Mexico City. According to a presidential decree published this Thursday in the Official Gazette, the Mexican government ordered the acquisition and definitive possession of the hydrogen plant of the French company Air Liquide at the refinery of the state oil company Pemex in the center of the country.
In December, the government announced the temporary occupation, for reasons of public utility, of a hydrogen production plant called U-3400, located at the Tula refinery in Hidalgo, in favor of Pemex Industrial Transformation (PMI).
“The immediate execution of this seizure decree is ordered and, as a result, there will be definitive possession of the U-3400 hydrogen production plant,” the new decree said. Paris-based Air Liquide did not immediately respond to a request for comment. reuters,
After announcing temporary possession late last year, the government issued a utility announcement in February in which it ordered PMI, Pemex’s commercial arm, to request the Energy Ministry to initiate the ownership process for the plant.
The new decree indicates that the filing of any means of defense by the company “does not suspend the immediate execution” of the measures and that PMI must cover the amount of compensation in terms of expropriation law, but did not detail the amount. Is compensation.
He further said, “Within 10 business days after the notification of this decree, interested parties may resort to the judicial procedure referred to in Article 11 of the Expropriation Law, for the sole purpose of disputing the amount of compensation.”
The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which began in December 2018 and will end in October, has sought the country’s self-sufficiency in fuel with million-dollar operations in the refining sector.
To justify the measures at the U-3400 plant, the Energy Ministry has said that the Tula refinery’s reliance on hydrogen provided by third parties has put the production of gasoline and diesel at the facility “at risk.”