He president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) signed this Saturday the decree to nationalize the lithium and that it cannot be exploited by foreigners “nor by Russia, China or the United States”.
During the event, together with the secretary of Energy, dew nahlethe federal president assured that, with the signing of the decree, declare lithium reserve area 234 thousand hectares in it state of sonora.
The owner of the federal executive stressed that this act has similarities, “keeping the proportional ones”, with the expropriation decree made by the president Lazaro Cardenas he March 18, 1938.
“This decree is signed to nationalize lithium so that it cannot be exploited abroad, neither by Russia, nor by China, nor by the United States. Oil and lithium belong to the nation, they belong to the people of Mexico, to you, to all those who live in this region of Sonora,” he assured.
The decree will be one more step of the Government after the reform to the Mining Law of April 2022 that declared lithium as a mineral of public utility whose exploitation will be the exclusive power of the State through a new public company, Lithium for Mexico (LitioMX), which will depend on Sener.
The president did not give more details about the decree, limiting himself to stating that it is part of a tour that he will do over the weekend in Sonora, a border state with Arizona, United States, in which the Government of Mexico intends to install a value chain for the manufacture of electric vehicles.
As part of the trip through the entity, López Obrador will supervise the work of the photovoltaic plant that is being built in Puerto Peñasco and that Mexico calls the “largest” solar energy plant in Latin America.
While on Saturday he will visit the Bacadéhuachi lithium mine, where the Government affirms that there is the largest mineral deposit in the country and one of the largest in the world.
In defending the nationalization of lithium, the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena) argued that Mexico is in tenth place out of the 23 countries with mineral reserves.
Although initially there would only be public investment, the Government has shown itself to be open to private resources, particularly from its partners in the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC).
With information from López-Dóriga Digital