• CANCELLATION: Spain-based Iberdrola has decided to cancel a US $1.2 billion combined cycle power plant in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz after not reaching an agreement with Mexico’s state-owned utility (CFE) to ensure supply of natural gas, local Mexican officials confirmed.
• ENVIRONMENT: With a total generating capacity of 1,228 megawatts (MW), the Iberdrola plant in the city of Tuxpan (pop. 161,000) was planned to bring 2,000 new jobs to the area. The plant’s cancellation occurs as the López Obrador administration embarks in major energy policy changes.
• ORDER: “The (Iberdrola) managers were here with me last Thursday. They gave me the bad news: They had been ordered to leave, because they had been trying to get the (gas) contract for 9 months and they did not have a favorable response”, Juan Antonio Aguilar Mancha, Mayor of Tuxpan, told Reforma newspaper.
• CRITICISMS: Last week, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador criticized Iberdrola saying it had benefited from unspecified acts of graft and that it had mounted a media campaign against him. President López Obrador has long criticized Iberdrola in Mexico’s energy market.
