Gasoline theft is now the second most profitable activity for Mexico’s criminal gangs.
Mexico’s state-owned oil giant, Petrleos de Mexico, AKA Pemex, has spent the last few decades being pillaged and plundered from the inside-out. The state-owned giant has been financially bled to the verge of collapse by its swollen ranks of senior managers and administrators, corrupt politicians, shady contractors, and the untouchable, unsackable leaders of the oil workers’ union.
Now, Pemex is being bled dry from the outside-in. Those doing the plundering this time include armies of amateur opportunists who live close to the major pipelines that crisscross the country as well as some of Mexico’s most ruthless and organized drug gangs. Thanks to these groups’ immunity, bought with bribes and death threats, Pemex is estimated to be losing 20,000 barrels of gasoline daily, with a market value of around $4 million. That’s about $1.4 billion a year.
That’s enough to put Mexico among the top in the world for fuel theft. In 2015, over 5,574 illegal pipeline taps were found. Pemex’s response to the problem has only made matters worse. The company has tried to stop running ready-to-use fuels through its pipelines. Instead, it now carries raw products from refineries to storage terminals where they are processed and shipped out in tanker trucks. But instead of eradicating or reducing fuel theft, it has merely made it easier as stolen fuel is taken straight from Pemex’s storage facilities, where thieves siphon fuel by the truckload and simply drive away.
This post was published at Wolf Street on May 21, 2017.
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