I don’t want to be the kind of foreign correspondent who relies on Uber drivers for reporting, but I think it’s okay when the subject is gasoline. And gasoline is a huge subject in México right now. In order to put a stop to the problem of theft from gas pipelines and the market in black-market gasoline – known as huachicol in the local slang – new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (also known as AMLO) shut down the pipelines at the beginning of this year. This created several new problems. First, the switch from the pipelines to gas trucks to transport gas meant that it took longer for many stations to get their deliveries. Then, with trucks replacing the pipelines, there were not enough trucks to serve tanker ships that bring in fuel imports from the US and Venezuela. Those gas stations that had been buying gas on the black market no longer had any supply, and so they closed.
Naturally, as soon as people hear that there may be a shortage, they start to hoard the scarce resource. In short order, México had a full-on crisis.
I first heard about this when people started complaining about gas station closures on expat message boards. The government did not give people warning about the shutdown, and the local news had been covering water shutdowns in Zapopan because of system upgrades. The greater Guadalajara region was affected before much of the rest of México because it is one of the few major cities that received most of its gas by pipeline, and so a lot of people were surprised to find gas stations closing.
I first realized that the problem went beyond foreigners who are not used to being inconvenienced when I took an Uber home from a Tres Reyes (Three Kings/Epiphany) party on January 6. The driver asked me to check whether each gas station that we passed was open or closed.
When I arrived in Cuernavaca last weekend to visit some friends, the problem had spread I was told that the gas stations there refused to fill up cars with license plates from out of state – especially those cars with México City plates. Local rivalries die hard.
For the record, all of the Uber drivers that I have talked to about the shutdown think that it is ultimately a good idea, although it is a huge inconvenience for them now. It could be because the gas shortage creates more opportunities for surge pricing.
Allegedly, the huachicoleros (gasoline thieves) take almost $4 billion US worth of annually. As México’s gasoline producer, Pemex, is government-owned, this is a huge loss of national revenue. Furthermore, the leaks and spills created when the pipelines are hacked into cause serious environmental damage, and there’s a risk of fires. In fact, I was planning to put up this post today before I woke up to the horrible news about a fire at a gas pipeline in Tepiji del Río. Huachicoleros broke into the pipeline, people in the local community showed up to collect gas in personal containers, and then something sparked a fire.
The pipeline shutdown creates another set of problems. One is whether and how the huachicoleros will respond; it is believed that many are affiliated with cartels. It is also believed that they have had the assistance of Pemex employees, the police force, and local communities. It is unlikely that these people will let $4 billion in revenue go away without a fight. We’re almost three weeks into the pipeline shutdown and there have been no arrests, which seems strange given the corruption involved in collecting and distributing huachicol.
The other big concern is what will happen to all of this gas stored in containers in people’s garages. Some of it may be in water containers that will be turned back in for the deposit, contaminated the bottled water supply. Even if this gas is stored properly, in proper containers with adequate space left in the container to allow for expansion whet it gets warmer, it significantly raises the risks of house fires. My apartment does not have a smoke detector, and I have been trying to buy one and am striking out. I suspect that smoke detectors are not as common here as in the US, so México will likely have more tragedy before this situation is solved.
AMLO’s political opponents are already running television and billboard ads criticizing his decision because of the major disruption it has caused in people’s daily lives. The fire at Tepiji del Río could change their tune.
And, with all of this going on, no one here is paying any attention to Donald Trump and his desire for a border wall.
