Thieves are bleeding Pemex of gasoline
Some U.S. companies are rethinking their plans to venture into Mexico
Thieves are tap ping into the gasoline pipe lines of Mexico’s state-owned oil and gas giant, P em ex, with such frequency and in such quantities, the business is losing nearly $2 billion a year, leaving some U.S. companies with second thoughts about entering Mexico’ s recently opened energy market,recent research at Rice University.
The number of separate incidents has risen from about 200 in 2006 to nearly 7,000lastyear—almost20 break-ins a an analysis of P em ex figures by Adrian Du halt, a Rice post doctoral fellow. Losses have jumped from under $1 billion in 2009 to $1.7b illion last year.
The rising thefts could deter internationalquash the bud ding revival of the Mexican oil and gas industry, Du halt said.
“It’ s huge ,” Du halt said. “Mexico is trying to attract investors in thecommercialization of gasoline .”
Mexico de regulated its oil and gas market and broke P em ex’ sm ono pol yin 2014, inviting foreign companies to take part, with hopes of spur ring exploration and production and boo sting the country’ s sagging energy profits.
Petró le os Mexican os, known as P em ex, pumped more than 3 million barrels per day of crude a decade ago and was responsible for one-third of Mexico’ s tax revenues. But the company has since been hobbled by over spending, heavy pension liabilities, and declining oil and gas production. The recent crash in oil prices only made things worse.
Crude output has dropped by more than one third over the decade and government contributions sunk to less than one-fifth of the country’ s revenues.
P em ex’ s new chief executive, Harvard-educated economist José Antonio González A nay a, has vowed to turn the company around, slashing spending and working to attract internationalinvestment to Mexico.
P em ex reported a first quarter profit of $4.7 billion this year as crude prices rose, its first quarterly profit since 2012. A year earlier, the company posted more than $3billion in losses.
British oil major B Pannoun ced in March it would build 1,500 new service stations in the country over the next five years, with 200 opening this year. The investment should cost “several hundreds of millions of dollars ,” in stations, terminal sand pipe lines, an executive said.
Neither P em ex norB P responded to requests for comment.
But Du halt, the Rice researcher, worries fuel thieves will deter future investment. Mexican authorities have long taken a “hands-off approach” to the theft, he wrote in his paper ,“Looting Fuel Pipeline sin Mexico .” And the problem’s gotten in worse in recent years.
“There is a huge black market ,” Du halt said. The state of Puebla, near Mexico City, about 600 miles south of the southern tip of Texas, is the epic enter .“Local people know where to buy gasoline.”