Colombia Oil Theft Surges As Smuggled Gasoline Dries Up, Data Show
By Oliver Griffin
BOGOTA, Nov eight (Reuters) – Theft from oil pipelines in Colombia is booming as criminal gangs look to substitute dwindling supplies of smuggled Venezuelan gasoline for use within the drug commerce, as shown by knowledge seen by Reuters from oil-pipeline operator Cenit and tax authorities.
Gasoline is a key part in making cocaine but there have been shortages of the gasoline https://www. If you adored this short article and herbal ingredients extract you would certainly such as to get even more information pertaining to fungi active ingredients – simply click the following web site, kindly see our own site. reuters.com/world/americas/diesel-shortages-paralyze-venezuelan-farms-prompting-sanctions-debate-2021-05-19 in Venezuela throughout that nation’s social and financial disaster. So criminal groups in Colombia are tapping pipelines for ever extra crude, which they must later refine. Colombian crime gangs https://www.reuters.com/world/colombias-clan-del-golfo-gang-network-extends-28-international locations-police-2021-11-03 additionally ship a few of that artisanal gas to Venezuela, a reversal of historic smuggling patterns.
“Now it is switched,” Yessica Prieto, undertaking and investigations director of Colombian energy advocacy group Crudo Transparente, advised Reuters. “It’s … Colombian mafias, or criminal groups, who are stealing Colombian crude, refining it illegally – clearly artisanally – and which crosses the border to Venezuela.”
Theft of crude in Colombia – primarily from the Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline near the Venezuelan border – hit no less than a six-12 months high in the primary half of 2021, in keeping with information from pipeline operator Cenit, a subsidiary of Colombia’s majority state-owned oil company, Ecopetrol.
Stolen oil is processed in clandestine refineries and turned into a rudimentary gasoline referred to as “pategrillo” or “cricket’s foot” – so-called for its green color – that is used in cocaine manufacturing, police and analysts mentioned.
A median of 3,299 barrels of oil have been being stolen per day in Colombia via June 30, up from 1,796 barrels per day in 2016, based on Cenit.
In comparison with 2020, when a median of 2,744 barrels of crude were stolen every day, oil theft in Colombia rose by a fifth during the primary half of this year.
While oil theft has surged, the amount of gasoline apprehended beneath suspicion of being smuggled has fallen sharply over the same period, in accordance with data from Colombia’s DIAN tax authority seen by Reuters.
A peak of 694,894 gallons of gas were apprehended by authorities in five provinces along the border with Venezuela during 2017.
That figure fell to 107,616 gallons by 2020, in line with the DIAN. In the first half of 2021, just 18,484 gallons of gas had been apprehended.
The DIAN attributed the fall in contraband gas to turmoil in Venezuela, where oil production and refining has fallen sharply, and the success of anti-smuggling laws.
Venezuela’s economic disaster “has pushed the movement of hydrocarbons from Colombia to Venezuela,” the DIAN said in an e mail.
The overwhelming majority of oil theft occurs along the Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline, with 2,430 barrels of crude stolen per day throughout the primary half of 2021.
In 2020, 2,008 barrels of oil had been stolen every day from the pipeline, Cenit said.
Once refined, the stolen crude is used to make coca paste, a precursor to cocaine. Leaves of coca are mixed with gasoline to extract certain plant extract compounds, with gallons of gasoline required to make only one kilo.
Fuel might also be sent to Venezuela or used for machines at illegal mining sites, Colombia’s police mentioned.
“The principle use is to course of plant compounds during cocaine manufacturing,” Brigadier General Jesus Alejandro Barrera, director of Colombia’s rural police, told Reuters.
“Once (criminal teams) saw they couldn’t convey gasoline straight from Venezuela, they mentioned ‘let’s use this pategrillo as an ingredient to make these compounds.'”
Repairing injury to Cano Limon-Covenas attributable to illicit valves – used to steal oil – and bombings by the left-wing ELN guerrillas value forty two billion pesos, nearly $11 million, in 2020, said Cenit’s vice-president of pipelines, Sandra Milena Orozco.
