The upward trend in the crime of stealing hydrocarbons from the national company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), known as ‘huachicoleo’, continued in the first half of this year, with a record of 15 cases per month, compared to just over 10 incidents reported during the same period in 2023.
This is stated in the Semiannual Report on Federal Crimes for which the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) opens investigation files, which in the country shows a decrease to 563 cases per month, from an average of 692, recorded during the past year.
In the nation, ‘huachicoleo’ has been on the decline since 2019, when they began to pursue it based on the Federal Law to Prevent and Punish Crimes in the Matter of Hydrocarbons, approved since 2016, but whose validity was delayed by a transition period and reforms to other norms.
Previously, hydrocarbon theft was prosecuted under the Federal Penal Code, which included it under the heading of property crimes, so its specific historical record dates back to the first full year of the current federal administration.
In 2019, nationwide, there were 10,464 open investigations, mainly in Hidalgo, Puebla, State of Mexico, Tabasco, Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Nuevo León, where the state-owned company’s oil production, refining and transportation activity is concentrated; this annual amount represented a monthly average of 872 cases that year.
In that same year 2019, the incidence of crime recorded in Chihuahua by the FGR was 114 cases, that is, less than 10 federal investigation files opened each month.
By 2020, the national incidence had dropped dramatically to 5,939 cases, or 494 per month on average; in the state, it also dropped to 100 incidences in the year, representing 8.3 cases per month; a lower figure than the previous period.
In 2021, at the national level, the ‘huachicoleo’ showed an increase up to 6,155 cases in the year, which averaged 512 investigation files per month; while in Chihuahua, the decrease was to 39 cases per year, just 3.2 per month.
In 2022, the incidence of the previous period was practically maintained throughout the country, as 6,220 cases were registered throughout the year, around 518 per month. That year was the one with the lowest number of reports in the state, given that only 32 investigation files were opened by the Federal Public Ministry, at a rate of 2.6 cases per month.
However, in 2023 the downward trend ended, with the incidence in Chihuahua rising by almost 300 percent, which reached 127 cases in the year, that is, 10.5 per month; at the national level, an increase was also reported, although not in the same proportion, as they rose to 692 per month, totaling 8,308 throughout the year.
For the first half of this year, the upward trend continued at the state level, as the investigation files opened by the FGR between the months of January and June are 90, at a rate of 15 per month; meanwhile, at the national level they total 3,381, an average of almost 100 fewer cases than those registered last year in the monthly comparison.
Losses: 2 billion for every 100 illegal taps
In May, El Diario reported that the estimated annual loss of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) in Chihuahua is around two billion pesos, for every 100 cases of fuel theft for which the Attorney General’s Office (FRG) opens investigations, according to data presented at meetings of security corporations, which have not managed to stop the incidence of this crime in the entity.
“Unofficial information from Pemex Physical Security personnel, presented in various meetings since last year with the Army, State Police and National Guard, indicates that losses due to detected and reported taps on fuel transportation pipelines can cost up to 20 million pesos each,” according to published estimates.
Between the volumes of gasoline or diesel illegally stolen over a certain period of time, the technical repairs and the processes of all kinds that each case entails, the state-owned company must face million-dollar costs, to which are added the operating losses due to the closure of valves or sections of pipelines.
These costs are independent of the open federal criminal cases, whose conclusions are unknown because the FGR does not report them, but it is very unlikely – according to the same sources – that those prosecuted for this crime can pay the damages if they are sentenced.
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