NAFTA negotiators to enshrine Mexico’s energy reforms

US, Canadian and Mexican negotiators are zeroing in on ways to enshrine Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s sweeping energy reforms into a modernised North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico’s chief negotiator said on Saturday. The 2014 reforms wrung control of the country’s oil and gas sector from state hands, opening it up to private investment, and incorporating them into the 23-year-old NAFTA is seen as a way to help preserve them for the long term. “We’re working in this sense, analysing all of the elements that need to be included in the energy discussion to reflect the reform Mexico established,” Mexico’s chief trade negotiator, Kenneth Smith, said on Saturday.