Democratic congressmen demanded that the president of the United States, Joe Biden, establish an energetic position against the policies that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is implementing in terms of energy and exploitation of lithium.
In a letter also sent to the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, they assured that the actions of the present administration are contrary to what was signed in the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC) and also puts at risk existing and future US investments.
For congressmen, the fact that President Biden has not commented on the issue until now has allowed the president of Mexico to consider this “silence” as an act of approval of his reforms.
We urge the Biden administration to more forcefully voice its concerns about President López Obrador’s damaging fossil fuel agenda. Public reports indicate that President López Obrador interprets the Biden administration’s relative public silence on this issue as indifference to or tacit approval of his government’s decision to prioritize fossil fuel development over renewable energy.”
For legislators, the policies, changes and actions that are being implemented in Mexico regarding energy are contrary to market competition and above all to the goals that seek to reduce the use of fossil fuels in the region.
We write with concerns about Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s actions to undermine private sector renewable energy development efforts in Mexico on behalf of state-owned fossil fuel industries, and urge the Biden administration to speak out more strongly on support for the production of renewable energy that benefits both countries”, says the document.
The letter joins the various calls made by business organizations and other members of Congress requesting the intervention of the United States government in Mexico’s energy policy, since they insist that these practices are discriminatory, in addition to the fact that they affect not only the companies that participate in the electricity sector, but also in the export, storage, distribution and sale of fuels.
One of the issues highlighted by the legislators in the document is the ban on private capital exploiting lithium, since this is a market that will be exclusive to the Mexican government.
They assure that this policy “would threaten more than 44 billion dollars in private investment in the energy sector of Mexico, will have a negative impact on the investment of the United States private sector in Mexico and is the antithesis of the historically solid economic relationship” between both countries.