Mexican drivers flood to California for 'gasolinazo' relief

[Houston] Mexico's fuel market liberalization has done something rarely seen before: make California's pump prices look cheap.

Drivers are flooding across the border to southern California to fill up on gasoline, after protesters blocking distribution centers near the Baja California capital of Mexicali caused stations to run dry. Antunez's Shell gas station in Calexico is just five blocks away from the Mexican border and rarely has business been as busy as now. Mexicali drivers wait four to five hours to cross into the US just to fill their fuel tanks and then wait two more hours to cross back into Mexico.

"Right now, it's crazy," Rodrigo Marquez, 30, a station employee, said in a telephone interview. "We are having a lot, lot of people, everybody is fueling up their tanks." As Mexico opens a formerly monopolized market to foreign competitors for the first time in nearly eight decades, the government increased fuel prices to attract imports and outside competition. The 20 per cent hike, dubbed a "gasolinazo," or fuel-price slam, sparked protests across the country that curtailed fuel distribution, leaving Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, struggling to keep its stations supplied.

Unleaded gasoline in Mexicali was increased in January to 16.17 pesos a liter, or S$1.05 a gallon. Seventeen miles north across the border in El Centro, California, pump prices jumped 5.3 cents a gallon to average US$2.718 as of 5 pm New York time Wednesday, according to GasBuddy, a price tracking company.

"There is a very important commercial exchange happening in the border region," said Jose Angel Garcia, the president of Mexico gasoline retailer association Onexpo. "There are trucks with large tanks being used to bring fuel into Mexico from the US." Pemex said in a tweet it removed blockades in Mexicali's fuel distribution center early Wednesday. As of Tuesday, wait times at the Calexico/Mexicali border were twice as long as normal, according to Best Time to Cross the Border, a website created by a University of California-San Diego team.

The demand from Mexico may push prices up further in Southern California, where prices near the border were up 11.8 cents from last week, according to GasBuddy.

As many as 10 cars at a time can be seen lining up at Antunez's to fill their tanks and the station is having to resupply its own tanks about once a day, Mr Marquez said. Usually the tanks are replenished every three to four days.

California gasoline prices are notoriously volatile and sensitive to supply interruptions due to its geographic isolation from the rest of the country's refining and pipeline distribution systems, according to Patrick DeHaan, senior analyst at GasBuddy.

"There certainly could be some disruption if motorists coming across the border overwhelm California systems," Mr DeHaan said.

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