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Empire Targets Drought-Wracked Mexico for Fracking

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(LPAC)—The same imperial predators whose fracking practices are devastating drought-wracked Texas, California, and other U.S. states, are salivating over the potential to do the same to Mexico, particularly eyeing the severely parched, but agriculturally crucial northern region.

This plan for murder, laid out in the April 20 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, stands in stark contrast to what Lyndon LaRouche and U.S. senatorial candidate from Texas, Kesha Rogers, have posed as the real basis for the U.S.-Mexico relationship, based on sovereign economic development and mutually beneficial economic collaboration. Under the headline "A shale-oil boom beckons in some of Mexico’s most violent areas," the Post-Gazette highlights how fracking in the "geological marvel" of Texas’s Eagle Ford Shale Play has produced "one of the most extravagant oil bonanzas in American history." But this shale formation also extends hundreds of miles into Mexico, known in that country as the Burgos Basin. More than 5,400 wells have been sunk on the Texas side since 2008, but fewer than 25 on the Mexican side.

The energy reform proposed by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, which includes provisions for hydraulic fracking, aims to remedy that, by emasculating the state-run oil company Pemex and inviting in the big oil predators—Shell, Exxon, and Halliburton —to extract an estimated 60 billion barrels of shale oil and develop additional shale gas reserves. Development of shale oil and gas is to be the centrepiece of the "North American energy independence" scheme among Mexico, the U.S., and Canada, which is being sold to Mexico as a way to develop its energy resources, industrialize, and create thousands of jobs—a baldfaced lie.

That northern Mexico, which has suffered from severe drought for the past two years, has no infrastructure or water, and is dominated by drug cartels, is of no concern. Mexican geologists and petroleum engineers say, if necessary, water can be brought from the sea in a pipeline or from wetter coastal areas, to meet fracking’s huge demand for water. Presumably, the large foreign oil firms and "risk takers" will pay for this.

Yet still languishing on the shelf, without financing, are the two crucial water infrastructure projects—the PHLINO (North West Hydraulic Project) and PHLIGON (Northern Gulf Hydraulic Plan)—that could bring water from Mexico’s south to the arid North, and would function as components of the broader North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA). Mexico’s El Manana reported April 20, that at the Border Legislative Conference held in early April in Monterrey, Mexico, Texas state Democratic legislator Jose Rodriguez spoke about what fracking had done to Texas’s economy, water supplies, and population. The Mexican Anti-Fracking Association is also warning of the dangers that fracking will represent for Mexico.