NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico ? The brutal Zetas gang poses among the most daunting challenges to the development by Mexican and U.S. companies of Mexico's abundant shale gas reserves near the Texas border.
The Mexican gas fields extend from the booming Eagle Ford play of South Texas deep into the ranch and coal country stretching inland from this violent border city. This is Zetas country, among the most fearsome of the country's criminal badlands.
U.S. and Mexican energy companies long have been besieged by the gangsters here ? their workers assaulted, extorted or murdered ? despite the presence of thousands of soldiers, marines and federal police.
Northern Mexico's gas production has suffered for years as gangland threats or attacks have kept workers from servicing the well heads, 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 issues, principally in Burgos,? Guillermo Dominuez, a senior member of the government's National Hydrocarbons Commission, has told the Mexico City newspaper Reforma.
In March, two men working for a Mexican company doing contract work for Houston-based Halliburton disappeared outside Piedras Negras, which is upriver from Laredo.
Halliburton declined to comment on the contractors' disappearance. But company spokeswoman Tara Mullee-Agard said ?employees receive security briefings and updates on a recurring basis to ensure they are informed about the current threat conditions.
?Halliburton's top priority is the safety and security of all its personnel across the globe,? she said. ?To that end, Halliburton has detailed, pragmatic and regionalized security and risk measures in place.?
At least eight Pemex and contract employees vanished in May 2010 near a gas facility a few miles from the border at Falcon Lake, territory under the Zetas' firm control.
?Many companies that were active in the areas have stopped until Pemex or the government can provide security,? said an employee of one of the Reynosa-based companies, speaking on condition of anonymity. ?In places where there have been incidents, we don't operate any more. There is no movement at night like there used to be. When darkness falls, we stop wherever we are.
?The situation has been controlled somewhat in Reynosa, but it's a real problem near Piedras Negras,? the employee said by phone. ?Those who have worked there report seeing groups of armed men.?
Coahuila state officials blame the Zetas for Monday's mass escape of 131 inmates from a prison in Piedras Negras, the city bordering Eagle Pass that's considered the gateway to Mexico's shale gas reserves.
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 U.S. 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 the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas, and 550 wells are producing there. Pemex so far has drilled just five exploratory wells so far, but hopes to drill 170 more in the next four years. The company last week announced that it planned to spend $200 million on exploration in the short term.
The exploratory wells are being drilled to the south of Piedras Negras, ranch and coal country that has been relatively violence free in recent years. But that tranquility may owe to the dominance of the Zetas than to rule of law.
?Violence has gone down, but that doesn't mean the Zetas have gone away. They are in control,? said a U.S. official in Mexico knowledgeable of the situation. ?They are pretty much just doing their thing.?
The Zetas' spats with rivals have turned Coahuila's other large cities ? Torreon in the west, Monclova in the center and Saltillo in the east ? into some of Mexico's fiercest gangland battlegrounds.
But perhaps nowhere is the Zetas challenge clearer than in Nuevo Laredo, a crucial gateway for both legitimate and illicit trade.
Mexico's plague of hyper-violence began here in 2004 and has continued since.
The Zetas first rose to prominence in that early fighting as enforcers for the Gulf Cartel, also based in the cities bordering South Texas. But they broke violently with their former patrons in early 2010 and have expanded their reach since.
Gangland slaughter has surged anew here with scores of people killed this month, including entire families gunned down as they've fled firebombed homes and nine men dumped last week on a busy overpass.
?Zetas are pretty much in control, but they have been challenged,? the U.S. official said. ?You have all these groups fighting one another, shifting alliances and internal fights within the groups.
?It's a wilderness of mirrors.?
dudley.althaus@chron.com
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