• PROBE: Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (FGR) has opened an investigation into a wide fuel-smuggling network from Texas to the northern state of Tamaulipas allegedly involving federal and state officials in connivance with fuel market participants, Reforma newspaper revealed.
• COMPLAINTS: Based on citizen complaints, the probe focuses on 200 companies reportedly implicated in the transportation, distribution and retail sales of fuel illegally imported through US-Mexico land border ports like Laredo/Nuevo Laredo, McAllen/Reynosa and Brownsville-Matamoros.
• SCHEME: According to details of the FGR investigation to which Reforma newspaper had access and shared with Mexico’s Lower House energy committee, smuggling begins at Mexican customs by misregistrating fuel as lubricants, blendstocks and other additives to avoid paying taxes.
• NUMBERS: Earlier this month, analysts at IHS Markit -along with fuel market participants- alerted of the sudden increase in Mexico’s imports of base oils and lubricants in recent years. According to their estimates import levels of base oils into Mexico exceed demand by 2.5 times.
