Mexico’s Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is moving in the opposite direction of fellow Latin American national oil companies (NOCs) by failing to embrace the energy transition and natural gas, according to a panel of experts.

Mexico hydrocarbons production

While NOCs such as Colombia’s Ecopetrol SA and Brazil’s Petróleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) have embraced diversification and environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance standards, Pemex and the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador instead are reverting to the business model of a bygone era, said panelists at an event in late February hosted by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

The López Obrador administration has reversed course to a model “going back maybe to the 1950s,” said Lourdes Melgar,...