Here’s a spot of good news; the Mexicans, God bless ‘em, have seen the future.
It’s infrastructure ….MASSIVE INFRASTRUCTURE being planned that connects Northwest Mexico with the Pacific Basin and booming Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona (outside of Tucson). Last summer’s giant port clog in America’s geostrategic Pacific Ports was a global wakeup call; not to mention the current strike threat in mid-2022.
Also, there’s a US national security urgency; Mexico’s closest Pacific port (Guaymas) to critical military assets in the American Southwest is now front & center. Remember “Pivot to the Pacific?”; going thru Sonora sure beats a long, expensive trip via the Panama Canal.
Investors from around the world are taking notice of Sonoran developments right under the noses of Tucson’s elite, and their lazy, pandering newsies in the local print media.
“Techno-Cactopolis” (my new name for Phoenix), is sniffin’ around big time.
While Tucson was debating which pronoun to use, along with the right gendered bathroom, the Phoenix Economic Development Office just opened a fully staffed operation in Hermosillo, Sonora’s capital, and only about ~4 hours south. And as well they should; Sonora’s new governor, Alfonso Durazo, is tight with Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a.k.a. ‘AMLO’.
Since it’s difficult to get real, or even timely area news in Tucson these days, let me elaborate. AMLO and Governor Durazo did a full day infrastructure confab in mid-February. High on the agenda were massive upgrades planned for the Guaymas Port, and re-routing of the critical rail links of FerroMex inside and around Nogales, where it connects with the Union Pacific Railroad. Union Pacific has openly planned to put hundreds of self-driving semi-rigs daily through Tucson’s congested I-10 by 2025.
Also sensing this new transportation paradigm developing to the South, Berkshire Hathaway’s (Warren Buffet) giant rail subsidiary, BNSF, last month secured an enormous state land tract (3500+ ac.) outside of Phoenix for a world-class logistics facility.
Meanwhile, Nogales has become a northern food powerhouse for Mexican exports to the US & Asia. Mexico is now America’s #1 trading partner (really!). They also want to sell American natural gas to Asia, and use it themselves. The influential Texas energy law firm, Thompson & Knight, in March 2021 quietly filed U.S. FERC & Mexican documents for a multi-billion $$$ liquified natural gas (LNG) prep-facility and new port ops near Guaymas, to be financed by Singapore business interests. A similar such LNG export facility is currently being finished in Ensenada Baja for San Diego based Sempra Energy. Arizona will need more natgas pipelines going west from the Permian Basin in neighboring New Mexico.
Sonora’s massive food industry, not immune to groundwater overpumping, has indicated it is VERY INTERESTED in the potential of desalination from the Baja. As a sidebar, the Trump Administration quietly approved Mexico in late 2018 for the ‘Part 810’ Rule, which now qualifies Mexico for the US NRC ‘123 Agreement’, to license & build US-designed nuclear reactors. Several SMR startups (Small Modular Reactor) are actively scouting Sonora. Engineers have long held, “the 2 most symbiotic industries on Earth are nuclear power & water desalination”.
It’s just more stuff happening right under Tucson’s nose; why Phoenix opened that office in Hermosillo.
The state of Sonora is in the middle of a large scale (for them) road & bridge building program along its northeastern flank. This is not by accident; in 2021, China’s largest lithium producer, Ganfeng, bought out its UK & Australian exploratory partners (Bacanora Lithium), east of Hermosillo. Geologists believe this formation contains North America’s single richest deposit of lithium pegmatites.
Last week, the 2 governors of Sonora & Chihuahua met and agreed to dramatically upgrade federal highway #16 linking their 2 capital cities (& indirectly Guaymas), and a key supply route for Chihuahua’s vast maquiladora industry. Sonora has long heard from a former client of mine, Ford-Hermosillo, about Ford’s shipping problems. Their export output is actually hauled by rail some 900km south to the Port of Mazatlan in Sinaloa, while the Port of Guaymas is less than 130km away. The list goes on….
Let me tie all this together, and the big picture unfolding here.
There’s a new geostrategic, global world being born, it involves things “above all our pay-grades”, this newly evolving space has a lot of moving parts. The big ones are clearly national security, food trade, energy trade, manufactured trade, and infrastructure.
That doesn’t mean we cannot play along smartly, and make key plans to actively participate, especially a big city Metro in Southeast Arizona like Tucson. Otherwise, we will get run over, or worse—absorbed by Cactopolis. . As long as Tucson continues its lazy attitude of passivity, with a contemptuous denial of growth and the standard NIMBY response of “No!”, we’ll lose out.
It’s already happening; ‘denial’ is NOT a river in Egypt.
Sellers is a Southpark Republican living in incorporated Oro Valley; his background is federal technology commercialization