San Martin’s pipeline inferno

Authorities in central Mexico are blaming  oil thieves for a massive oil pipeline explosion today. The explosion was apparently caused by thieves trying to steal crude oil, said Valentin Meneses,interior secretary for the state of Puebla, where San Martin is located.

Investigators found a hole in the pipeline and equipment for extracting crude, Gurza said. It consumed people,houses, trees and cars,spewing crude turned streets into flaming rivers, it left metal and pavement twisted and in some cases burned to ash in the bitter heat. At least 28 people were killed, 13 of them children. The blast in San Martin Texmelucan, initially estimated to have affected 5,000 residents in a three mile radius.

Housewife Zoyla Perez Cortes, 27, said she awoke about 5:30 a.m. to a strange, over powering smell, like gasoline. Minutes later, her street looked like it was flowing in tar and then erupted in flames. Her husband knocked down a wall allowing them to escape out the back of their two-story, cement-brick home with their three children.Her brother-in-law is being treated for burns in a hospital, but she didn’t know the fate of his wife and two children.”It was like we were living in an inferno,” she said, her eyes red from crying. “Everything was covered in smoke.” Many of the buildings destroyed were humble cement homes. Gurza said people are not permitted to live near oil pipelines, but Jose Luis Chavez, 58, who lives 10 blocks from the explosion, said residents had been there for some time. The state owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said in a statement that it had shut down the pipeline. Government authorities said the fire was under control by midday. Some areas were without electricity or water.

Pemex has struggled with chronic theft, losing as much as 10 percent of all of its product. Criminals tap remote pipelines, sometimes building pipelines of their own, to siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil each year, Pemex has said. There have been 100 such illegal taps this year all along the pipeline that exploded Sunday. It runs from Veracruz, a heavy oil producing Gulf coast state, to Mexico state outside the capital, said Juan Jose Suarez, Pemex director general.Suarez also reported 60 illegal taps on the pipeline in the area of Sunday’s disaster, and 580 nationwide this year.

He said such illegal taps cause leaks in only 3 to 4 percent of the cases. In 2009, the U.S. Justice Department said U.S. refineries  bought millions of dollars worth of oil stolen from Mexican government pipelines and smuggled oil  products across the border in illegal operations led by Mexican drug cartels expanding their operation .Pemex sued five companies in the United States U.S. in June for allegedly buying stolen Mexican petroleum products.