Drug Cartels Exploit Fracking on Texas-Mexico Border

Saturday, July 21, 2012
(photo: Eagle Ford Shale Blog)
Texas’ obsession with underground drilling for natural gas has created a giant gap in the federal government’s border patrol defenses against drug smuggling.
 
Across a large swath of remote land stretching from the border into east Texas, drilling companies performing hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have opened up a network of new private roads—which smugglers are now using to ship illegal narcotics into the U.S.
 
Cartels also have stolen trucks belonging to energy companies, and bribed truck drivers and contractors working on the Eagle Ford Shale, which is 50 miles wide and 400 miles long.
 
Smugglers have even “cloned” Texas government vehicles to use for transporting drugs through the region.
 
Police seized about 18,000 pounds of marijuana in two trucks “on a private road leased to energy companies and carrying what looked like supplies used in oil field operations,” according to the Houston Chronicle.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
 
To Learn More:
Gas Drilling A Boom For Drug Traffickers, Too (by Dane Schiller, Houston Chronicle)

Comments

anonymouse 11 years ago
wow! what a piece of journalism this is. you got my attention with the phrase "texas' obsession with underground drilling for natural gas" --- yep, it's true, we drill for gas underground because exploration for it above-ground has repeatedly failed to find any. i can't dispute the obsession part though: for the past 110 years, texans have definitely been obsessed with finding petroleum. but wait! then we get to the supposed point of this story. it is that "illegal narcotics" are flooding into the us. only it turns out the "illegal narcotics" are in fact "marijuana." jeez louise, wrong on both counts: marijuana is not a narcotic (this is police-speak), and its current legal status is simply an anomaly --- sorta like the jim crow laws we used to enforce against black people. lastly, 18,000 pounds of pot is not a "flood," it is a drop in the bucket of american demand for this amazing plant.

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