I think I found the small time refiner involved...
Posted on 04/04/2009 8:37:31 PM PDT by Redcitizen
MEXICO CITY – Police in northern Mexico caught a gang that allegedly stole oil from state-owned pipelines and smuggled it across the border to sell it to U.S. refineries, authorities said Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
::blink::
How could this have happened without the cooperation of the local police?
Oh, yeah. It almost certainly couldn’t have.
Mexico wants us to solve it’s internal problems. That’s not our job.
The one in power, or the one that will be in power next?
It's all corrupt, big deal.
Good point!
If they "stole oil from state-owned pipelines and smuggled it across the border to sell it to U.S. refineries", they sure weren't selling very much at a time.
I don’t think its economical to make deliveries via trucks.
I could see this happening in that they sold tanker loads or less to the field gathering locations where it is gathered from various well heads to then be put into pipelines. At $100 bbl or so both the gang and the oil field operator could make a few bucks.
Truck tankers carry 150 to 180 barrels per load. At $100, they’d make $15,000+ per load.
Good grief, anything could be in these trucks. We wonder why we have a drug pusher problem?
I think I found the small time refiner involved...
Agree next story will be about mules used to smiggle oil to evil oil companies.
Truck tankers carry 150 to 180 barrels per load.
What doesn’t make sense to me is that a tanker could cross the border with a load undetected. It seems it would have to be on at least some minimal roadway with a decent base to hold up the wieght.
Prosecutors say they froze 149 bank accounts and detected bank transfers of over $46 million related to the scheme, in which the oil was smuggled across the border in tanker trucks with false import documents.
I guess I should have read the entire article as it seems based upon the above statement that they were clearing legal check points but with false documents... That makes more sense.
You gotta know all those tankers, even with false docs, had help from people who were paid to look the other way. $46 million is a lot of trips.
Seems to me I remember hearing of a scheme a few years ago involving natural gas tankers also.
Pemex estimated a 12 billion pesos loss due to theft in 2004, equivalent to 4% of national sales.
The trucks are limited to 7500gal loads, 15,000 for a tandem trailer load.
It isn’t economical to transport the fuel by truck, when you are the producer seeking to sell greater volumes by orders of magnitude more, but for the thief who has little to no capital investment, his profit is simply obtained by the truckload.
There are probably isolated wells which slowly produce, but aren’t economically viable to maintain a liquid petroleum pipeline to transport their product. So a market exists for independent petroleum trucking.
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