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Leftists say they bombed Pemex lines

Smoke and flames from an explosion at a gas pipeline near Queretaro, Mexico, are seen Tuesday as a Mexican army truck drives by.Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Hector Tobar and Marla Dickerson Los Angeles Times
Smoke and flames from an explosion at a gas pipeline near Queretaro, Mexico, are seen Tuesday as a Mexican army truck drives by.Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

MEXICO CITY – A leftist guerrilla group claimed responsibility Tuesday for a series of bombings of pipelines operated by Pemex, Mexico’s national oil company, and authorities moved quickly to protect the nation’s oil and gas industry from further attacks.

The Popular Revolutionary Army (known by the Spanish initials EPR) said in a communique that it would continue the bombing campaign until the government disclosed the whereabouts of two group members said to have disappeared in Oaxaca last year.

A spokesman for President Felipe Calderon said the Mexican government would “punish those responsible” for the attacks that began Thursday. Founded a decade ago, the EPR is a small group based largely in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero.

Officials were taking steps to increase security at the country’s “strategic installations,” Calderon’s office said in a statement.

Explosions sent flames nearly 1,000 feet into the air before dawn Tuesday outside Corregidora, in the central state of Queretaro, where several pipelines were severed, including a 36-inch pipe transporting natural gas to local distributors and a 16-inch line that supplied a local refinery with crude oil.

Officials said no one was injured in the attacks.

The EPR statement said the group carried out “surgical harassment actions” at 1 a.m. Tuesday and had done so at the same hour Thursday at four locations in central Mexico.

Pemex officials initially had said one of two pipeline explosions Thursday was of suspicious origins but said the other could have been caused by aging pipes. On Tuesday, with more pipeline explosions reported and Mexican media speculating that “terrorist” cells might be responsible, authorities confirmed that all the explosions were the result of deliberate attacks.

“This criminal conduct aims to weaken our democratic institutions, the patrimony of all Mexicans and the security of their families,” Mexico’s Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The attacks, which appeared to be focused on internal distribution networks and not the infrastructure Mexico uses to export 1.7 million barrels of oil per day, come as Pemex reels from an 11 percent drop this year in exports from its aging oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Declining oil revenue looms over the country’s budget calculations, and a continued drop in output could set off a national fiscal crisis.

Oil and gas pipelines have become attractive targets for radical groups who know that disrupting energy supplies can wreak havoc on a nation’s economy. Colombia has weathered hundreds of pipeline bombings in the course of its long civil war. Some analysts said Mexico would do well to take heed.