Days after a fireball erupted near the Mexican town of Tlahuelilpan, killing at least 117 people pilfering gasoline from a pipeline, the area’s fuel bandits were back in business.
Illegal taps, some of them newly opened, were the giveaway that fuel was flowing again.
Soldiers patrolling the area near the town in central Mexico after the tragedy on Jan. 18 told reporters they found 15 illicit spigots just a few kilometers away on the same pipeline operated by state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
In one spot, reporters saw a freshly dug hole leading to a shiny valve attached to the pipeline lying about 1m underground. Nearby were discarded plastic hoses, snack wrappers, an empty pack of cigarettes and a blanket still wet with gasoline.
Such is the mammoth task confronting Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has vowed to end Mexico’s rampant fuel theft. The practice is depriving the government of badly needed tax revenue; it cost Pemex an estimated US$3 billion last year alone.
Security experts say that small-time thieves, organized crime gangs and corrupt Pemex employees all have a hand in the trade. The crudest operators hack into pipelines to siphon gasoline and diesel, often at night in rural outposts. They then resell it to gas station owners, at roadside stands and in open-air markets.
A Pemex spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Last month, Lopez Obrador announced a crackdown on the banditry. To thwart pipeline taps, he ordered Pemex to transport some fuel overland in tanker trucks. The result: widespread shortages and long lines at gas stations.
The bottlenecks have eased, but fuel theft is so endemic that the culture would be hard to break, even in Tlahuelilpan.
An estimated 800 of the town’s residents, many carrying buckets, had flocked to a nearby pipeline when word spread on social media that a large pool of gasoline had sprung from a bootleg tap. Dozens were killed when the gas ignited.
Marcelino Valdez, a Catholic priest in Tlahuelilpan, said in between funerals that many there support Lopez Obrador, but he doubted the president’s strategy would yield quick results in an area where nearly two-thirds of the population live in poverty, according to government data.
“The people don’t like to steal, it’s not something they enjoy,” Valdez said. “But they look up and see so much corruption, so much injustice, and they see that their hands are empty.”
Hidalgo State, where Tlahuelilpan is located, is the nation’s leader in illicit breaches of Pemex pipelines.
Fuel thieves known as huachicoleros last year drilled a record 2,121 illegal taps in the state, or nearly six each day, Pemex data showed. That is more than a six-fold increase in just two years.
Oil industry experts say that Hidalgo’s location is a big reason. The state is home to Pemex’s second-biggest oil refinery and critical pipelines supplying the giant Mexico City metro area.
Fuel prices are a factor too. At the start of 2017, the government of then-Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto hiked prices by as much as 20 percent in a bid to end costly subsidies, a move many in Tlahuelilpan say is driving theft.
Since Lopez Obrador’s term began on Dec. 1, the government says it has arrested 558 people accused of stealing fuel.
It has frozen bank accounts and deployed soldiers to guard key Pemex installations, including the Tula refinery about 15km southwest of Tlahuelilpan.
While organized crime is a big player, the president has reserved particular disdain for Pemex, blaming crooked company insiders.
Tlahuelilpan Mayor Juan Pedro Cruz is also suspicious of Pemex employees. He told reporters he visited the site of an illegal pipeline tap shortly after he was elected in 2016 and watched as Pemex workers carefully covered up the tap without disabling it.
“What message did that send to me?” Cruz said. “They were going to use it again.”
Lopez Obrador has also launched a new 3,600 peso (US$188) monthly scholarship for unemployed young Mexicans, a program he has pitched as a way to address the root causes of crime.
However, some people in Tlahuelilpan doubt it would dissuade many young people from seizing what some see as their only opportunity to get ahead.
Math teacher Mariano Hernandez said that some fuel thieves can make as much as 10,000 pesos in a day.
“They say: ‘I’d rather make a lot of money for one or two years than live many years in poverty,’” Hernandez said.
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