In Mexico, an Outbreak of Fuel Thefts Becomes a Crisis

The brisk, open gas trade is one of the more obvious manifestations of Mexico’s national fuel-theft epidemic. Thieves are now siphoning gasoline and diesel fuel at record-high rates from the system — often by drilling taps into pipelines under cover of darkness — and are selling it on the black market around Mexico and perhaps even in the United States and Central America.

By Kirk Semple

An hombre who hailed from El Paso

Was collared with some bootleg gaso.

He sold it so cheap

It made tourists weep

When he was dragged off with a lasso.