The US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, publicly acknowledged the difficulties US companies face in obtaining permits to operate in all areas of the Mexican energy sector and assured members of the Atlantic Council that the government of President Biden is working to address this situation.
“We need to work on some really tough issues. One of them has to do with contracts and permits (in the energy sector),” Salazar said in response to a question from
“We’re pushing to get those things resolved. Hopefully there will be some resolution of that, because otherwise you (can’t) have confidence in investing in Mexico“He said in response to Jason Marczak, director of the Atlantic Council’s center for Latin America.
The latest complaint of detained permits by the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE), mainly, in addition to other approvals for imports, under the power of the Ministry of Energy, and environmental authorizations from the Energy and Environmental Safety Agency of the Hydrocarbons sector (ASEA), revealed that there are more than 600 procedures related to the sale, storage, service stations and transfers of rights only in the hydrocarbon sector, which together have stagnant investments close to 18,000 million pesos, according to Beatriz Marcelino Estrada, president of the Association of Distributors and Distributors of Energy (ADEE).
More specific figures from the National Organization of Petroleum Sellers (onexpo) revealed that the number of permits held at the end of last year for service stations amounted to 350.
And according to the Mexican Association of Service Station Providers (AMPES), last year the CRE only granted 105 permits for the gas sector, compared to previous years, since in 2018 416 permits were granted, in 2019 there were 407, and even in the pandemic year of 2020 there were they delivered 175.
Regarding the constitutional reform to the electricity sector proposed by the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obradorwhich will give the vertical monopoly to practically the entire electricity value chain to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the US ambassador assured that the legislative process of the initiative is being monitored, hoping that the opinion that is voted on this year has elements to support the regional integration of North America.
“My role as Ambassador is to represent the United States and to carry out the wishes of President Biden. And the way we see the challenges of energy and electricity reform is that we have to solve it in a way that supports the vision of the United States” he said, “Mexico has its own sovereignty. They will pass a law of some kind. But at the end of the day, our concern is that it supports supply chain integration between the US and Mexico. I’ve been to 20 states in Mexico and where Everywhere I go I see that our economies are already so integrated.