Mexico gas line blasts force major factories to close

VERACRUZ, Mexico – One of Mexico’s largest automotive plants and hundreds of other factories were shut down Tuesday after a series of gas and oil pipeline explosions, apparently caused by a shadowy rebel group, left them without fuel.

Volkswagen AG said it suspended production at its sprawling car factory outside the city of Puebla – the company’s only North American manufacturing site – on Monday because of a lack of natural gas. Glassmaker Vitro SAB also said it was temporarily closing six plants across central and western Mexico.
Six explosions ripped apart pipelines in eastern Mexico on Monday, rattling financial markets in the U.S. and Mexico. Industry officials estimated losses at $90 million.

It was the second time in three months that a group calling itself the People’s Revolutionary Army has claimed pipeline bombings as part of what it has labeled its “prolonged people’s war” against “the anti-people government.”

The group, known as the EPR, is a secretive Marxist group that killed dozens of police and soldiers during attacks in the late 1990s. It was later weakened by internal divisions, leaving it unclear which splinter group carried out the attacks.

The new explosions affected a dozen natural gas pipelines and one oil pipeline in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, said Jesus Reyes, the head of Mexico’s oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. The attacks occurred in valve stations where pipelines intersect.

AZCentral