The Secretary of Energy, Rocío Nahle , revealed in a tweet the name of the new state company that will focus on the exploitation of lithium, a resource that the Mexican government has called “strategic.” It will be called Lithium for Mexico.
It is expected that in the coming weeks the official creation of this new state company will be announced, after the declaration of lithium as a mineral that can only be exploited by the State. This implies the refusal to grant more concessions and the prohibition of the participation of private capital in the exploitation and commercialization of the mineral.
The name that the new state company could have generated a debate on social networks in April that even caught the attention of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “Which one are you going for?: Mexican Lithium Agency ‘Amlitio’ or Mexican Lithium ‘Litiomex’”, asked the president in one of his morning conferences.
Lithium has been called the “oil of the 21st century” or the “green gold”. By 2030, global demand for lithium is expected to exceed two million metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent, more than double the projected demand for 2025, according to data from analytics firm Statista. Increases in demand for batteries for electric vehicles will be a strong driver of lithium consumption in the next decade.
In May 2021, the president said that the Mexican state was considering “taking a larger role” in lithium production, arguing that companies were using mining concessions for speculation rather than extracting the metal.
In Mexico there are 36 lithium mining projects, all of them financed with foreign capital and controlled by 10 companies, according to data from the Comprehensive System on Mining Economy and the Ministry of Economy.
López Obrador warned last October that the companies that were granted a concession in previous years will have to demonstrate that they have actually invested in exploration and exploitation work in order to keep it.
With information from Diana Nava and Ivet Rodríguez
