Mexico Scraps Plans to Build as Many as 10 Nuclear Power Plants

Mexico, one of three Latin American nations that uses nuclear power, is abandoning plans to build as many as 10 new reactors to focus on natural gas-fired electricity plants after boosting discoveries of the fuel.

The country, which found evidence of trillions of cubic feet of gas in the past year, is “changing all its decisions, amid the very abundant existence of natural-gas deposits,”Energy Minister Jordy Herrera said yesterday in an interview. Mexico will seek private investment of about $10 billion during five years to expand its natural gas pipeline network, he said.

Mexico, Latin America’s second-largest economy, is boosting estimated gas reserves after Petroleos Mexicanos discovered new deposits in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and shale gas in the border state of Coahuila. The country was considering nuclear power as part of plans to boost capacity by almost three-quarters to 86 gigawatts within 15 years, from about 50 gigawatts, and now prefers gas for cost reasons, he said.

“Until we find a model to make renewable energy more profitable, gas is more convenient,” Herrera, who was appointed energy minister on Sept. 9, said from Mexico City.

Nations around the world are also reconsidering plans for increasing their reliance on nuclear power after the March 11 earthquake in Japan that wrecked the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, causing a loss of cooling, the meltdown of three reactors and the worst atomic disaster since the leak at Chernobyl in 1986.

Mexico’s energy ministry plans to update the nation’s long-term strategic plan to reflect the increased importance of gas, Herrera said, with the report due in the first-quarter of 2012.

After the shale-gas discovery in Coahuila, Pemex, as the state-oil producer is known, estimates there may be as much as 300 trillion cubic feet of gas in that region, the head of exploration and production, Carlos Morales, said in an Oct. 27 presentation.

To contact the reporter on this story: Carlos Manuel Rodriguez in Mexico City at carlosmr@bloomberg