Mexican police arrested 39 employees of state owned Petróleos Mexicanos for stealing gasoline and other products from a refinery.
Pemex said that an unrelated leak in a gasoline pipeline near the Jalisco state capital Guadalajara on Wednesday was caused by fuel thieves., the Wall Street Journal said.
Jalisco State Governor Aristoteles Sandoval said the spill is contained. Thousands of people who had been evacuated can return soon to their homes, the report said.
“For 2012, Pemex said that it had discovered 1,749 illegal pipeline taps, mostly to extract refined products. However, there were also some involving crude oil and natural gas. The illegal taps siphoned off about 4.4 million barrels of products valued at 7.3 billion pesos ($565 million),” the Wall Street Journal said.
Pemex said Tuesday that it caught workers changing the weight of stored fuels at its Salamanca refinery in central Mexico to cover up the thefts.
