Dirty business

Mexican drug gangs have found a new way to bankroll their war against the government: stealing oil and selling it.

The cartels tap into underground pipelines and siphon crude oil and gasoline, USA Today reported. This activity produces as much as $715 million per year which the cartels use to buy weapons and bribe officials, the Mexican attorney general's office said.

The state oil company, known as Pemex, said that thieves stole an average of 8,432 barrels of petroleum products each day in 2009. That amount would fill 39 tanker trucks.

In southern Mexico, drug gangsters called the Zetas sell stolen fuel using their own gasoline stations. Manufacturers or trucking companies buy the products. Profits are used to buoy front companies owned by the cartels. Some of the siphoned products are sold to foreign refiners on the international black market.

Pollution has resulted in some cases. Last fall, at a Pemex pumping station in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, thieves attempting to tap one of the oil company's lines created a geyser 60 feet high that polluted 86 acres of farmland.

Drug gangs have acquired gas stations and other businesses to launder drug money. They are known to mix stolen fuel with that legitimately purchased for sale on the black market, renting tanker trucks to transport the products.

Some of the stolen petroleum is being sold in the United States. Executives from five Texas companies were convicted of knowingly purchasing natural gas products stolen from Pemex.

The Mexican government is trying to crack down on such criminal activities, with mixed results. Oil and gas theft provide more headaches for the government which is locked into a fierce battle with the drug cartels.