ENERGY

Mexico Backs Off on Oil Sell-Off: Bowing to stiff political pressure, Mexico scrapped a 4-year-old project to end its control of the cash-strapped petrochemical industry and offered to go halves with the private sector instead. Energy Minister Jesus Reyes Heroles said the privatization of 61 secondary petrochemical firms had stalled. Faced by stubborn opposition from within the ranks of its own ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and Mexico’s powerful oil workers union, as well as many other sectors of society, the government, he said, had changed tack. Instead of fully privatizing those plants that produce materials the government considered nonstrategic, he said, state oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos, known as Pemex, would retain at least a 51% stake in each plant.