Gasoline shipments from Texas headed to Mexico have floor to a halt because the Mexican authorities cracks down on imports over tax funds.
The Texas-Mexico land crossing has been successfully closed for 2 weeks for vehicles carrying fuels akin to gasoline and diesel after the federal government ramped up cargo inspections, in line with folks acquainted with the matter. One gas distributor who requested to not be named because the matter just isn’t public, mentioned its gas trucking enterprise to the border dried up in a single day after buyer demand dropped following the heightened scrutiny.
Mexico is the highest vacation spot for US gas, with 1.15 million barrels of petroleum merchandise getting into the nation day by day in January, in line with knowledge from the US Vitality Data administration. The bottleneck on the border comes as Mexico ramps up monitoring on potential unlawful gas shipments coming into the nation, the place the slowdown may again up provides within the US and improve prices for transporters and gasoline stations in Mexico.
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Mexico imported 470,000 barrels a day of completed motor gasoline from the US in January alongside 237,000 barrels a day of diesel. Most gas imports into Mexico come by ship, however the points on the land border are proof of the broader crackdown.
Mexican drivers are unlikely to be instantly affected, nonetheless, as pump costs within the nation are presently managed beneath a six-month gas pricing settlement signed by President Claudia Sheinbaum in February.
Heightened scrutiny on the Texas border is the newest within the Sheinbaum administration’s efforts to police gas importers who’ve been paying no or incorrect taxes on their shipments, Mexican vitality dealer Indimex Group’s chief govt officer Rajan Vig mentioned. Vig doesn’t anticipate the border to reopen for oil product shipments this week forward of spiritual holidays main as much as Easter Sunday.
An vitality ministry spokesman and a spokesperson for President Sheinbaum didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
The crackdown comes amid strained US-Mexico commerce relations as President Donald Trump imposes tariffs on its single largest buying and selling accomplice and threatens to upend treaties between the 2 nations on every little thing from water to tomatoes. Nonetheless, President Sheinbaum has acknowledged that reducing off the unlawful gas commerce is a precedence, promising to sort out the issue that prices the state oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos billions of {dollars} a yr in misplaced income.
Final month, Mexico seized greater than two million gallons of what the federal government deemed illegally imported gas at a storage facility in Baja California. Every week later, authorities seized a tanker ship on the port of Tampico carrying diesel, a part of a broader operation to “fight unlawful gas trafficking,” the nation’s Secretary of Safety Omar García Harfuch wrote in a submit on X.
The Singapore-flagged Problem Procyon tanker was loaded in Beaumont, Texas, on March 16 at Enterprise Product’s gas terminal, in line with commodity knowledge supplier Kpler. Enterprise says it was unaware of the state of affairs — “We loaded customer-supplied diesel on a customer-chartered ship,” an organization spokesperson mentioned in an emailed assertion.
Final week, Mexico’s tax authority additionally briefly suspended Valero Vitality Corp.’s allow in its importers registry, stopping the corporate from bringing gas into the nation. The suspension was attributable to apparently falsified paperwork utilized by unlawful importers that was apprehended throughout the federal government’s sting operations, in line with an individual acquainted with the matter who requested to not be named discussing an ongoing investigation.
Unlawful imports proceed to be a significant drawback for Pemex, which misplaced a minimum of $263 million within the third quarter of final yr to gas theft, greater than double its losses from the identical interval a yr prior. The corporate in latest days has requested Mexican residents to assist report theft and gross sales of unlawful gas, in line with posts on X.
Pemex, the world’s most indebted oil firm, misplaced a minimum of $1.2 billion to import fraud and gas theft in 2023, in line with firm knowledge.
A Pemex spokesperson mentioned the corporate is working with the related authorities to fight illicit gas trafficking.
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