Drug cartels siphon pipelines

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador | Colombian cocaine cartels are tapping into pipelines in neighboring Ecuador, stealing with impunity thousands of gallons a day of “white gas” that can be used to process raw coca into cocaine, Ecuadorean and U.S. officials say.

The black market trade in petroleum ether - a solvent used by clandestine cocaine labs - is undermining U.S.-backed counternarcotics efforts in this low-lying jungle border region spanning northeastern Ecuador and southern Colombia.

Complicating matters, counternarcotics investigators at Ecuador´s National Police, as well as oil analysts and former company advisers, say employees of Ecuador´s state oil firm, PetroEcuador, are complicit in the scheme.

“This is an enormous problem,” said Jaime Atapuma, an investigator in the counternarcotics division of Ecuador’s National Police based in Quito, the capital. “We estimate that of the 10,000 gallons of white gas crossing into Colombia daily, some 70 percent ends up in cocaine laboratories.”

Petroleum ether, a byproduct of oil drilling commonly known as “white gasoline,” can be upgraded to gasoline, but cocaine makers use it in native form as a relatively pure solvent to help turn coca leaves into cocaine.

Ecuadorean police and military officials, who provided The Washington Times with dozens of declassified intelligence photos, said smugglers tap oil pipelines with homemade spigots and rob trucks and facilities owned by PetroEcuador.

Storing the gas in 55-gallon drums, they move the drug precursor chemical across the San Miguel and Putumayo rivers that divide the two countries, or take it directly to the drug laboratories that a 2008 State Department report says are increasingly being set up in Ecuador.

Military officials underscored the extent of the problem.

“Along with armed groups of Colombians inside Ecuadorean territory, the smuggling of white gas and gasoline to drug laboratories is one of our biggest problems at the border,” said Col. Javier Perez of the Ecuadorean 4th Army Division based in Coca, about 50 miles from Lago Agrio.

Mr. Atapuma said the base-line problem is twofold: endemic poverty that draws jungle dwellers into the lucrative trade and failure by PetroEcuador to fix its chemical controls.

He said police and military officials have asked the company to install automated systems that detect variances in pipeline pressure caused by illegal taps, or use inspection tools that spot holes drilled into lines.

“They have made promises in the past to automate their systems,” said Mr. Atapuma, “but nothing happens. They know what is going on and could stop it, but they do nothing because there is corruption.”

Boris Abad, president of an Ecuador-based energy consultancy, is a former manager at ConocoPhillips and former adviser to PetroEcuador. Echoing industry specialists, Mr. Abad said smugglers couldn’t steal white gas without knowing when a batch of the chemical was passing inside pipelines that alternately carry a variety of chemicals such as petroleum and diesel.

“Only PetroEcuador employees can know the sequence and timing of those batches,” he said. “So there is no doubt that company employees are in on it. And it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that the stolen gas is going to cocaine laboratories.”

PetroEcuador was contacted numerous times by e-mail and telephone but did not grant an interview for this article.

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