Pirates threaten Mexico’s Pemex, the gold mine of Obrador’s government

The night falls, and the pirates are ready to attack. Without the need to use their weapons, they will commit one more of the million-dollar robberies that have accumulated in recent years on the coast of Campeche, under the watchful eye of marines whose orders prevent them from acting against unknown civilians.

In stealth, this small group of men subdues state workers who work for a company that, in the second quarter of 2022 alone, generated MXN 131.4 billion (US$6.6 billion).

Because this story does not belong to Mexico’s colonial history, it is happening in the present; it is a reality that the workers of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), one of the key Mexican agencies for Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Fourth Transformation, are living.

They arrive with boats, with weapons, long weapons. Even though we have a padlocked fence, they break the padlock and come up.

“The personnel who are working at night point guns at them, threaten them, and proceed to bring down what they can,” Carlos Joaquín (not his real name to protect his identity), a worker who witnessed earlier this year a millionaire robbery at the K-Sierra platform in the Ku Maloob Zaap complex, in Ciudad del Carmen, told Sputnik.

The loot is not gold, but it is worth as if it were: the balance of the theft committed on January 8, 105 kilometers from Carmen Island, was communication radios, tools, and 25 self-contained breathing apparatuses (ERAS), whose total value is estimated at more than MXN 1.25 million (US$62,400). The ERAS are used when there is a hydrogen sulfide gas leak or explosion.

The robbery is committed at night on a platform where workers are completely incommunicado, without cell phones, due to the nature of their work. During the 14 days that the oil workers stay on the platforms, they depend 100% on the State to survive, even in risky situations such as robberies by pirates.

“The only thing we can do is hide”, acknowledges Carlos Joaquín after telling how easily these thieves break the padlock to access the platforms; once they manage to climb the stairs, without the sailors always present on the platforms, preventing it because their mission is to “safeguard the platform”.

So far, in 2022 alone, local and national media have recorded, based on workers’ testimonies, 12 robberies on 19 platforms, such as Akal-M, Akal-DB, Akal-T, Shil-A, and Akal-TI. At the end of June, three were committed in less than 24 hours at Akal Charly, Akal Bravo Nova, and Ichalkil Alfa.

According to Pemex, the loss from these thefts, just between 2016 and 2022, amounts to more than MXN 700 million, according to the transparency request with folio 330023022000046 disseminated by local media Tribuna Campeche.

The same request states that a total of 242 investigation files have been opened before the Attorney General’s Office, which would confirm the statements made by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on August 3, when he affirmed that the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) is already investigating the thefts.

However, even though the K-Sierra theft occurred in January 2022, witnesses such as Carlos Joaquín have not been called to testify, and no public prosecutor’s office personnel have approached the platform to investigate.

Sputnik asked Pemex for a statement and information on the thefts committed on its platforms throughout the current administration, but the state-owned company has not responded.

PEMEX, THE GOLD MINE THAT DOES NOT REACH THE WORKER

Pemex has been one of the key agencies for the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Since his campaign, he insisted on the need to rescue the state-owned company amid a growing world trend towards clean energies.

His bet, contrary to the opinion of many experts, was to aspire to energy self-sufficiency that would allow the Mexican company founded by Lázaro Cárdenas to be a producer and exporter of gasoline and thus reduce imports.

In addition to the reactivation of six refineries shut down in previous six-year periods (Tula, Salamanca, Minatitlán, Madero, Cadereyta, and Salina Cruz), the construction of the new Olmeca refinery in Dos Bocas, Tabasco, a state where 182 offshore platforms and 55 onshore facilities are currently concentrated, and where pirate attacks have also been reported.

In fact, in February, the Ministry of the Navy requested a budget of MXN 6.5 billion to build a project to guarantee the security of Dos Bocas, given that there are currently no resources allocated for such purposes.

“With all this, we are preparing to stop importing gasoline, diesel, and turbosine, become self-sufficient, create jobs in the country, and dedicate these fuels to the domestic market and national development. It is a profound change, a great turning point, from selling crude oil to transforming the raw material, producing fuels, and selling them in the domestic market,” highlighted the president during the inauguration of the Olmeca refinery on July 1.

Carlos Joaquín has been working at Pemex for 16 years, 12 just on oil platforms supervising exploration and production tasks in an area in charge of treating Mexican crude oil.

In his career, he has gone through three federal administrations. He assures that this is the first time he has been ordered to suspend the sea patrols that prevented even fishermen from approaching the platforms, a situation that began only four years ago.

The problem, increasingly common in Ciudad del Carmen, reached the Mexican Senate, where a point of agreement was promoted last July for the Secretary of the Navy to present a report, without any response so far.

“The administration is not being empathetic with human resources. They talk about helping the worker and have blocked positions; they say they have to help the worker, and there is no vacation coverage for those who do not have a fixed position. You continue producing oil; you continue generating, there is still that money, there is still that surplus, it is incongruent,” criticizes Carlos Joaquín.

INSUFFICIENT SELF-SUFFICIENCY

López Obrador’s plan to achieve energy self-sufficiency became more relevant when the conflict in Ukraine broke out. Inflation and the increase in energy prices, derived from the sanctions against Russia, allowed Mexico to take advantage of the surplus in crude oil prices to pay subsidies and avoid an increase in gasoline prices, as observed in the US.

According to the company’s most recent financial report, gasoline sales grew by 21% between the second quarter of 2022 and the same period of 2021, which, together with other factors, translates into a net return of MXN 253.9 billion during the first half of 2022.

But “all the surplus does not reach the worker” or maintenance work, denounces Carlos Joaquín. The lack of maintenance results in accidents such as the leakage of a submarine line in the satellite platform KU-C of the Ku Maloob Zaap complex, which resulted in a “marine fire”, an “eye of fire” that caught the world’s attention in July 2021.

The neglect of workers is also manifested in the lack of renewal of contracts for basic services for oil tankers on platforms, such as food, which, on occasion, has been reduced from three meals a day to one because contracts with suppliers have not been renewed.

The same happens with the contracts to acquire basic protective equipment such as work boots, which Pemex must endorse, or the state-owned company will not be liable for accidents.

They are deceiving the president without talking about the political issue and telling him everything is fine. He has a whole country with successes and failures, but he says everything is fine, and we will rescue sovereignty.

“As a unionized oil worker, the truth offends because everything bad is through the union when the truth is that the millionaire contracts are with the company,” accuses Carlos Joaquín.

For the oil workers, the situation becomes complex since they are aware that Pemex and the Sindicato de Trabajadores Petroleros de la República Mexicana (STPRM) are not going through a crisis, precisely due to the global context in which it is developing.

At the same time, they are witnesses to the poor administration of the state-owned company, which is still under the threat of pirates.

“Those managing now have no idea of what is happening, (before) there were problems, like everything else, but an agreement was reached. Now with the boots issue, the union offered to pay for the boots, and the company said no,” says Carlos Joaquín.

With information from Sputnik