Drug Wars tooooo close to home!

[classicman]

Drug gangs steal oil in Mexico

They sell the fuel through their own gasoline stations; sell it to unscrupulous manufacturers or trucking firms in Mexico; use it to pump up profits at front companies owned by the cartels; or sell it to foreign refiners on the international black market.

Last year, thieves stole an average of 8,432 barrels of petroleum products each day, enough to fill 39 tanker trucks. The thieves are leaving a trail of environmental devastation, with broken pipelines poisoning farm fields and leaking into Mexican rivers.

The number of illegal pipeline taps has more than quadrupled since 2004, from 102 then to 462 last year, despite renewed anti-theft efforts by Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil monopoly better known as Pemex. In 2008 alone, authorities arrested 528 people and seized 517 vehicles, Pemex said. Losses that year were $715 million; it has not released an estimate for 2009.

"It's a big problem and a continual thorn in their side," said David Shields, editor of Energia a Debate, an oil-industry magazine. "And the states that have drug trafficking have more problems with their pipelines."

The thieves use powerful drills and sophisticated valves to prevent any drop in pipeline pressure that might be detected by Pemex. They use hoses to fill fuel trucks with the stolen liquids. Sometimes they even take a more direct approach: hijacking tanker trucks full of fuel.

Since October, five American businessmen have pleaded guilty to importing stolen petroleum condensate, a raw ingredient for fuels.

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So they're diversifying as well. Very capitalist of them.