Mexico’s ruling party is changing its stance on shale gas extraction. And Rafael López Aliaga claims fraud in Peru’s narrowly-contested vote recount.
ENERGY
Sheinbaum reconsiders AMLO’s anti-fracking stance
The expansion of hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, helped drive an energy revolution in the US, with shale gas and tight oil production multiplying by 15 over the past two decades, from 2 trillion cubic feet in 2005 to 30 trillion in 2024 — now accounting for about one-third of total US energy consumption.
Much of that economic boom came from the southern US, in states such as Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico. But the story has been very different across the Rio Grande, even though Mexico’s northern states share many of the same natural resources.
While the US moved from heavy import dependence to becoming a net energy exporter, Mexico has gone in the opposite direction and is, in fact, covering much of its energy needs with purchases from its northern neighbor.
The divergence is largely because Mexico has taken a more skeptical approach toward fracking, particularly under President Claudia Sheinbaum’s predecessor and party leader, Andrés Manuel “AMLO” López Obrador, who argued that the technique was environmentally harmful and instead prioritized conventional oil production through the country’s state-owned energy giant Pemex.
Now, Sheinbaum, a climate scientist by training, appears to be setting the stage to reverse course. In multiple press conferences this year, the Mexican leader said she was weighing the pros and cons of fracking and looking for improved technologies with a reduced environmental impact, and brought in multiple officials and advisers to lecture her public on the matter.
“We have abundant natural gas resources, and we haven’t taken advantage of them. We have a great opportunity considering the high consumption levels in the country,” Pemex director Víctor Rodríguez Padilla said. At a press briefing last week, Sheinbaum presented a team of nearly two dozen experts to analyze the topic.
The president has insisted that environmental considerations will continue to be heard, but has shifted the emphasis to sovereignty and economic development, as Mexico faces one of the region’s weakest growth outlooks in the coming years, according to recent World Bank projections.
👉 Why it matters. As with other fossil fuels, oil and gas from fracking add to Earth’s carbon dioxide emissions, which scientists see as the primary driver of global warming. Yet Mexico’s resistance to fracking was not based on climate change, and AMLO was an active backer of traditional oil and gas enterprises. His objections centered instead on water use and the risk of soil contamination, which could affect the sustenance of local communities.
The capital-intensive nature of fracking might also have played a role in AMLO’s skepticism, as developing the industry would almost inevitably have required large-scale private investment, much of it from abroad, which would have been more difficult to control from the National Palace.
But the structural weaknesses in Mexico’s economy revealed by recent oil price hikes are seemingly prompting the ruling Morena party to reconsider its options. “I was also against fracking,” Sheinbaum said recently. “But when I see these new technologies and the country’s economic dependence, the worst I could do would be not to look into what they can offer.”
ELECTIONS
López Aliaga’s fraud claims heat up Peru’s slow recount
Peru’s election has entered territory reminiscent of Honduras’s late last year: more than a week after voters went to the polls, the outcome remains uncertain. While left-winger Roberto Sánchez Palomino has edged ahead of the religious conservative Rafael López Aliaga for second place by 0.1 percentage points, enough ballot boxes from Aliaga-leaning areas are still left to count — making it unclear who will join Keiko Fujimori in the June 7 runoff.
Betting markets currently rate Sánchez as three times more likely to advance than López Aliaga, but the duo swapped positions multiple times during the last week, and another turnaround could still be possible with late-arriving votes from Peruvians living abroad, who massively favor Aliaga.
The combination of a close race and chaotic organization has stirred up tempers, with López Aliaga denouncing fraud at multiple public rallies and calling for a partial do-over, citing logistical failures in several districts favorable to him.
👉 Why it matters. López Aliaga’s claims were exaggerated in many ways, such as saying 500,000 votes were stolen from his party. But beneath his inflammatory rhetoric, he did make a valid point: approximately 68,000 people were unable to vote on Sunday because of logistical problems, and thousands more encountered polling stations that opened hours late. Most of these disruptions occurred in Lima, where López Aliaga performs well.
In an election where the gap between second and third place is just 14,000 votes, such disruptions could have been consequential. López Aliaga took around 20% of the vote in Lima, compared with roughly 3% for Sánchez.
López Aliaga blamed Peru’s chief electoral authority, Piero Corvetto, and compared the case to “Operación Morrocoy,” a tactic used by Chavista authorities during Venezuela’s authoritarian turn, in which voting was allegedly slowed in opposition-leaning areas to discourage turnout. The term refers to a local turtle species, a nod to the deliberate pace of the process.
“You know where you can shove your Morrocoy!” López Aliaga told a crowd of supporters hours after the vote, drawing criticism about his use of crude sexual language. The right-wing leader has continued to organize rallies since then, arguing that many polling stations should be reopened in May.
Fifth-placed candidate Ricardo Belmont appeared to support López Aliaga’s claims despite their ideological differences, arguing that Fujimori and Peru’s establishment would prefer Sánchez as an easier rival in the runoff. “I said this was planned from the start,” Belmont proclaimed.
But neither López Aliaga nor Belmont has offered any concrete evidence of fraud, even if the election-day disarray was real and may well have helped Sánchez. The situation has also revived memories of Peru’s 2021 election, when Pedro Castillo (an ally of Sánchez) faced similarly unproven fraud allegations.
“Without these fraud narratives that we already saw in the previous election, the Andean, rural and Amazonian vote from deep Peru will be respected,” Sánchez said.
With the count advancing at a glacial pace — currently stalled at 93.5% — electoral authorities have warned that final results might have to wait until May 15, opening the door to weeks of rumors and speculation that could further damage Peru’s institutional credibility, in a country where a majority of citizens already view politics with deep skepticism.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Last Friday, we asked you where Nayib Bukele’s paternal family originated in the Middle East. The correct answer was Palestine (guessed by 37% of respondents). His grandfather came from Bethlehem, in what is now the West Bank, as did many others of El Salvador’s 100,000-strong Palestinian community, one of the largest in the world.
QUICK CATCH-UP
🫣 Colombian President Gustavo Petro said he would file a criminal complaint against Ecuadorian counterpart Daniel Noboa, after Noboa alleged links between Petro and drug traffickers operating in Ecuador. The two leaders have clashed repeatedly in recent months over criminal activity at the border, even imposing 100% tariffs on each other’s imports.
🧪 An anti-drug raid on a cartel laboratory in the Mexican state of Chihuahua led to the death of two US agents. President Claudia Sheinbaum called for a full investigation, saying her administration was not aware that US forces were playing a role in these operations, which could “violate national security laws.”
🎚️ In a curious mass-scale event, Portuguese Catholic Priest Guilherme Peixoto — who reached international fame thanks to his parallel career as a DJ — led a dance music rave in tribute to Pope Francis one year after his death, bringing in hundreds of thousands of worshipers and revelers alike to Buenos Aires’s historic Plaza de Mayo.
🗳️ Allies of Rodrigo Paz, Bolivia’s centrist president, won two of nine gubernatorial races that concluded his weekend, tying with allies of right-winger Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga and surpassing a left-wing coalition backed by former President Evo Morales, which held onto its stronghold in Cochabamba. Independents and regional candidates took the remaining four departments.