Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) will start in Guanajuato a pilot project that seeks to stop the huachicoleros (fuel thieves), a crime that causes losses of approximately 21 billion pesos (1.2 billion USD) a year. Placing Guanajuato in the first place nationally with 1,852 clandestine pipeline tappings reported.
The project consists of two axes:
The first, is to control the amount of product that comes out of the Pemex refinery in Salamanca, with a mandatory QR code on each and every invoice, so they can prove, validate and verify that the quantities correspond to the load.
According to the governor of Guanajuato, even though the state has the largest number of cases reported, that does not mean it is the state where more fuel is being stolen. And this monitoring of Pemex vehicles, will make possible to know the exact amount of fuel produced at the Ingeniero Antonio M. Amor refinery, and the exact amount of fuel that reaches its final destination in each transportation unit.
The second axis is to physically address the problem, because according to Ricardo Ortiz Gutiérrez, municipal president of Irapuato, one of the municipalities in the state and the country with the highest number of clandestine pipeline tappings detected last year, there are occasions when they report a tapped pipeline, and Pemex takes up to a month to fix it. And many times the repair is only superficial, so the huachicoleros open it again rapidly and keep stealing fuel.
For that reason, the strategy is to place concrete in the perforated pipes of Pemex, to cover those with higher incidence of huachicoleo.
According to an official Pemex document, they already started to “seal” the pipelines with concrete in Salamanca, Irapuato, Valle de Santiago, Pénjamo, Villagrán and Juventino Rosas.
Tapped Pemex pipeline (Photo: OEM)
Source: elsoldelbajio.com.mx
