The reform to the Ley Minera published in the DOF on 8 May 2023 moved four things out of the corporate responsibility file and into the permit file. Article 14 BIS makes delivery of a concession title conditional on the winner first securing the federal environmental, labor, energy and social authorizations, the water concession for industrial mining use among them. Article 27, fracción XXIII requires reuse measures inside the mining lot that reach at least 60% recycling of treated wastewater. Article 13 sets a payment to affected communities of at least 5% of the fiscal result after non-deductible contributions. Article 27, fracción XV requires a funded instrument, an insurance policy, a letter of credit, a deposit with the Tesorería de la Federación or a trust, filed before the concession title is granted. It guarantees the prevention, mitigation and compensation measures set by the social impact assessment. The same decree added article 107 BIS to the LGEEPA, which requires an equivalent instrument as security for the site restoration program.
Article 14 bars concessions in áreas naturales protegidas and in zones without water availability. Article 15 cut the concession term from 50 years to 30, with a single renewal of 25. Article 13 also ends first-come allocation and moves grants to concurso de licitación pública.
Sustainability at a Mexican mine stopped being a policy document in May 2023. It is a set of permit conditions with a capital cost and a filing date. The 60% recycling floor and the closure guarantee reach the budget first, and both of them land on the electricity bill.
What the reform changed, and for whom
The licitación route in article 13 and the 30 year term in article 15 govern how new concessions are granted. The obligations in article 27 attach to the concession holder, so on our read they reach mines already operating and not only future grants. Fracción XV is the exception, because its own wording ties it to the period before a title is granted. That distinction decides whether a general manager is planning a capex item for the coming year or a bid strategy for the one after.
What the reform does not do is set the sizing rules. The restoration guarantee in article 107 BIS of the LGEEPA has to cover the approved restoration program, and article 62 of the Ley Minera governs the closure plan, but the amount is settled with the environmental authority case by case. That number is not public. An operator quoting a sector-wide figure for it is guessing.
Water is the condition that binds first
Congress enacted the Ley de Aguas Nacionales, published in the DOF on 1 December 1992. Conagua administers it. Conagua issues the water concession, and Conagua publishes the availability determinations that decide whether a basin or aquifer has water left to concession. A mining company does not make that call about its own site.
That is why article 14 BIS reorders the schedule. Under the old sequence a company held a mining concession and then went looking for water. Under the new one the water concession sits in the file that has to close before the title is handed over. For a project in a stressed basin the water application, not the drill program, now sets the critical path.
The 60% recycling floor is the operating half of the same requirement. Meeting it means thickener overflow recovery, tailings water return and a treatment train sized to the process flow. Those are capital items. The water constraints Mexican industrial sites face apply to mining with a statutory percentage attached to them.
Recycled water arrives as an electricity load
Reclaim pumping, aeration and membrane trains run close to continuously, and they run through the peak hours. At a mine that load is added to an already large one. Under the disposiciones administrativas published in the DOF on 15 November 2018, a site becomes a usuario de patrón de alto consumo once it passes 45 GWh of electricity a year, or 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent in fuels other than transport fuel. A UPAC reports to CONUEE between 1 March and 30 June each year on its consumption and on the measures it has put in place. That filing, rather than a voluntary audit, is the recurring obligation the sector actually carries, and it is the natural starting point for industrial energy efficiency work in Mexico.
The generation options are narrower than they look. Article 17 of the Ley de la Industria Eléctrica, published in the DOF on 11 August 2014, exempts plants below 0.5 MW from holding a CRE generation permit. It exempts nothing else, and 0.5 MW is immaterial against a mine's load. Anything at mine scale needs a CRE generation permit. It then reaches the site either as abasto aislado or through a power purchase agreement taken as a Usuario Calificado. That last route requires 1 MW of maximum demand at the centro de carga over the previous twelve months. Solar and wind at a mine are a contracting decision before they are an engineering one.
Mines connected at transmission or subtransmission voltage also carry the Código de Red obligations that CRE reissued as RES/550/2021, published in the DOF on 31 December 2021 and in force from 1 January 2022. The power factor band of 0.95 lagging to 1.0 is not enforceable until 8 April 2026. An operator adding pump and blower load has a defined window to size compensation before that date.
Consultation is a schedule item
Article 6 requires prior, free, informed, culturally appropriate and good faith consultation where a concession affects indigenous or Afro-Mexican communities. Article 13 attaches the 5% contraprestación to the same relationship. Neither is discretionary, and neither can be compressed by a sponsor working to a financing timetable. The consequence of getting it wrong is a project that does not start, so the consultation belongs in the schedule from the first day rather than in a report at the end of the year.
What the sector numbers say
Camimex reported in its Informe Anual 2023 that mining and metallurgical exports were USD 22,408 million in 2022, down 2.4% against 2021. It put production value at 316,955.7 million pesos, the sector at 2.46% of national GDP, and 2022 investment at USD 5,264.7 million.
The USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2023 placed Mexico first in world silver mine production, at 6,300 tonnes of a world total of 26,000 tonnes in 2022. On foreign investment, Secretaría de Economía figures reported on 23 November 2023 showed USD 2,737 million into mining from January to September 2023, an increase of 110% on the same period of 2022.
Lithium is the part the sustainability case tends to skip. The reform to the Ley Minera published in the DOF on 20 April 2022 reserved lithium to the nation. The decree creating Litio para México appeared in the DOF on 23 August 2022. A mining reserve zone of 234,855 hectares in Sonora was declared on 18 February 2023. The USGS lists Mexico with 1.7 million tonnes of identified lithium resources and shows no Mexican lithium reserves. Reading the status of lithium in Mexico as a private mining opportunity means reading the wrong statute.
What to do before the next reporting date
Start with the water balance. Set the site's actual draw against the concessioned volume, then calculate the current recycling percentage against the 60% floor in article 27, fracción XXIII. Where the gap is real, the treatment capex and the power draw it creates belong in the same paper, because approving one without the other understates the operating cost.
Then check the UPAC thresholds. If the site clears 45 GWh a year of electricity or 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent in fuel, the CONUEE window opens on 1 March, and the consumption data has to be assembled before it.
Then price the closure instrument. Insurance, a letter of credit, a deposit or a trust each consumes credit capacity, and the treasury team is usually allocating that capacity somewhere else.
Put a number on your mine's power and water exposure
Send the twelve most recent CFE bills or the isolated generation fuel log, the connected load, and the water volumes reported under the site's concession. Mexico Energy Partners returns the electricity cost per tonne processed, the share of site emissions coming from purchased power against onsite diesel, and whether qualified supply or an onsite generation contract lowers the cost at that load. MEP's work with mining and metals operators sets out what the review covers.
Sources
- Diario Oficial de la Federación, decreto reforming the Ley Minera, the Ley de Aguas Nacionales, the LGEEPA and the Ley General para la Prevención y Gestión Integral de los Residuos, 8 May 2023.
- Diario Oficial de la Federación, reform to the Ley Minera reserving lithium to the nation, 20 April 2022.
- Diario Oficial de la Federación, decreto creating the public body Litio para México, 23 August 2022.
- Diario Oficial de la Federación, decreto declaring a lithium mining reserve zone of 234,855 hectares in Sonora, 18 February 2023.
- Diario Oficial de la Federación, Ley de Aguas Nacionales, 1 December 1992.
- Diario Oficial de la Federación, Ley de la Industria Eléctrica, 11 August 2014.
- Diario Oficial de la Federación, "Disposiciones administrativas que establecen los criterios para determinar cuando un usuario cuenta con patrón de alto consumo de energía", 15 November 2018.
- Comisión Reguladora de Energía, RES/550/2021, Código de Red, published in the DOF on 31 December 2021 and in force from 1 January 2022.
- Cámara Minera de México, Informe Anual 2023, covering 2022 production, exports, GDP share and investment.
- US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2023, silver and lithium chapters, January 2023.
- La República, "México ya captó US$2.737 millones de Inversión Extranjera Directa en minería en 2023", reporting Secretaría de Economía data, 23 November 2023.