Police Chief Says Pipeline Thefts Can Only Happen with Collaboration of Pemex Personnel Mexico News Daily
go to original January 12, 2017

Two of Mexico’s most ruthless drug cartels were accused of stealing more than a billion dollars of oil in 2014. They reportedly did it by tapping into some 2,500 oil pipelines run by Pemex, Mexico’s national oil company. (CGTN America)

A high ranking Federal Police official says the continued tapping of Pemex’s fuel pipelines can only happen with the participation of employees within the oil company.

“The people who are illegally tapping must have the knowledge necessary to drill the pipes and install the valves,” Benjamín Grajeda Regalado, head of the National Gendarmerie, told the newspaper El Universal.

Official data helps support the Gendarmerie chief’s claim: between 2006 and 2015, 123 Pemex employees and 12 ex-employees were arrested for collusion in the theft of fuel.

Grajeda is proud of the results obtained by the Gendarmerie in terms of recovered fuel: “During this administration we’ve retrieved over 30.4 million liters of fuel.”

But that success has not brought a lot of arrests. More often than not the thieves have fled by the time police arrive and all they have to show for their efforts is recovered petroleum products.

A report by the Attorney General’s office says that 2,616 people were arrested for crimes related to the theft of hydrocarbons throughout the country between January 2010 and April 2016.

Other reports indicate that an average of 23,500 barrels of fuel — magna and premium gasolines and diesel — are stolen each year, representing earnings of up to 21 billion pesos (US $983 million) lost to organized crime groups.

The last five years have seen a steady and pronounced increase in the number of illegal taps: in 2012 the total reported was 1,635; by 2015 that figure had leapt to 5,252.

Read the rest at Mexico News Daily

Related: Drug Cartels Looting Mexico's Lucrative Gasoline Supplies (Newsmax)

Related: Pemex to Combat Gas Theft with Israeli Technology (Elena Toledo)

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