This paper presents a critical comparison of EROEI and Relational Analysis applied to the Mexican Oil and Gas sector. Energy return on energy investment (EROEI) is used in this paper as an example to flag the problem that arises when data are aggregated into a simple ratio, leading to the loss of a significant amount of meaningful information. In contrast to that approach, this paper shows how Relational Analysis is helpful for policy discussion and for embracing complexity by means of adopting a variety of categories of accounting across different levels and dimensions, characterizing the relationships among the different metabolic patterns of the different components, and integrating inequivalent views of the same system: a structural (bottom-up) and a functional (top-down).

本文对EROEI和关系分析应用于墨西哥石油和天然气行业进行了重要的比较。本文以能源投资的能源回报（EROEI）为例，说明了将数据汇总为简单比率时出现的问题，从而导致大量有意义的信息丢失。与这种方法相比，本文通过采用不同级别和维度的各种会计类别，描述了不同组成部分的不同代谢模式之间的关系，展示了关系分析如何有助于政策讨论和拥抱复杂性，并整合同一系统的不等价视图：结构（自下而上）和功能（自上而下）。