FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
López Obrador Takes On Massive Oil Theft in Mexico
Jan. 18, 2019 (EIRNS)—After less than one month in office, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced on Dec. 27 that his government would shut down the highly organized operation, which for decades has been stealing a huge percentage of the petroleum, gasoline and other manufactures produced by Mexico’s state oil company, Pemex. He began by ordering the military to secure Pemex facilities and pipelines. Yesterday, as the battle continues, the government announced the creation of an inter-agency task force to go after the robbery from the money-laundering flank.
Although the President did not say so, Mexican and U.S. government agencies have long been aware that the narco-terrorist armies of the drug cartels are at the core of the oil theft, which, in turn, is organized with the connivance of leading oil multinationals, including Royal Dutch Shell, Sunoco, Conoco Phillips, BASF petrochemicals, among others. The laundering of the proceeds also involves major international banks that have proven large scale involvement in laundering dirty drug money.
This is no “Mexican” matter. The Atlantic Council has an “Oil Theft” project which estimates that $133 billion a year is stolen in similar operations globally. The Council acknowledges that Mexico is a case study of these operations, and that the drug cartels play a key role in it.
Exposed in the Mexican case is the single, integrated black economy of drugs, terrorism, arms trafficking, oil and coal robbery, human trafficking, etc. which lies at the core of the British Empire’s “free trade system.” The López Obrador government is showing great courage in taking on the oil component of that apparatus. Doing so directly calls the question on London’s entire Dope, Inc. apparatus, and Mexico will require international allies to launch and win that war.
The scale of oil theft in Mexico had grown over recent decades to reach 60 billion pesos—US$3 billion—a year by 2017, López Obrador reported. Oil and gas being siphoned off from Pemex pipelines fill an average of 600 tanker trucks, each carrying 15,000 liters, a day, he said. This theft, dubbed “huachicole” in Mexico, constitutes a “parallel Pemex”; with what has been stolen in 2018, Mexico could have financed 40% of a new refinery. Put differently, he said, with the proceeds of three years of this theft, Mexico could have built a new refinery.
The beneficiaries were the oil cartels. A former press liaison for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, Joshua Crescensi, was identified as playing a key role by Project Reckoning, and turned state’s witness in return for a sweetheart deal. In 2010 and 2011, Pemex filed suits against the multinationals for their role, including those named above.
