The brutal Zetas gang poses one of the most daunting
challenges to the development of Mexico's abundant shale gas reserves near the
Texas border.
The gas fields extend from the booming Eagle Ford play of South Texas
deep into the ranch and coal country stretching inland from the violent
border city of Nuevo Laredo. This is Zetas country, among the most fearsome of Mexico's
criminal badlands.
U.S. and Mexican energy companies long have been besieged by the
gangsters here -- their workers assaulted, extorted or murdered -- despite a
heavy military and federal police presence. Now, with feuding Zetas factions
bloodying one another and fending off outside rivals, what has been a bad
situation threatens to get much worse.
Northern Mexico's gas production has suffered for years as gangland
threats or attacks have kept workers from servicing the wellheads, pipelines
and drilling rigs in the Burgos Basin, the territory between the Rio Grande
and the city of Monterrey, which now provides up to 20 percent of Mexico's
natural gas.
"Petroleos Mexicanos has problems with security ... principally in
Burgos," Guillermo Dominguez, a senior member of the National Hydrocarbons
Commission, told the Mexico City newspaper Reforma.
And now the surging Zetas bloodletting pits the gang's top bosses --
Heriberto Lazcano and Miguel Angel Trevino -- against Ivan Velazquez, a former
underling known as "El Taliban." From his base in the western state of
Zacatecas, Velazquez reportedly has allied with the remnants of other gangs
to launch a challenge for control of Coahuila state, which holds most of the
shale gas reserves.
Challenge to control
Banners recently hung by both Zetas factions have accused one another of
treason and other transgressions that will be avenged with death. Fighting has
rattled Nuevo Laredo, the Zetas stronghold that also is the busiest land port
for U.S.-Mexico trade, killing scores this month alone.
Still more banners appeared in Nuevo Laredo Tuesday, reputedly written by
beleaguered civilians, promising all the gangster factions further bloody
vengeance.
"Zetas are pretty much in control, but they have been challenged," said a
U.S. official in Mexico who monitors the situation, speaking on condition of
anonymity. "You have all these groups fighting one another, shifting alliances
and internal fights ... It's a wilderness of mirrors."
The Zetas' spats with rivals already have turned Coahuila's other large
cities -- Torreon in the west, Monclova in the center and Saltillo in the east
-- into fierce gangland battlegrounds. State officials are blaming the Sept.
17 escape of 131 prisoners from a Piedras Negras prison on the Zetas seeking
to replenish their ranks for new battles.
The insecurity in Mexico's gas fields contrasts sharply with the drilling
and production frenzy seizing the ranchlands just north of the border. Oil
field pickups and semi-trailer fuel tankers choke Highway 83, the
once-desolate ranch-country highway that cuts northwest from Laredo though the
lower reaches of the Eagle Ford.
Some 6,000 drilling permits have been issued for Eagle Ford shale in
Texas, and 550 wells are producing there. By comparison, Pemex so far has
drilled five exploratory shale gas wells, but hopes to drill 170 more in the
next four years. The company plans to spend $200 million on exploration in the
short term.
Those first exploratory wells have been drilled to the west of Nuevo
Laredo and below the border at Piedras Negras, ranch and coal country that
remains relatively violence free for now. But that tranquility may owe more to
the now-threatened dominance of the Zetas bosses than to rule of law.
"They are in control," said a U.S. official. "They are pretty much just
doing their thing."
Workers disappearing
At least eight Pemex and contract employees vanished in May 2010 near a
gas facility near Falcon Lake, territory under the Zetas' firm control. Last
March, two men working for a Mexican company doing contract work for
Houston-based Halliburton disappeared outside Piedras Negras.
Halliburton spokeswoman Tara Mullee-Agard said employees get regular
security briefings, but the company declined to comment on the contractors'
disappearance.
"Many companies that were active in the areas have stopped until Pemex or
the government can provide security," said an employee of one Reynosa-based
company. "In places where there have been incidents we don't operate anymore.
When darkness falls, we stop wherever we are."
