Oil crisis casts shadow of unemployment in Gulf of Mexico

By José Antonio Gurrea

The crisis derived from the effects of oil prices having hit an all-time low, as well as of recent PEMEX budget cuts have affected former prosperous Gulf states of Campeche, Tabaco, Veracruz and Tamulipas.

A series of news reports, produced by EL UNIVERSAL, reveal that the job losses, in at once bountiful oil rigs, impact the business, accommodation, real state and transportation sectors that depended upon an economic machinery that relied solely on the oil industry and which is virtually paralyzed in its present state.

Shadow of unemployment

Ciudad del Carmen, in the state of Campeche, is home to almost 250,000 people and it once represented 70 percent of all the crude oil extraction in the country. Today, it reports job losses of 22,000 formal jobs between 2015 and 2016.

Ciudad PEMEX, in the State of Tabasco, was built in 1958 and it represented a cutting-edge development for the oil industry and its derived activities. Today, it looks abandoned and awaits the arrival of multinational companies that will save the day after the promises made by the Energy Reform of opening oil resources for private investment and exploitation.

The City of Poza Rica, in Veracruz is full of rotting trucks that were intended to operate in the oil pumping efforts of 2,000 wells, a project which never saw the light.

In Altamira, Tampico and Ciudad Madero in Tamaulipas 3,500 jobs have been lost, all of which were directly dependent upon the oil industry in the region.

These days, thousands wait outside refinery doors for a job opportunity.