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Mexico's Agency for Industrial Security and Environmental Protection in the Hydrocarbons Sector, or Agencia Nacional de Seguridad Industrial y de Protección al Medio Ambiente del Sector Hidrocarburos (ASEA), issued an official decree on Jan. 24, 2017, with the purpose of ruling how liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) supply stations shall submit to the federal Environmental Impact Evaluation process.

According to Article 28 of the General Law on Ecological Equilibrium and Environmental Protection, or Ley General de Equilibrio Ecológico y Protección al Ambiente (LGEEPA), those who wish to build and operate LPG supply stations must submit to this process in order to obtain an authorization from the federal government. Until publication of the official decree, said authorization was requested through the submittal of an Environmental Impact Assessment, an extensive environmental study that took the authority 60 to 120 business days to review and resolve.

With the publication of the official decree, however, and given the existing Mexican Official Standards that already rule the construction and operation of this specific industry, developers of LPG supply stations may now request the environmental impact authorization by means of a Preliminary Report, which is a simplified form of the Environmental Impact Assessment and requires only 20 business days from the authority to review and resolve.

This decree has been welcomed as an effective effort by ASEA to simplify the Environmental Impact Evaluation process for these types of projects.