President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, admitted on Thursday that the country’s oil reserves are running out and that the disproportionate consumption of fossil fuels during the last years caused the drought of Cantarell Field, a supergigant oil field located 50 miles offshore in the Bay of Campeche. This oil well was found accidentally in 1961 by a local fisherman, Rudesindo Cantarell (it took the name from him), and became the second most productive oil field in the world, only after the Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia.

The incomes from the oil yield have been used for decades to fund infrastructures, social programs, welfare subsidies, and the even the gas consumption, keeping the prices low in Mexico. “We killed the goose that laid the golden egg”, claimed Peña Nieto in a press conference on Thursday. “The goose funded a lot of things, and when the oil price was high the Goverment had surplus, but it finished”.

The daily production rate of Cantarell fell from 2.2 million barrels per day in the 2000s decade to the current figure of 0.2 million barrels per day, and this has caused that the Government decided to slash the subsidies that kept gas prices low in Mexico, to let now the market dictate prices. This increase of the prices, called ‘gasolinazo’ by the Mexican people, origined several days of protests and discontent across the country.

More information, in Spanish, on ‘El Economista‘ and ‘Proceso.

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