Pemex won't ship gasoline in pipelines amid wave of thefts
Pemex, said the number of illegal taps rose to 3,674 in 2014, up 70 percent from 2013 and 137 percent over 2012 figures. (Photo: AP )
Slammed by a 70 percent increase in illegal pipeline
taps in one year, Mexico's state oil company announced Tuesday that it will no
longer ship finished, usable gasoline or diesel through its network of ducts.
Analysts said it
was a striking admission of Mexico's inability to stop the fuel thefts, in
which thieves drill into pipelines operated by Petróleos Mexicanos more than 10
times each day, on average.
"This is a
big admission of the vulnerability of Pemex," said George Baker, publisher
of the Houston-based newsletter Mexico Energy Intelligence.
Petróleos
Mexicanos, known as Pemex, said the number of illegal taps rose to 3,674 in
2014, up 70 percent from 2013 and 137 percent over 2012 figures. The market for
illegal gasoline and diesel, in which drug cartels have been implicated, has
more than doubled in the last two years.
Pemex lost an
estimated US$1.15 billion in fuel thefts in the first nine months of 2014,
according to the latest figure available.
Because the
country is crisscrossed by tens of thousands of miles of pipelines, neither
Pemex nor security forces can guard them all. Thieves, often highly organized
gangs linked to drug cartels, pump the fuel from dangerous pipeline taps into
tanker trucks, and sell it to industrial users or sometimes even seek to sell
it through legitimate Pemex-franchised gas stations.
Pemex's move will
make it risky to buy stolen fuel. While the company didn't specify what steps
in the refining process will be left unfinished, it said fuels moved through
its pipelines will not be "usable in vehicles and industrial plants."
"Customers
should make sure that the fuel they buy has been delivered from Pemex
terminals, and not buy gasoline or diesel from anyone other than gas stations
or authorized dealers, given that ... it could damage motors," the company
said.
It appears Pemex
will do basic processing before shipping oil to tank farms and distributional
terminals it operates. Employees there would then have to add additives that
regulate the combustion process before the fuels could be used.
"The only
thing you could do additionally to the gasoline is to put additives in it"
at the tank farms, "but that is a very delicate process," said
industry consultant Guillermo Suárez, a chemical engineer.
He predicted the
change will lead to quality problems, because "the distribution or storage
centers don't have the technological capacity to do this."
Some doubt the
measure will stop the gangs.
"If you can
just add an aspirin at the end of the process, the narcos can do that,
too," Baker said.
The analysts
noted that Pemex has acknowledged that some of its own workers are involved in
the thefts.
"When the
process of finishing the gasoline is transferred to the terminals, obviously
the people who are doing this (stealing fuel) will find out, because they are
inside," Suárez said. "So, very simply, they'll steal additives and
make their own mixture."