g, thence of the State (Rippy, 1972 p. 1ff).
In the following pages, we will examine in more detail the background to the creation of a Mexican oil industry, and will survey the course of its development from its beginnings, through the expropriation, and into the decade of the 1950s. We cannot establish any absolute date for the end of the period considered here: No decisive turn took place in the two decades after nationalization. For convenience, we will end our consideration in 1959, the year in which a policy of low domestic pricing of Mexican oil was reversed by the Mexican government, allowing PEMEX to charge a higher price and thus build up its resources and capabilities, a development which ultimately led to the rapid expansion of Mexican oil production from 1970 (Williams, 1979 p. 6).
Natural petroleum seepage has occurred in Mexico since pre Columbian times (Grayson, 1980 p. 3). The Aztecs used this oil as a body ointment for ceremonial occasions. Later, many Spanish place names in Mexico referred to tar or pitch, and these place names wer
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