A long-awaited environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline released Friday by the State Department found the project would have a negligible impact on climate change, bolstering the case for the controversial project as it heads to the White House for a decision on its construction.

An oil industry overhaul approved by Mexico's Congress portends massive changes for the country's iconic national oil industry – and potentially a boost for the economy. The bill, approved overnight, would promote foreign investment and allow private companies to explore and exploit petroleum deposits – tasks previously reserved for Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, as the state oil agency is known. It must be ratified by state assemblies, approval that is expected.

Mexico's senate unveiled an historic energy bill Saturday (Dec 7) that goes further than expected to break the state's monopoly over the oil and gas industry. After months of negotiation between the ruling PRI party and the largest opposition party PAN, a bill was finally brought into the senate over the weekend. The right-wing PAN appears to have come out ahead with a pro-market bill.

The Mexican oil industry, long a state monopoly, appears to be on the verge of opening itself to outsiders. In August, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto presented a proposal to allow national oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, to enter into joint ventures, and for private oil companies to operate their own projects in profit-sharing agreements with the government. Mexico's opposition parties have their own proposals.

The tiny nation of Ecuador is sitting on a lucrative oil reserve — some 846 million barrels of heavy crude. But that oil also happens to be right under a large, biodiverse rain forest. There’d be some obvious environmental problems with digging it up. And so, in 2007, Ecuador President Rafael Correa came up with a innovative proposal. He’d ask wealthy countries and donors to pay Ecuador $3.6 billion to leave that oil untouched.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced on Monday one of the most "sweeping economic overhauls" in Mexico's history with his proposal to open the country's closed energy industry to foreign investment for the first time in 75 years. For Mexico's northern neighbor, the question is how do these reforms affect the average American consumer, the North American energy sector, and the overall U.S. economy? According to energy and economic analysts, the answer is simple: A lot.

Pena Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, want to let foreign companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Repsol SA sign production-sharing contracts for oil exploration and output. (The companies would still be prohibited from operating their own fields.) Thus would Mexico return to the situation that prevailed from 1938, when the country expropriated oilfields from U.S.

President Enrique Pena Nieto’s PRI and the like-minded PAN have the congressional votes to pass an energy reform. Doing so without preparing Mexicans for the change could be counterproductive. The PRI has also vowed to unveil its own proposal later this year. But pushing a little-known reform on Mexicans at the very last minute may be as troublesome as not having a reform at all. Mexico has a historic opportunity to change its energy future. The country's politicians will make history if they educate their citizens about why their insular oil nationalism is no longer an option.