1938 and 1970 can in turn be divided into three broad periods. The first was one of reorganization and consolidation, and extended from 1938 until about 1946. When the foreign oil companies were forced out, they took with them their non Mexican technical personnel and expertise. In addition, the
international companies attempted to co ordinate a boycott of Mexican oil. The efforts of the oil companies were undercut, however, in the short term by the policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and in the long term by the exigencies of World War Two.
At the same time that the newly established PEMEX was struggling to rebuild the industry in physical and organizational terms, it had to define its relations with its own workers and its place in the Mexican economy and society. Many oil field workers were syndicalists, and wanted to run the industry essentially in their own interests. Only in 1946 did management succeed in winning control over its own work force, and thus come into a position to integrate Mexican oil production into overall Mexican economic planning and the Mexican political system.
In the first half of the postwar era, 1946 1958, the guiding policy of Mexican oil production was to keep the domestic price low, so as to encourage the development of an oil based Mexican industrial base. The consequence of this policy was, however, to keep PEMEX itself starved of development capital, so that oil production lagged. In some respects this policy was successful; while the oil industry itself tended to stagnate, Mexican industry as a whole benefited from low domestic oil prices, and domestic consumption, largely for industry, expanded rapidly.
Indeed, by the end of this period, Mexican domestic consumption was beginning to catch up to production. In 1938, sixty percent of Mexican oil production had been exported. By 1976, even in the face of production increases that began in the late 1950s and acce...