greater added value.
In the end, the discussion focused too much on the extraction method and left the purposes of an eventual natural gas policy in the background. Before deciding how much to produce and through what technology, Mexico would have what we want to produce natural gas in Mexico for. Without that definition, sovereignty and the energy transition will continue functioning as political arguments around an industrial strategy that does not yet exist.
This article was originally published by La Prensa OEM.
Date: July 24, 2026
Link: https://oem.com.mx/la-prensa/analisis/opinion-por-paul-alejandro-para-que-queremos-producir-gas-natural-en-me-xico-31369441 [Online]