How to Enter Natural Resources in Chile and Latin America: A Guide for Foreign Investors

This guide sets out what a foreign investor needs to understand before committing capital to natural resources in Chile — and, when the decision is regional, how Chile compares with Argentina, Peru and Panama. It is not legal advice. It is the map we use ourselves before telling anyone where to put the first dollar.

The first decision is not technical — it is jurisdictional

Almost every investor who walks into our office has already chosen the country. They came for the asset — a property, a local partner, a mineral law — and they want to know how to permit it. The question arrives late. The risk that destroys the most value in Latin American natural resources is neither geological nor price-related: it is the distance between what the law says and what the administration does, and that distance varies more between countries than between orebodies.

The four markets we cover are, today, four different bets:

Chile: what is open, and under what regime

Chile remains the most orderly natural-resources market in the region, and its main advantage is not the subsoil: it is that the rules hold when the government changes. That comes at a cost, and the cost is slowness.

Metallic mining

A Chilean mining concession is constituted by judicial resolution, not administrative decision, and is protected by constitutional guarantee. For a foreign investor this matters more than it sounds: title does not depend on the goodwill of the ministry of the day, and it lapses only on objective grounds — essentially non-payment of the annual fee. It is the most defensible asset in the Latin American portfolio.

The trade-off is that holding the concession does not authorise you to operate. Between title and the first cubic metre moved sit the two permitting tracks described below, and that is where the time goes.

Lithium

Lithium in Chile is not concessible. It is reserved to the State, and private access happens through exceptional routes — special operating contracts (CEOL), partnership with state companies, or inherited contracts already in force. An investor who arrives expecting to apply for a lithium concession the way they would for copper is starting from the wrong model. We cover it in detail in our article on lithium regulation.

Renewable energy and green hydrogen

Here the regime is open and the bottleneck has moved: it is no longer generation but transmission and storage. A solar project in the north can be technically ready and financially unviable through curtailment. It is the first question to put to a developer offering a portfolio: not how many megawatts, but how many evacuable megawatts. We develop this in solar energy in northern Chile.

The two permitting tracks, and why they get confused

The most common mistake a foreign investor makes is treating Chilean permitting as a single process. There are two parallel systems with different logics.

The environmental track. Every project of meaningful size enters the Environmental Impact Assessment System (SEIA), administered by the Environmental Assessment Service, either as a Declaration (DIA) or a full Study (EIA). The output is the Environmental Qualification Resolution (RCA). Without a favourable RCA nothing gets built, and most sectoral permits are conditioned on it. The concrete bottlenecks are in environmental permitting in Chile.

The sectoral track. Dozens of specific authorisations — Sernageomin for the mining method and closure plan, the water authority for rights and works, the National Monuments Council for archaeological clearance, municipalities and health authorities. This is the track the 2025 reform set out to fix. The full route is in how to get mining permits in Chile.

What changed between 2025 and 2026

Chile has spent eighteen months rewriting its permitting system. Four pieces are moving simultaneously, and their calendar is what determines whether a project should be filed now or in six months.

1. Law 21,770 and its phase-in

The Framework Law on Sectoral Authorisations, published on 29 September 2025, is the most significant permitting reform in decades: maximum statutory timeframes, parallel processing, alternative enabling techniques — sworn declaration with ex-post control instead of prior approval for lower-risk authorisations — and a digital single window, the SUPER platform.

The real calendar was set by DFL No. 2, published on 10 February 2026, which determines the phase-in for sectoral bodies to comply with Title VI of the law. It distinguishes two groups — ministries and public services (Group A); municipalities, works departments, regional health authorities and regional governments (Group B) — and two phases:

• Phase 1, by 29 June 2026: both groups were to identify and submit complete information on their procedures, forms, deadlines and administrative-silence effects.
• Phase 2, digital processing through SUPER as the exclusive channel: 31 December 2026 for Group A; 31 December 2027 for Group B.

The practical consequence: through 2027 a single project may be filing ministerial permits on a digital platform and municipal permits over a counter. Planning as if the system were already unified is a scheduling error.

2. The SEIA regulation

The Environmental Impact Assessment regulation was amended by Decree 17/2026, published in January 2026: new entry thresholds and project typologies — mining development among them — adjustments to sectoral environmental permits (PAS), and clearer criteria for when modifying an existing project triggers reassessment. For a project still in design, the entry threshold is a design variable, not a given.

3. The Mining Safety Regulation

On 3 August 2026 the Ministry of Economy and Mining filed with the Comptroller General an amendment to the Mining Safety Regulation consolidating 55 sectoral authorisations into 13 permits and 18 alternative enabling techniques operating as sworn declarations. Public consultation on the associated environmental regulatory amendment ran from 31 July to 11 September 2026. It is potentially the change with the greatest practical effect on the post-RCA stage of a mining project — and it is not yet in force.

4. The change of government

The government that took office in March 2026 put permitting at the centre of its economic agenda and created a combined Ministry of Economy and Mining headed by Daniel Mas. In its 2026 public account the minister reported 15 mining projects worth US$24 billion filed with the SEIA, the largest volume the system has recorded, alongside a mining-fee simplification bill in its second constitutional reading and the reactivation of the mining integration treaty with Argentina.

Our reading, and it is a reading: the direction of travel is clear and sustained, but almost everything that matters is still being implemented or still in the legislature. A timeline built on announced reforms rather than reforms in force will not survive the first quarter.

Water, land and communities: the real critical path

After twenty years watching projects enter and leave the Chilean system, the observation we repeat most is this: the SEIA is rarely the critical path. Water, land and communities are.

Water, because in the north there are no rights available and desalination with high-elevation pumping is an infrastructure project in its own right, with its own assessment, its own easements and its own calendar.

Land, because mining easements, access, and state-owned or agricultural-community land are negotiated on calendars that budget does not compress.

Communities, because when a project may directly affect indigenous communities, ILO Convention 169 prior consultation is triggered inside the environmental assessment — and because engagement that begins after the project is filed is by definition late. Agreements built before filing save years; conflicts that emerge during assessment add them.

A timeline that survives the investment committee

These are the planning assumptions we use, not promised timeframes:

• Baseline studies: 1 to 2 years, because they require full seasonal data and cannot be accelerated.
• Environmental assessment via DIA: 1 to 2 years.
• Environmental assessment via EIA: 2 to 4 years for a mining project, longer with indigenous consultation.
• Post-RCA sectoral processing: variable, and precisely the stage the reforms under way may shorten.
• Water and land: run in parallel from day one, or become the critical path.

A mining project of meaningful size starting baseline work today is looking at several years before it is ready to build. Anyone presenting a shorter timeline to the board is not being optimistic: they are taking on a risk they have not disclosed.

The five most expensive mistakes

1. Buying the asset and then mapping the permits. The regulatory map and gap analysis belong in due diligence, not in next year's work plan. A regulatory liability discovered after closing is no longer negotiable.
2. Designing the project and then asking which track it enters by. Location, water source and associated infrastructure determine whether a project enters by DIA or EIA, and whether it triggers indigenous consultation. Those decisions are made in conceptual engineering and paid for over the life of the project.
3. Confusing legal representation with institutional representation. A good law firm drafts and litigates. The sustained technical conversation with the regulator — the one that keeps an observation from becoming a rejection — is a different craft.
4. Treating community engagement as risk management. If it starts when opposition appears, it is already late and already expensive.
5. Planning on the announced reform. See the section above. In Chile today the gap between the published rule and the operative rule is months or years, and it is documented in the phase-in calendar itself.

Argentina, Peru and Panama

When the decision is regional rather than about a single asset, these are the three comparisons that matter. Each has its own page.

How this actually gets done

None of the above is resolved by reading. These are the three most frequent entry points when someone moves from evaluating to deciding:

The full catalogue is under services, and the person behind this work is on Javier Jara's page.

Sources: Law 21,770, Official Gazette (29 Sep 2025); DFL No. 2 on phase-in, 10 Feb 2026; Decree 17/2026 amending the SEIA Regulation; La Tercera on the Mining Safety Regulation amendment (3 Aug 2026); 2026 public account of the Ministry of Economy and Mining. Last reviewed: September 2026. General information, not legal advice.