Mexico’s cabinet amends again import, export permits for chemicals, fuels

SAO PAULO (ICIS)–The Mexican government has amended for the third time the decree regulating import and export permit requirements for several chemicals as well as fuel products and re-opened the door for 20-year permits.

Among others, there were amendments published for permits to import key building blocks within the petrochemical industry, such as naphtha; products within the aromatics chain such as benzene and toluene; or within olefins such as ethylene, propylene and butadiene (BD).

Within fuels, import permits for jet kerosene or biodiesel were amended, as well as those for feedstocks such as methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE).

Read the list of products in the decree’s annexes (see here, in Spanish).

The government said it was aiming to simplify the procedures by providing greater legal certainty and clarity to interested parties, seeking to facilitate compliance with obligations by considering the type of merchandise, its use, and the quantities requested.

These import and export permits apply when the product is related to the energy industry or derives or is produced from hydrocarbons.

For lubricants and additives, recent regulatory amendments have made it necessary to obtain a Permit for the import of such products, when classified under certain specific tariff codes.

Some of the updates referred to the term of the permits for import and export, an aspect in which the government is backtracking its earlier decision from 2020 to withdraw 20-year permits existent at the time, according to a note to customers by the Mexican office of law firm Holland & Knight.

“Permits are granted for different validity periods that vary based on the nature of the merchandise and its intended use. For merchandise intended for sporting events and research trials, both for import and export, the validity is sixty days. Standard permits for one year and five years may also be requested,” said Gabriel Ruiz, partner at the law firm.

“Furthermore, permits for export may be granted for periods exceeding five to twenty years, provided the need for such permits is justified in the interest of social and economic benefit, subject to approval by the Ministry of Energy (SENER).”

The decree also establishes specific requirements for obtaining prior import and export permits, differentiating the requirements based on the validity of each type of permit.

Regarding renewals, permits granted for one year may be renewed up to two times for the same validity, while five-year permits may be renewed once for the same duration.

For permits exceeding five years intended for export, the renewal will be singular and may extend up to half of the original validity; in the case of twenty-year permits, the renewal will be limited to the same proportion.

The new rules published on 18 September came to amend a decree originally issued in December 2020, later amended in November 2022 and November 2023.

These amendments were part of wider changes included in the Energy Reform passed in 2013, which sought to liberalize Mexico’s energy sector.

The current Administration’s approach, however, has been keeping the state-owned energy companies – crude major Pemex or utility CFE are two of them – at the center of the country’s energy landscape.

Front page picture source: Shutterstock