MEXICO CITY, July 27 (Xinhua) -- Mexico's President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday unveiled a 9.4-billion-U.S. dollar program to revive the country's languishing energy sector.
The four-pronged plan, requiring an investment of 175 billion pesos (9.39 billion U.S. dollars), calls for boosting oil output, rehabilitating six refineries, building a new refinery and modernizing hydroelectric plants.
"We don't want to be an alarmist, but ... 14 years ago, oil production was at 3.4 million barrels a day and today it is at 1.9 million barrels. In 14 years, we lost 1.5 million barrels a day in output and it's declining because the energy sector and the oil industry were abandoned," Lopez Obrador told reporters at a press conference.
"That is why we are going to urgently intervene and invest from the first year an additional 175 billion pesos in exploration and drilling," said Lopez Obrador, who will take office on Dec. 1.
Mexico's six existing refineries will be revamped "to operate at 100 percent of their capacity in two years," he said.
A new refinery will be built in Dos Bocas, in southeast Tabasco state, and when completed in three years, Mexico should be able to stop importing costly gasoline, he added.
Existing hydroelectric plants need to be upgraded to make the most of the "underutilized" infrastructure, said Lopez Obrador.
