Seventeen of Mexico's 31 state congresses have approved the energy reform bill passed by federal legislators earlier in December, electoral officials said December 16, ensuring its constitutional passage. The reform, which will end Mexico's 75-year state monopoly on oil, natural gas and electricity included two changes to the nation's constitution, which have to be approved by more than half of the state congresses. The reform bill goes further than the measures proposed by President Enrique Pena Nieto earlier in the year. Senators said the legislation would allow private companies to hold licenses as well as profit and production sharing contracts for the first time since the nationalization of the oil industry in 1938. Pena Nieto's original proposal called for just profit sharing deals. However, the reform retains the existing ban on foreign companies holding oil concessions.
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