Mexico Takes Aim at Private Companies, Threatening Decades of Economic Growth

MONTERREY, Mexico—For the previous 20 years, a 1,100-megawatt energy plant owned by Spain’s Iberdrola SA outdoors Mexico’s industrial capital has stored the lights on for scores of corporations reminiscent of brewing large Heineken NV, regardless of winter freezes, a hurricane and the occasional brush hearth.

But since January, half the gas-fired plant has been forcibly shut down by Mexico’s authorities, which argues that non-public vitality corporations have plundered Mexico like Spanish conquistadors of outdated. The electrical energy shutdown compelled dozens of companies in Monterrey to return to the inefficient and extra expensive state-run utility for his or her energy.