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.

Four years have passed since the inauguration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose speeches and value judgments permeate all segments of Mexican society. His message is also echoed by his team. Last month in San Antonio, one of the most influential officials in the Mexican gas sector, Miguel Reyes, attended an event with an international audience for the first time.

The audience, eager to listen directly to the director of CFEnergía, could have been listening to one  of the president’s daily press conferences. Reyes said that promoting competition in...