A Gas Heist Gone Wrong

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-26/a-gas-heist-gone-wrong-an-explosion-and-137-deaths-in-mexico

by newscasta • 7 years ago

100 50 7 years ago

lifeeeeee• 7 years ago

There was an article recently about how the drug cartels in Mexico pivoted into stealing gas. Much easier and less risky than drug trafficking.

This is why ending the war on drugs in US will not improve the Mexico violence problem much.

mschuster91• 7 years ago

the war on drugs should have been aborted years ago. If that had been done, there would not be any gangs blowing up pipelines today.

threezero• 7 years ago

We haven’t fought any drug wars in Venezuela, and they have routine gas theft, including tanker truck hijackings. It sounds more like economic causes than “the US did it!”

jopsen• 7 years ago

Removing one revenue source might help... Even just reducing it.

Obviously, no single thing will fix it, and whatever you do it'll take a long time.

Economic opportunities might be just as important too.

catacombs• 7 years ago

Like a Hydra: Once you caught off one head from the beast, three more appear.

wil421• 7 years ago

The gas theft is just a way to reduce the risk of drug trafficking. The drugs make far more money than theft or kidnapping.

stickfigure• 7 years ago

Nonsense. It's orders of magnitude easier to protect a pipeline than to stop millions of people from engaging in secret commerce. You could secure that infrastructure with a mere tiny sliver of the tens of billions of dollars spent annually to fight the drug war.

dsfyu404ed• 7 years ago

Agreed. Cartels aren't run by idiots. There's a reason they didn't pivot years ago and it's not because stealing fuel was too easy/lucrative.

seanmcdirmid• 7 years ago

Just getting rid of the guns for drugs trade would eliminate a lot of Mexico’s violence: Mexico’s gun production is trifling compared to the USA, they would be underwater on gun violence without that illicit trade link.

mcguire4• 7 years ago

This is what happens when you take a story, in this case gangs and cartels stealing gasoline from pipelines, and add a human interest element that has nothing to do with the story. In this case, that is a group of locals taking gas spewing from a broken pipeline and being killed or injured by the explosion.

TotempaaltJ• 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure the story here is how 137 people died in a gas explosion in Mexico (plus probably hundreds injured for life), including some backstory as to why that explosion happened.

The Mendoza sisters, however, say seeking out a guilty party is a low priority for them, at least for now. They’re trying to survive the consequences of the fire and get used to the idea of being alone in Hidalgo.

jjeaff• 7 years ago

Fortunately, that is the story. But the headline makes it sound like the accident in particular was due to a heist. This implying an organized effort to steal gas. But as the precious poster mentioned, this was a broken line that locals just started showing up to in order to take advantage of the free money.

mcguire4• 7 years ago

"A typical huachicoleo involves two or three people soldering and tapping the pipe and a group of halcones, or hawks, keeping watch. The solderer and his teammates use high-power drills to perforate the pipes, then affix taps and sometimes a hose to retrieve as much fuel as their portable tank can carry, generally into the hundreds or thousands of gallons. [...] Generally, these extractions, or tomas clandestinas, are coordinated operations run by gangs in the dead of night."

That doesn't sound like it has anything to do with the incident where 137 people died.

"Huachicoleo is becoming one of Mexico’s most pressing economic issues. In 2018 thieves made off with about $3 billion in gas from 12,500 siphonings, almost double the number of thefts of two years earlier. The motive comes down to math. “Most people here earn around 1,500 pesos [$78] a week in a normal job, but by doing this you can get your hands on 2,000 pesos a night for being a hawk and up to 15,000 pesos for being the one who solders the tap,” the Hidalgo huachicolero says. “In an area where people were not long ago riding donkeys, they now have fancy cars.” He and other gang members say a night’s worth of stolen fuel, sold on the black market, can net their bosses roughly $46,000 in profit."

Which means all that has nothing to do with the story, right?

teh_klev• 7 years ago

I'm not sure I understand the point you're making?

parliament32• 7 years ago

I don't think a broken pipeline is the case -- unlike our pipelines, these ones are buried several feet underground. Pipelines don't just unearth themselves: someone deliberately dug out and punctured it, in an attempt to steal gas.

mcguire4• 7 years ago

Ever seen those "Dial before you dig" signs?

miguelmota• 7 years ago

A great podcast episode on this is Planet Money's 'Mexico Fights The Fuel Pirates'; they explain how it all led up to this

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/08/701613540/epis...

ghostbrainalpha• 7 years ago

Wow... that was a lot better than your average Planet Money segment.

gnusty_gnurc3• 7 years ago

Worth remembering Mexico nationalized gas, leading to gas shortages, rationing - and higher prices.

forthwall• 7 years ago

That seems like a un-nuanced generalization of Mexico and it's politics. Saudi Arabia has nationalized gas and has no shortage and low prices.

privateSFacct2• 7 years ago

Saudi Arabia's subsidy of gas prices likely results in either unsustainable economic performance without oil revenue and/or a total lack of value for fuel efficiency = environment impact.

They are having some actual success reforming in this area - http://www.arabnews.com/node/1353116

gnusty_gnurc3• 7 years ago

I'm just relaying the sense I get from all of my Mexican friends, and studying their culture and history. Their government is unbelievably corrupt and under-performing - and insofar as they've nationalized the provision of gas, yes I expect their government to be less reliant than private&international companies.

ac29• 7 years ago

Mexico nationalized the petroleum industry... in 1938 [0].

Are you talking about something else?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Mexico

licebmi__at__2• 7 years ago

Worth debunking that, as:

a) Mexico nationalized gas on 1938.

b) Fuel shortage and price hike actually started on 2016 when the previous right wing government deregulated the gas price, and allowed other companies to sell fuel in a free market scheme.

Panic sales as everyone was expecting a price hike were the cause of fuel shortages across 2016 and 2017.

While the current government has currently halted the privatization process for PEMEX, based on allegations of corruption and dirty business; the fuel shortage was (at least the official story) because of an operation to stop fuel theft, again with allegations of complicity of previous governments.

gnusty_gnurc3• 7 years ago

It's hard for me to see PEMEX as a noble venture when price controls on gas largely act as a subsidy for the richest in Mexican society. I would blame less on "right wing deregulation" and more on a system that is rotten to the core and failing at such a basic service like providing fuel.

dredmorbius• 7 years ago

s/Mexico/Saudi Arabia/

Or, effectively, most other petro states. At the very least, the leading petroleum venture is a public-private hybrid.

Petro-state political economy is a strange, fire-breathing, beast.

BlueTemplar• 7 years ago

Did a kid get shot for seeing too much ?

gwbas1c3• 7 years ago

Version of story without a paywall: https://1stamendmentnews.org/2019/06/26/a-gas-heist-gone-wro...

knd775• 7 years ago

You mean a stolen repost of the article?

gwbas1c3• 7 years ago

Reminds me of the Zoolander gasoline fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTrxEQnPtAg

Johnny555• 7 years ago

That's exactly what I was thinking when I read:

“People were fighting, others laughing, and most were drunk on the fumes. They were throwing gas at each other.”

It's amazing (and tragic) that people would do this in real life.

katbyte• 7 years ago

Intoxication is a hell of a thing.

gwbas1c3• 7 years ago

I can think of examples of "mass" misbehavior when I was younger:

- Camp councilors eating the freeze pops in the lunch freezer that were for the kids

- High schoolers eating all the candy in the vending machine when someone broke the glass

- A very large group of us went to a local restaurant. The next day we heard of a lot of people leaving without paying. (I left a lot of money before leaving, and told everyone I sat with to do the same too. Now that I'm older I'd at least track down our server and hand them money personally.)

In all cases, there's this weird thing that seemed to turn off in other peoples' heads. It's like all reason just goes away.

aaron695• 7 years ago

LiveLeak has the footage of it exploding and before and after.

It's worth watching if your up to it but the footage of people escaping on fire is hard to handle.

But like all such things it is both informative and might help you handle similar situations such as a small gas fire.

https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=sLpTO_1547875958

hirundo• 7 years ago

This is primarily about the poverty of the victims. Most of the adults must have known about the extreme danger of being close to gasoline fumes. If we can't blame their innocence, what's left besides an overwhelming need for the gas or the profit from it?

Maybe the answer is herd following behavior. A few oblivious people go into the danger zone, and the less oblivious think maybe they know a reason why it isn't dangerous and I shouldn't miss out. It's a human variation of the myth of lemmings jumping off cliffs, but less mythical.

crooked-v• 7 years ago

"The profit from it" is underselling the effects of extreme poverty.

Many of the survivors say they’re among the 43% of Mexicans living below the poverty line—about $1,940 a year in the city, $1,260 in the country—and can’t afford to ignore free money.

always4getpass• 7 years ago

Greed breeds corruption, corruption breeds poverty, poverty breeds lack of education, lack of education breeds stupidity.

It is the same if you replace the lack of education with despair..

A Gas Heist Gone Wrong

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