Mexico City Notebook: Drug Gangs Tap Oil To Top Up Their Illicit Gains

[Sample Record]

Title: “Mexico City Notebook: Drug Gangs Tap Oil To Top Up Their Illicit Gains”, in Financial Times, May 16, 2017. p. 8.

Abstract: In recent years, Mexican druglords have moved into the siphoning of petroleum products from the pipelines of PEMEX on a massive scale. A recent battle in Puebla involving 2000 troops was a fight against a drug cartel over oil. Pipeline taps have risen 2000% to 6873 in 2016, and PEMEX estimates losses to such taps at $1.6 billion. >Fuel thieves (“huachicoleros”) operate nationwide, but their heartland is the “Red Triangle” in Puebla, an area traversed by a major pipeline from Veracruz refineries to Mexico City. The recent Puebla fight in Palmarito Tochapan involved the use of women and children as human shields by Huachicoleros bosses linked to the Zeta cartel. The Huachicoleros sell fuel at half the official price, even as the price has just been raised 20% by the government.

At the same time, the arrest of El Capo [Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman] has triggered a massive war within the Sinaloa Cartel under El Chapo’s successor Damaso Lopez Nunez (who was arrested this month) and El Chapo’s children, even as the cartel has been fighting the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. In the first three months of 2016, Mexico has seen 6511 murders. Violence is believed to cost Mexico 19% of the its GDP. [TXT]

Author: Webber, Jude
Published: 2017
Geographic: Distrito Federal, Jalisco, Mexico City, Mexico, Puebla, Veracruz

Subject: GDP, Human Shields, Losses, Organized Crime, Petroleum Products, Pipelines, Refineries, Statistics, Succession

Corporate: PEMEX, Sinaloa Cartel, Huachicoleros, Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Los Zetas, Zetas, Red Triangle

Named Person: Lopez Nunez, Damaso [Mexico]’ El Chapo [Mexico]; Guzman, Joaquin [Mexico]

Place of Publication: UK
Document Type: Newspaper
ISSN: 0925-9460
Record Type: Newspaper
Language: English

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