PRD vows court fight to prevent Yucatán oil drilling

One of Mexico’s major political parties is fighting a move to auction off a piece of Yucatán’s Gulf for oil exploration.

The center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) will file an injunction to remove the Yucatán Platform from a bid to be offered in January, said Alejandro Cuevas Mena, regional head of the party.

Alejandro Cuevas Mena, head of Yucatán’s branch of the PRD.

Opponents of oil exploration off Yucatán worry that the coast’s fishing industry would be badly harmed if off-shore industrialization were to be allowed.

The Gulf off Yucatán is possibly a vast, untapped oil field, but for years, environmentalists have succeeded in holding off drilling.

Opening up the platform would threaten the livelihood of 17 fishing communities, affecting 25,000 families, not to mention tourism, a former state environmental official has said.

In a press conference, Alejandro Cuevas Mena, the PRD’s state president, called on the governor to also intervene.

The idea of exploring for oil is “just a hoax” because “…we already know that there is oil here and they will come to convert Yucatan into an oil zone,” he added.

The PRD is one of Mexico’s three major political parties and offers a populist platform. It recruits leadership from the working class more often than the other competitive parties, according to an online encyclopedia.

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