When The Free Fuel Caught Fire

Professional fuel theft is common across Mexico. No one was ready when an amateur robbery went wrong.

- Matthew Bremner

The morning before 137 people died in Mexico’s deadliest pipeline explosion, clouds gathered on the horizon above Tlahuelilpan, a town two hours north of Mexico City. As the rising sun flicked the mountains poking out of the flatlands on Jan. 18, locals who worked in the nearby fields or factories left home to earn their daily wage.

The day passed like any other. Around 2:30 p.m., 25 soldiers on patrol spotted a horde of people jostling and yelling at Mile 140 of the Tuxpan-Tula pipeline. They were engaged in another of the area’s major occupations: siphoning gasoline.

That wasn’t surprising in and of itself. The patrol was there to protect the pipeline, which carries fuel from Mexico’s east coast to the major refinery in Tula, near Tlahuelilpan, on behalf of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state-owned oil company that accounts for about a fifth of the country’s $174 billion in annual tax revenue. Tlahuelilpan’s home state of Hidalgo is infamous for huachicoleo, the illegal tapping of fuel from pipes that lie several feet underground. Over the past decade, the practice has spread across Mexico, but Hidalgo is one of the most affected areas. “We have the largest number of pipelines in the country,” says Ricardo Baptista, a local congressman. “Huachicoleo has been going on here for more than 25 years.” According to Pemex, Tuxpan-Tula had been breached 10 times in the preceding three months, and pipelines in Hidalgo were tapped more than 1,700 times in 2018.