Mexico’s state oil company Pemex
will shield 175 km of pipelines , the ones with a higher incidence of illegal tapping, with concrete slabs to reduce fuel theft in 2020.
According to the joint plan of the government of the Republic to fight Pemex fuel theft , which will come into force this year, there are 149 km of different pipelines considered “the most problematic” that transport gasoline and diesel .
Concrete will be installed in 36 of the 306 km of the Tuxpan-Tula pipeline, in 35 of the 1,104km of the LPG Cactus-Guadalajara pipeline, 25 of the 314km of the Tuxpan-Azcapotzalco pipeline, 23 of the 223km of the Tula-Salamanca pipeline, and 30 of the 492 km of the Madero-Cadereyta pipeline.
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The other pipelines that will be shielded are the Salamanca-Guadalajara (10km), the Salamanca-León (10km), and the Tula-Azcapotzalco (6km).
Until now, concrete slabs have already been installed in 51.5km of the pipelines.
The government will also look to regulate and even forbid , among national and foreign providers, the sale of valves used in illegal tapping.
They will also work in a bigger intervention in the Mexico Control Center at Pemex’s Executive Tower , where 44 military engineers from the Army and the Navy work to verify and monitor the loss of pressure in the pipelines to issue an immediate response alert.
In 2019, the year with the largest gasoline shortage in the recent history of Mexico, the government deployed surveillance with forces from the Army , the Navy and the National Guard . That January, they operated in bases of 50 elements per every 20km of pipeline with a total of 8,600 elements.
For 2020 , the government will deploy 5,300 elements , a diminution due to the withdrawal of federal forces in three pipelines that are out of order while they are waiting to optimize the staff to deploy them every 30km in pipelines with less incidence.
Surveillance
in the facilities will be done through the air with five airplanes , 10 helicopters , and 21 drones for a total of 8,770 flight hours.
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They also hope to increase the number of elements of Pemex Strategic Safeguard Sub-Directorate over time until reaching, by the end of the administration, a total of 11,600 elements. Currently, they are less than 2,000 .
With these and other measures, the federal government set goals for 2020 among which the following stand out:
Reducing the volumetric deviation up to 2,500 daily barrels ; increasing the installation of alert systems in 1,300km of pipelines; increase the transported volume from 817,000 (the average in 2019) to 950,000 barrels per day .
The plan mentions that the number of illegal taps in the first year of the López Obrador administration, with the measures implemented against fuel theft , allowed to go from 14,894 taps in 2018 to 13,016 in 2019.
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