Mexican Cartels Are Getting Into the Oil Business, and Business Is Booming

Enterprising crime syndicates are using firetruck-sized industrial drillers to bore literal drug pipelines under the US-Mexico border, but more and more the cartels are profiting—tremendously so—from another sort of pipeline.

Gangs like the Sinaloa, Los Zetas, and the Gulf Cartel have been diversifying into oil for years, though now that President Enrique Pena Neito has ended the 75-year monopoly enjoyed by Pemex, the state oil company, organized crime is expected to move in on Mexico's deep shale reserves. These basins, the International Business Times reports, cut through Mexico's northeast region, turf that's controlled, brutally, by the Zetas. This puts the Zetas, at least, at a distinct advantage over rival cartels and any other private interests looking to cash in on the oil rush.

But across the board, stolen petro sales have steadily grown into a major revenue stream for Mexican cartels. The numbers are revealing: As of 2008, Pemex estimated that cartels had leeched roughly $720 million worth of petroleum products. By 2012 and through the first nine months of 2013, that figure had risen to $1.13 billion, according to a November report from Pemex director Emilio Lozoya. Those last nine months were veritable boom times, constituting over half of the illegal earnings, which came mostly from siphoned Pemex pipelines.

The bulk of these clandestine taps can be traced back to the Sinaloa and the Zetas, the IBT adds. There were 155 such siphons discovered in 2000; in 2013, Pemex and Mexican officials busted up 2,600 taps, which slurped up diesel, gasoline, crude oil, natural gas, and petrochemicals, according to a recent freedom of information act request obtained by El Universal. That's a whopping 1,548 percent uptick in taps in just 13 years. And as the IBT notes, it's no coincidence that states where cartels are most active are home to the lion's share of illegal siphons.

From here, it's a matter of forging false documents to transport the crude northward. Just how much a cartel stands to gain hinges on how many gas stations and outside companies are willing to pay for the stuff, whether or not they know full well they'd be shelling out for stolen goods.

The cartels are strategic in marking the fuel well below market price to lure buyers looking to increase profit margins. And buyers there are: The IBT reports that numerous American companies and individuals, such asBig Star Gathering Ltd., F&M Transportation Inc., Western Refining Co., and Joplin Energy, have all been sued by Pemex for engaging in fuel trafficking.

Which is all to say, can we stop calling Mexican organized crime outfits "drug cartels"? Drug trafficking is now just one spoke in a much larger, globe-spanning wheel of dark business, including human trafficking, fuel trafficking, and illegal mining operations. You know, like shipping iron ore to China in exchange for meth precursor chemicals.

@thebanderson