Mexico's dark fleet of tankers.

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One Essential Read

One Essential Read

Recommended by Kate Turton, Newsletter Editor

A ‘dark fleet’ of tankers helped a Mexican cartel build a fuel-smuggling empire

 

On the afternoon of March 8, a petroleum tanker named Torm Agnes entered the Port of Ensenada on Mexico’s Pacific coast carrying almost 120,000 barrels of diesel.

Waves of fuel-hauling trucks rolled up to the dock to cart away much of the Torm Agnes’ load. Workers scurried about filling the vehicles’ cavernous tanks, up to six at a time, using hoses springing from a larger hosepipe affixed to the vessel. 

The audacious maneuver was the work of cartel-linked smugglers, according to three Mexican security sources and three people familiar with the operation – part of a wave of bootleggers upending Mexico’s fuel market with a flood of cut-rate fuel.

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