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.

Cenagas

The decision by Mexico’s Energy Ministry (Sener) to require users to source imported gas from state companies upends a long process of market opening. The recent history of the gas market is worth studying to understand what impacts the new rule might have for both buyers and commercial agents in Mexico.

The presence of Mexican state companies in the Texas gas market goes back years. MGI supply (MGS), the Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) subsidiary in charge of international natural gas trading formed in the Cayman Islands, has been present in the United States since...