The fuel flight has increased in equator while the security forces are struggling with an increasing front in the country's criminal war that recent diesel grant cuts could exacerbate.
The armed forces discovered 1,095 illegal pipeline valves in the first nine months of 2025, against 334 in 2022 and 994 in 2023. The police have also seized more than a million unlawful fuel gallons in 2025, 78% more than the amount of 2024.
The updated entry numbers have been announced a few days after the Ecuadorian government abolished a Diesel subsidy of $ 1.1 billion which caused pump prices of $ 1.80 to $ 2.80 per gallon. Prices are now almost the same as prices in neighboring countries for the first time since 1974.
See also: Cocaine production of Cocaine from Ecudor Colombia of smuggling
The government said that the abolition of the grant will allow it to spend more on other social programs and that this decision would paralyze fuel trafficking networks which have long benefited from moving cheap fuel from the equator and selling it to neighboring Colombia and Peru.
The abolition of the subsidy is a “key measure that reduces smuggling incentives … and makes it difficult for the mafias to access cheap fuel for their illicit operations,” the defense ministry said in a statement.
An analysis of insightful crime
The elimination of the diesel grant reduces opportunities for smugglers who buy cheap fuel in equator to sell in neighboring countries, but this increases incentives for criminal groups to fly from fuel they use in various illegal activities.
The fuel flight already increases. The state oil giant, Petroecuador, estimated that the flight had cost $ 215 million to the company between 2022 and October 2024, according to To a report by Reuters, and the number of illegal taps detected on the country's pipelines has more than tripled in the past three years.
The increase in theft coincides with the previous increases in the price of gasoline, which has almost double From 39 cents per liter in 2018 to 76 cents in September 2025, according to Energy Monitor Global Essence Prix. The price increase was motivated by the gradual phase of government subsidies, which began in 2019 as part of long -term costs reduction measures required to access the funds of the International Monetary Fund.
As prices increased, criminal groups have changed the way they get fuel, according to organized crime expert Renato Rivera.
“The smugglers have already bought gasoline directly from the service stations,” said Rivera, but once the fuel privatization process took place in Ecuador, the smugglers have changed tactics and began to extract the fuel directly from the pipelines. “”
Ecuador is not the only country to fight these dynamics. In Mexico, the elimination of fuel grants from 2009 raised the prices of the pump. In the years that followed, highly armed criminal groups muscular on fuel flight and transformed The criminal economy of a racket led by local gangs in a criminal company of several billion dollars.
As in Mexico, the criminal groups of the equator use cheap fuel to kill their illicit profits. Essence is a key precursor for cocaine production. Producers of drugs in border states rich in coca in Colombia, Nariño and Putumayo, have long used smuggling or flying fuel in the north of the equator to avoid changing the Colombian authorities to the presence of cocaine laboratories by creating excessive demand from local service stations.
See also: The history of the fuel flight crisis of several billion dollars in Mexico
Produce a kilogram of the drug need Up to 284 liters of fuel. When the essence is rare, thieves also type clandestine refineries To produce a essence to be eliminated pategrillo. Essence also supplies the railboats that use equator as a launch point for drug shipments in the direction of Central and North America.
Diesel also has substantial demand in the criminal world. Narco submarinesMany built in equator, are mainly equipped with diesel engines. The fuel also feeds the dredging machines used by illegal minors to chew rivers' beds in remote regions of the equator and Peru. Record prices of gold in recent months have made the criminal economy boom And supported the illegal fuel request.
Featured photo: Oil workers repair the perforated pipeline in San Rafael, Ecuador. Credit: Petroecuador
