A rumor is growing in the Mexican oil sector: if Joe Biden makes it to the White House, it is likely that former New Mexico governor and former Barack Obama official Bill Richardson will be appointed as ambassador to Mexico.

He is an unavoidable, but also controversial, figure in the Democratic firmament. In 2008 he came very close to being Obama's vice presidential nominee, but the president finally went with Biden and offered Richardson the Secretary of Commerce.

He never did take that position in the end, because of a corruption scandal in his state that led him to decline the offer. In the Bill Clinton administration, he had already served as ambassador to the UN and Secretary of Energy.

After the Clinton administration he joined the staff of Henry Kissinger's consulting firm from where he would make friends with several Mexican businessmen, many of them headquartered in Nuevo Leon state, near Texas. In 2002 he won the governorship of New Mexico and then got reelected.

In Mexico he is more closely linked to politicians from the PRI and the PAN parties, currently not in power. He is friends with former Foreign Secretary and former Secretary of Economy Luis Ernesto Derbez, and with Senator Juan Carlos Romero Hicks. He also has ties to former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, cosigner of the original Nafta in the 90s.

Richardson grew up in Mexico City since his father was an executive of a U.S. company with operations in the country.