Volkswagen's only manufacturing plant in North America and hundreds of other foreign and domestic factories shut down operations today after attacks on the national oil company's pipelines cut their natural gas supplies.
Industry officials estimated the losses from both the attacks and subsequent precautionary shutdowns at close to $90 million. Petroleos Mexicanos chief Jesus Reyes said it would cause hundreds of millions of dollars in production losses for the state-owned oil company and affect 10 states. The six explosions Monday did not cause any directly related injuries or affect major oil installations, but both industry and national-security experts say the small shadowy leftist group that claimed responsibility has proved it is a force to be reckoned with. "The sophistication required to plan, coordinate and execute these explosions shows that the perpetrators have the technical capability of turning these episodes into either terrorist attacks or industrial sabotage," George Baker, a Houston, Texas-based energy analyst who follows Pemex closely, wrote in a report sent to news media.
The Revolutionary People's Army, or EPR, a secretive Marxist group that killed dozens of police and soldiers during attacks in the late 1990s, claimed responsibility for the explosions in a note left with an undetonated explosive device in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, a state police officer who was not authorized to be quoted by name told The Associated Press on Monday. Mexican newspapers today published photographs showing an additional message the group painted on a Pemex pipeline.
The group had been weakened by internal divisions and was largely inactive in recent years. "But something has changed because now they have the capacity to attack pipelines," said Mexican national-security analyst Jorge Chabat. "They're acting outside their regular sphere of influence and that is a problem."
| Got some of those Hugopesos flowing in, do they? |
|