Mexican drugs gangs move into the oil business

Mexican drug cartels, responsible for several years of escalating violence along the US border, have found a new business: oil smuggling.

According to the Washington Post, the Zetas, a leading criminal organisation founded by former military commandos, are largely responsible for stealing as much as $1bn worth of oil from Mexico's pipelines - using little more than drills, rubber hoses and stolen tankers - and then selling it over the border in the US.

As if the Mexican authorities didn't have enough to deal with - as The First Opost reported earlier this year, the drugs war has claimed thousands of lives - the Zetas have now set themselves up as a "parallel government" in the border region of Veracruz.

"They practically own vast stretches of the pipelines, from the highway to the very door of the oil companies," says lawmaker Eduardo Mendoza Arellano.

The Mexican oil firm Pemex says it has discovered 396 clandestine taps this year. To steal the oil, thieves use safe houses from where they build extensive tunnel networks leading to the pipelines before drilling through the steel pipes and extracting the oil. Pemex estimates it lost 140,141 barrels of oil to theft last month in the Veracruz region alone.

The Mexican government believes the gangs are using their oil revenues to fund the drug trade and has launched a campaign to defend the pipelines. Since taxes paid by Pemex account for 40 per cent of the Mexican federal budget, the loss to traffickers is being treated as a crime against the people.

"When they steal this oil, it's not just a regular crime," said Arellano.

"It becomes a crime against society, because the people who steal this oil the next day are using it to kidnap us. Tomorrow, with that oil money, they are shipping drugs." ·