Mexico's incoming president tapped academic Victor Rodriguez to be the next top executive of debt-ridden oil giant Pemex on Monday, among the last senior nominations for the country's financially volatile and politically sensitive energy sector.
At a press conference, Rodriguez said working with the finance ministry was essential to stabilize the state-owned company. He also emphasized the need to produce less-polluting fuels.
"We need to maintain the basis of energy needs and that is oil and gas, while we move forward with the energy transition," he said. "We are going to make a gargantuan effort in developing renewable energy sources."
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office in October, has announced nearly all of her cabinet ministers, a mix of fresh faces and holdovers from the outgoing administration of her leftist mentor.
Rodriguez, a physicist and energy economics scholar with longstanding ties to Sheinbaum, has no oil industry background. But in 2009, he co-authored a paper with Sheinbaum on Mexican energy policies and development, warning of a growing gap with sustainability goals.
As a professor, Rodriguez most recently led energy systems studies in the engineering department of Mexico's National Autonomous University.
It is not uncommon for Mexican presidents to prefer close confidants over oil and gas industry veterans to head Pemex, the country's largest company and for decades a major contributor to state coffers.
Like her predecessor, Sheinbaum has supported giving more power to Pemex for producing oil and gas while mostly sidelining other companies. But unlike Lopez Obrador, she has expressed more interest in pursuing green energy projects, predicting they will be a "signature" of her administration.
The incoming Pemex executive will be charged with reversing a longstanding crude oil slump, with production down by more than half since hitting a peak of 3.4 million barrels per day two decades ago.
Pemex is one of the world's most indebted oil companies, with just its financial debt hovering around $100 billion.
In recent years, Pemex has sought to expand refining, the company's biggest source of losses by far, as Lopez Obrador has argued for the need to wean Mexico from its longstanding dependence on gasoline imports, mostly from U.S. refiners.
(Reuters - Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Additional reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez, Adrianna Barrera and Sarah Morland; Editing by Kylie Madry and Richard Chang)