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.Such a vessel was a rare
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.
Such a vessel was a rare sight in that port, which mainly hosts cruise liners, luxury yachts and container ships. Ensenada lacks the infrastructure needed to unload cargos of flammable hydrocarbons safely – making what happened later that day odder still.
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 operation, while risky, ran like clockwork, according to an eyewitness and a photo and video from the scene shared with Reuters.
“They had a team, they were very thorough on what to do, and they were very fast,” the person said. “They worked insane hours, like through the night.”
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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