Environmental organizations have denounced that the Mexican government intends to postpone the production of ultra-low-sulfur diesel until 2015. The government is preparing new regulations which would hold the entire production chain responsible for the use of clean fuels, not only the state-owned oil company Pemex, which was supposed to be producing them, by law, since 2009. But the company’s budget for 2012 allocates a mere 1.09 million dollars for the required refining.

“With cleaner fuels, better motor vehicle technologies could be adopted, which would reduce polluting emissions,” Gabriela Alarcón, director of research on urban development at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, told Tierramérica.

More than 14,000 people die every year in Mexico from diseases linked to poor air quality, such as bronchitis and pneumonia, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).