Reuters
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, October 23, 2025, p. 4
The Houston-based company Ikon Midstream has played a key role in operations for the Monterrey-based company Intanza, which is believed to be a front for the Jalisco cartel. New Generation (CJNG), smuggled fuel into Mexico.
The illegal importation of fuel and stolen crude oil have become the largest source of non-drug-related income for Mexican cartels, which take advantage of legal loopholes and enjoy support from US companies and Mexican officials, using ghost entities, false documentation and bribes.
Below is part of a special report from Reuters, which documents that the CJNG It is the only criminal organization that jumped from the use of trucks and trains to boats. The full text can be read at https://shorturl.at/kD2s2
On the afternoon of March 8, an oil tanker called Tom Agnes entered the port of Ensenada, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, transporting almost 120 thousand barrels of diesel.
Such a ship was rare at that dock, which mainly hosts cruise ships, luxury yachts and container ships. Ensenada lacks the necessary infrastructure to safely discharge flammable hydrocarbons, which made the event even stranger.
Unexpectedly, waves of trucks arrived at the dock to take away much of the cargo from the ship. Tom Agnes. Workers rushed to fill the huge pipes, up to six at a time, using hoses that ran from a larger one attached to the ship.
The audacious maneuver was orchestrated by smugglers linked to a cartel, part of a wave of criminals that revolutionized Mexico’s fuel market. The strategy consists of flooding the local market with low-priced energy sources obtained mainly from the United States and disguised in customs declarations as something else.
Mexican criminals did not act alone. A Houston company called Ikon Midstream played a key role in the multimillion-dollar operation.
The American firm bought the diesel in Canada, declared in the documentation that it was lubricants and rented the ship to deliver it to a client who, according to Mexican authorities, is a front for one of the largest and most violent cartels in the country.
Ikon Midstream and its chief executive, Rhett Kenagy, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Reuters. Attorney Joseph O. Slovacek, who represents the company and Kenagy, indicated in an email dated October 18 that this agency “will stop contacting its clients. No one will speak to your reporter!” Slovacek wrote.
The Torm firm, based in Denmark and manager of one of the largest oil tanker fleets in the world, has among its properties the Tom Agnes. He noted that he stopped trading with Ikon Midstream weeks after the Ensenada incident.
Diversification
Drugs remain the main source of income for Mexican cartels. However, illegal fuel and stolen crude oil have become their largest source of non-drug revenue, according to the US Treasury Department.
Some US officials have begun calling ships carrying illegal fuel the “dark fleet,” a term most often associated with the illicit transport of Russian or Iranian crude oil designed to evade sanctions.
Fuel smuggling has grown so rapidly that illegal imports now account for up to a third of the Mexican diesel and gasoline market, taking profits from some of the largest oil companies.
The fuel that enters the country irregularly each year is valued at more than 20 billion dollars.
In Mexico, this smuggling has unleashed a scandal that shakes the Secretary of the Navy, the entity that manages the ports.
To unravel the ins and outs of fuel smuggling to Mexico – known locally as huachicol prosecutor–, Reuters interviewed more than 50 people with knowledge of the matter, including five people with experience in illicit shipments, Mexican and American law enforcement officials, executives and former executives of the oil industry in both countries, as well as oil product marketers and regulatory compliance specialists.
Reuters is the first agency to publish a complete account of the voyage of the Tom Agnesfrom its shipment in Canada to its unloading in Ensenada and then in Guaymas, from where it was hastily withdrawn.
According to the authorities, the cartels have the help of American actors who facilitate the acquisition and transportation of the products, some without knowing it, others actively participating. Texas state senator Juan Hinojosa assured that “the cartels have infiltrated many legitimate businesses on the border and further north.”
The fuel smuggling scheme largely boils down to lucrative tax evasion. Mexico applies a tax known as IEPS to several products, including imported diesel and gasoline.
Mexico is a major producer of crude oil, but imports these fuels because its aging refineries cannot meet local demand. Criminals evade the tax, which is charged per liter and is often more than 50 percent of the value of the cargo, by declaring foreign fuel to be another type of petroleum product exempt from the tax.
U.S. and Mexican officials agree that smugglers typically use shell companies and falsified cargo documents to cover their tracks, and pay bribes to corrupt port and customs officials to get their cargoes through.
Contraband diesel is sold at a discount in the Mexican market to thousands of gas stations.
The cartels also steal fuel and crude oil directly from Pemex and sell some in the United States, with the help of corrupt importers who market the merchandise at lower prices than American producers, according to the US Treasury Department.
Other oil companies are also suffering the consequences. In May, the British multinational Shell confirmed the sale of its retail fuel business in Mexico. This departure was due in part to the difficulties in competing with fuel narcocheaper, five Shell sources told Reuters.
He Tom Agnesflying the Danish flag, was one of several tankers that in recent years transported fuel, but declared their cargo as lubricants to evade taxes and customs controls.
At the center of that agreement was an American company: Ikon Midstream, a fuel marketer based in Houston. The company bought the Canadian diesel and hired the ship Tom Agnes to transport it to Mexico.
Here, a company based in Monterrey called Intanza was the recipient of the shipment of the Tom Agnesaccording to Mexican port records, as well as a company shipping invoice seen by the Reuters news agency.
Mexican authorities suspect that Intanza is a front company for the CJNG.
Intanza has no website or social media presence that Reuters has been able to identify.
The Intanza name came up again after Mexican authorities detained another ship, the Challenge Procyonon March 21 in Tampico, Tamaulipas.
The Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection of Mexico, Omar García Harfuch, declared on March 31 that 10 million liters (about 63 thousand barrels) of diesel were found on board Challenge Procyon.
For decades, petty thieves known as huachicoleros They have stolen gasoline, diesel and crude oil from Pemex.
He CJNG He has taken the plot to a new level and is the leader of fuel and crude oil smuggling, according to Mexican and US security sources.
The authorities claim that the CJNG has established a formidable smuggling network in Tamaulipas, just across the border from Texas.
From there, they say, it sends crude oil stolen from Pemex to the United States, while importing refined products from the northern neighbor. In this illicit task it uses trucks, trains and ships. They added that the CJNG It is the only cartel that currently uses ships.
The jump from trucks and trains to ships reflects a degree of business knowledge and investment power that is in a different league than what existed before, stressed Marisol Ochoa, an expert in organized crime at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico.
“You have to have high sophistication and too many logistics operation networks and connections” to execute that criminal operation.
Full note in @lajornadaonline; https://shorturl.at/kD2s2
