Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stopped short Monday of declaring victory over the country's fuel theft scourge, but said the government was making progress.
Long lines continued at gas stations in many parts of the country, but Lopez Obrador asked for patience and said things would soon be getting back to normal.
Security patrols had prevented any new illegal taps since late Friday in an important pipeline that brings gasoline from the Gulf coast to Mexico City, he said at his near-daily morning news conference.
Mario Avante, 45, who drives a small truck for a cleaning services company, waited a mere 20 minutes Monday morning to fill his tank at a service station in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, while people in other parts of the city reported waiting four or five hours the day before.
"The gasoline has started to arrive," he said, calculating that the panic over gasoline has begun to subside.
Avante, who said he voted for a candidate other than Lopez Obrador, felt it was too early to judge the president's performance in office. He applauded Lopez Obrador's efforts to stem fuel theft, but wished he had planned it better so that distribution wasn't affected.
More than 5,000 members of the armed forces and federal police are now focused on pipeline security and Lopez Obrador promised to continue the stepped-up security until supplies normalize, but said conditions are starting to improve in some places.
He asked citizens to avoid panic buying, saying, "We have enough fuel; it is a distribution issue."
Octavio Romero, director of the state fuel company Pemex, displayed charts showing fuel sales beginning to pick up in some important parts of the country.
Jalisco, home to Mexico's second-biggest city, Guadalajara, had seen daily fuel sales drop nearly 40 percent and regain about half that in recent days. He said Michoacan state sales had about recovered to normal levels.
Mexico State on the outskirts of the capital has the country's biggest population and highest sales volume. It lost well over half of its sales when an important pipeline was taken off line Jan. 3 and showed only a small improvement Saturday, according to Romero's data.
Mexico City sales volume had rebounded to nearly normal levels by Saturday, but the system was still trying to recover from a day earlier this month that saw daily sales—normally about 10 million liters (2.6 million gallons)—fall to about 1 million liters.
"We had problems these days in Mexico City," Romero said. "The truth is we exhausted the city's inventories." He said he was confident that things would be back to normal in the capital in a few days.
"We're concluding that if you monitor the pipelines, you guard them, they can operate more efficiently," Romero said.
In early December, there was a day in which Pemex estimated 126,000 barrels of fuel were stolen. Recent days have had thefts of 3,400 and 6,700 barrels, according to the company.
Officials also announced that cases were opened against three high-ranking Pemex officials responsible for monitoring pipelines. They were not named.
Fuel theft had become a massive problem for Mexico. From January to November last year, 65,000 barrels of fuel per day were being stolen, the company estimated. The vast majority was lost to illegal taps in pipelines.
Lopez Obrador vowed to get the upper hand on the fuel thieves and earlier this month tried to choke off their supply by taking several major pipelines off line. However, tanker trucks used to deliver the fuel couldn't distribute fuel at the same levels as the pipelines. Shortages and panicked buying ensued.
Gasoline tankers shown to be involved in fuel theft are now being seized and turned over to Pemex.
In Mexico City, spirits were lifting among motorists Monday, many of whom expressed support for Lopez Obrador's efforts to confront the criminal groups who traffic stolen fuel.
Dulce Escamilla, 38, a government employee who said she didn't vote for Lopez Obrador, shrugged off the gas shortage as a minor inconvenience with a higher objective. "We have him as president now, and we have to support him," she said while filling her small scooter with five liters of gasoline at a Pemex station.
"If the government makes changes for the good of the consumer, it's worth it," she said.
