In the absence of responses from the government of Claudia Sheinbaum, experts point to failures in the infrastructure of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) as the most likely cause. According to Mexican government data, since March 2, scattered oil slicks have been reported on the beaches of Veracruz, and the next day, Pemex reported an illegal discharge from a vessel in the Coatzacoalcos area. Four days later, on the same day, Pemex stated that it had collected approximately 240 kilograms of material impregnated with crude oil, but today, there are still reports of impacts on fishing activities in the area. Collectively, the incidents once again expose the operational risks of the state-owned oil company in a context of budgetary constraints and growing pressures on its maintenance capacity. Although the president avoids pointing to the oil company, within the energy sector, the perception persists that the official explanation does not hold up in the face of the magnitude of the observed damage. Two hydrocarbon spills affecting the Gulf of Mexico once again put the focus on Pemex's operational and financial problems. Although the government claims to have contained the pollution, the volumes have spread from Tabasco to southern Tamaulipas. In this context, and almost a month after the first alerts, the argument of a spill from a ship is losing force in the energy sector in the face of the volumes observed in various reports from local people and organizations such as Greenpeace. Engineer Francisco Barnes, a former commissioner of the now-defunct Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE), stated in an interview that "a tanker would have had to sink to justify the volumes of spilled oil seen from southern Tamaulipas to Tabasco." Pemex confirmed the death of five people and several injured after a fire in Dos Bocas. The expert suggested that the scenario is an internal failure of Pemex. He explained that this would be the result of a lack of budget to continue supplying the anti-corrosive products that this infrastructure requires. In the same vein, Ramsés Pech, a sector expert cited in the newspaper El País, also questioned the ship hypothesis and considered the option of a small leak at the oil company's facilities to be more likely. Doubts about the government's initial hypothesis are growing due to the lack of official information. As of this Tuesday, Sheinbaum announced the creation of an interdisciplinary group to determine the causes of the incident and opened the door for the Prosecutor's Office to investigate the ship accused of the spill. Experts insist that it is not normal that the official cause of the leak is still unknown, when in their knowledge, there are rapid means to detect its origin. The alleged spill from a ship is not an isolated case this month: mid-month, another was reported at Olmeca, the emblematic refinery promoted by the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which revives criticism of its construction in Dos Bocas and the failures in its engineering. It happened that, after a fire on a perimeter wall in Dos Bocas in mid-March, the presence of hydrocarbons was detected in its surroundings. "The most probable is that it is one of the submarine pipelines that is carrying crude oil to land," he added.
