The victor in Mexico's hotly contested presidential election was apparently Felipe Calderon, the conservative candidate of the National Action Party (PAN). However, his win was secured by a razor-thin margin, and the opposition candidate had yet to concede at press time. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City and candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), was bested by just 236,076 votes, a sliver of 0.57%. Calderon's win was deemed official after a recount, although court battles over the results have already begun. According to Mexico's election agency, Calderon took the majority votes in 16 of 31 states, mainly in the industrial north and west of the country. Obrador won 15 states and the federal district of Mexico City, with his best showing in the impoverished south. The election was essentially a referendum on two topics: the performance as president of Vicente Fox, the PAN candidate elected in 2000, and the readiness of Mexico to accept a leftist government, Houston-based energy-consulting firm Baker & Associates reports. Baker notes the election boiled down to votes for and against Obrador. In the elections of 2006, the globalization candidate was Calderon and the opposition candidate was Obrador, Baker reports. "Presidential candidates personalize and personify the issues, but the real conflicts are about Mexico's place in the world order," he says. Two visions of Mexico have been competing for dominance in the country for some time. One is essentially economic, and holds that Mexico is a niche player in the world economy, and it needs to strengthen its links to the outside world. The other view is that this is the wrong starting point. People in the latter camp want fresh approaches to such issues as poverty, out-migration, the growing gap between rich and poor citizens, and the sluggish rate of job creation. Seemingly, the globalization view has prevailed, although it cannot claim a mandate yet. The reelection of PAN is expected to bring six more years of the same types of programs that were seen under Fox, which were essentially continuations of the economic model first adopted in the mid-1980s. For foreign energy companies, these programs were largely disappointing and restrictive to investments. "In the energy sector, there have been all manner of neoliberal gestures but fashioned very much a la mexicana," Baker reports. The electric sector was opened in 1992 to private investors in generation, but the wholesale market remained closed. Gas transportation was opened in 1995, but national oil company Pemex kept all the main industrial accounts. Gas distribution was also opened in 1995, but there were so many restrictions that all the American and Canadian companies that operated in the same areas as Pemex sold their franchises and left Mexico. In 2002, the upstream oil and gas sector was opened to private companies, but only if they functioned as service contractors, Baker notes. Foreign firms were barred from ownership of equity interests in leases and reserves. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Mexico produced an average of 3.3 million barrels of oil per day during 2005. Of that total, 2 million barrels flows from just one complex of fields, the supergiant Cantarell accumulation in the Gulf of Campeche. Mexico's dilemma is that its reserves-to-production ratio has collapsed from 20 years in 2002 to just 10 years in 2005. Although it ranks as one of the world's top producers of oil, it needs substantial discoveries to replace its hefty production volumes. For the past few years, Pemex has been pushing into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Recently, its work appeared to pay off, as Fox announced a potentially world-class deepwater discovery at Deep Coatzacoalcos Field, offshore Veracruz. The discovery, drilled in late 2005 in nearly 3,000 feet of water, could contain as much as 10 billion barrels of oil. During his tenure in office, Fox made hefty increases in E&P funding for Pemex, and spearheaded changes to the tax regime. Now, energy companies around the world are watching Mexico with interest, waiting to see what the new Calderon administration will propose. Will Mexico open its energy sector to outside investment, will Pemex go it alone, or will half-hearted attempts at privatization continue?

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