Cartels in Mexico Are Getting Into the Oil Business, and Business Is Booming Brian Anderson - Vice
go to original February 17, 2014

Enterprising crime syndicates are using firetruck-sized industrial drillers to bore literal drug pipelines under the US-Mexico border, but more and more the cartels are profiting - tremendously so - from another sort of pipeline.

Gangs like the Sinaloa, Los Zetas, and the Gulf Cartel have been diversifying into oil for years, though now that President Enrique Pena Neito has ended the 75-year monopoly enjoyed by Pemex, the state oil company, organized crime is expected to move in on Mexico's deep shale reserves. These basins, the International Business Times reports, cut through Mexico's northeast region, turf that's controlled, brutally, by the Zetas. This puts the Zetas, at least, at a distinct advantage over rival cartels and any other private interests looking to cash in on the oil rush.   

But across the board, stolen petro sales have steadily grown into a major revenue stream for Mexican cartels. The numbers are revealing: As of 2008, Pemex estimated that cartels had leeched roughly $720 million worth of petroleum products. By 2012 and through the first nine months of 2013, that figure had risen to $1.13 billion, according to a November report from Pemex director Emilio Lozoya. Those last nine months were veritable boom times, constituting over half of the illegal earnings, which came mostly from siphoned Pemex pipelines.

Read the rest at Vice

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