Today, March 18, is "PEMEX Day" - it is 73 years to the day since Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized foreign oil companies and eventually set up Petróleos Mexicanos.
In this regard, PEMEX director Juan José Suárez Coppel said that the the state oil company lost three billion pesos worth of gasoline last year from criminals siphoning off the petroleum. This apparently amounts to 17,000 barrels milked every day - double the figures from 2009.
El Universal, for its part, in its editorial today called for "rescuing PEMEX" from yet another plunder - the "official" one, as the oil company continues to be used as a cash cow to cover budget holes yet at cost of depleting the company for resources needed for its modernization.
Either way: PEMEX is being plundered.
3 billion pesos worth of "combustibles", not gasoline. Most gasoline is re-imported PEMEX oil refined at the leased facility in Deer Park Texas. The thefts seem to be mostly of diverted fuel oil (as that sold to BASF and other Texas buyers in 1009) and of LPG gas.
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