PEMEX: Mexico Loses $700 Million Annually to Oil Theft

PEMEX: Mexico Loses $700 Million Annually to Oil Theft

Posted on Sep 1, 2009 in Guest Bloggers, Mexico Today by PMC 1 Comment

By Sylvia Longmire

Normally when someone hears a story about oil theft or criminal groups hacking into pipelines, one thinks of places like Nigeria or Iraq. Unfortunately, oil looting is rampant in Mexico, and it’s costing the government millions.

And it’s not just oil that’s being stolen.

Mexican criminals have been tapping into Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) pipelines for years to steal gasoline, diesel, and even jet fuel, according to Reuters’ reports. Criminals dig up pipelines that are buried in rural areas, attach a valve, and then siphon off the fuel. They usually have no problem selling the stolen fuel to corrupt service station owners or companies that operate large fleets of vehicles in Mexico.

The theft of crude oil is not as common because the oil must be sent somewhere else to be refined into something valuable. Yet, the fact that this is occurring highlights either desperate economic times or very bold criminals. The reality is that it’s probably a little of both.

It sounds almost comical to picture a group of Mexican criminals hacking into a pipeline, filling a truck full of oil, somehow managing to cross the U.S.-Mexico border with all the proper paperwork, then driving up to a refinery and yelling, “Hey! Does anybody want this oil? We’re selling it for cheap!” While that’s not exactly what’s happening, there are individuals in the U.S. that are facilitating this process.

According to MarketWatch, federal documents released on August 21 revealed a Texas chemical plant, owned by German chemical company BASF Corp., bought $2 million worth of petroleum products that had been stolen from Pemex and smuggled across the U.S. border. The documents also showed the stolen condensate passed through several companies’ hands before arriving on a barge at the BASF facility in Port Arthur, Texas.

The actual transport of stolen oil from Mexican pipelines into U.S. corporate hands is complicated at best. Donald Schroeder, former president of Trammo Corp., testified that in January 2009, two companies, Murphy Energy Corporation and Continental Fuels, contacted him. Both wanted to sell him stolen condensate. Apparently he agreed to buy it, and the transfers began. “Unnamed import companies” would sell the condensate to intermediary companies like Continental (which has since shuttered its headquarters in Houston). Those import companies would smuggle the condensate across the border and store it in Continental facilities. No details were available on how those trucks managed to successfully cross the U.S. Mexico border. These piecemeal transfers would continue until there was enough oil in the storage facility to fill a barge and ship to BASF.

Read the rest at Mexidata.info

_{Sylvia Longmire is a former Air Force officer and Special Agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, where she specialized in counterintelligence, counterespionage, and force protection analysis. After being medically retired in 2005, Ms. Longmire worked for almost four years as a Senior Intelligence Analyst for the California State Terrorism Threat Assessment Center, providing daily situational awareness to senior state government officials on southwest border violence and significant events in Latin America. She received her Master’s degree from the University of South Florida in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, with a focus on the Cuban and Guatemalan revolutions. Ms. Longmire is currently an independent consultant and freelance writer. Her website is Mexico’s Drug War; she is a regular contributor to Examiner.com; and her email address isspooky926@gmail.com. She is also a friend of Mexico Trucker Online}

Tags: oil thefts, Pemex