Editor’s Note: NGI’s Mexico Gas Price Index, a leader tracking Mexico natural gas market reform, is offering the following column by Eduardo Prud’homme as part of a regular series on understanding this process.

This week marks 27 years of regulation in the natural gas industry in Mexico. The law that gave rise to the Comisión Reguladora de Energía (CRE), enacted on Oct. 31, 1995, granted the regulator powers to promote competition, protect the interests of users, and ensure adequate national supply. The creation of the CRE was contemporaneous with the process of deregulation of the natural gas markets across North America. It happened just three years after order 636 of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) imposed open access and separated the activities of...