Breathe
By Adela Navarro Bello
For the time being, unofficially, the case of the huachicol ranch in El Sauzal, delegation of Ensenada, Baja California, discovered on Friday, March 28, is noted to be an inside job.
In the extensive property, owned by the Morenista Gerardo Novelo, 100 containers with fuel were found, with an estimated capacity of 71,000 liters per container; in addition, 46 trailers, 19 tractor-trailers, two mobile offices, a cistern and at least 12 motor pumps for the extraction and flow of fuel were also seized.
In total, elements of the Army, National Guard and local authorities confiscated 8 million liters in all of these industrial containers, which, at market value, is estimated to be worth 209 million pesos, just from what was found there.
So much professionalism, precision and infrastructure to store stolen fuel is not a spell, but quite the opposite. At the ranch in El Sauzal they had a small branch for the storage and distribution of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) fuel.
It is not just any gang dedicated to huachicol, but experts in the handling, storage and distribution of fuel. Certified engineers must have worked at the site, at least in setting up the infrastructure for the illicit business.
The fuel did not arrive at the huachicol ranch because inexperienced criminals opened a Pemex pipeline and sucked the fuel out, but because specialized pipes unloaded the fuel there, evidently in a clandestine but highly organized manner.
Petróleos de México is an institution that has systematically served as petty cash for governments of any party: PRI, PAN, now Morena, and in the case of Baja California, they sleep with the criminal at home.
Personnel from the Rosarito plant have unofficially confirmed that the fuel theft detected in Ensenada, where elements of the Armed Forces and local authorities confiscated 8 million liters of fuel, was done with the approval of the institution. In other words, their superiors were aware of the theft and knew about the logistics for the transfer and storage of the fuel.
They explained that the boats with Pemex fuel first supplied the official plant in Rosarito, and from there they were transferred to Ensenada to supply the industrial containers in the property that Novelo rented to another person. That is to say, it was a robbery, but not an unrelated one.
Certainly huachicol, like drug trafficking, cannot develop and grow unilaterally in the criminality, it requires complicity on the part of the authorities in order to have impunity in the logistical actions for the commission of crimes and not be apprehended for them.
Pemex workers in Rosarito confided that the system had been working this way for some time: a few liters for the plant, as much for the huachicol in El Sauzal, and everyone was happy, making money for the coffers of the institution and the pockets of the criminals who have not been identified.
The "stolen" fuel stored in El Sauzal was used in the same way as the fuel stored in the Pemex plants: to supply retail gasoline and diesel stations. So much so -confessed Pemex employees- that before the discovery of the huachicol ranch, 120 pipes were leaving Petróleos Mexicanos Rosarito every day to supply gasoline stations in the coastal zone of Baja California. Every day, but since the seizure of the property in Ensenada with its respective infrastructure and 8 million liters of fuel, 160 pipes have left Rosarito daily to supply service stations. This dignifies -the Pemex employees reflected- that those 40 additional pipes were the ones that provided the supply service leaving from the huachicol ranch in El Sauzal, but since the seizure, now Pemex must take charge directly, as it should be.
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