David Agren

Special to USA TODAY

MEXICO CITY – Avocados growers in Mexico’s western Michoacán state send truckloads of the creamy fruit they call “green gold” to the United States ahead of Super Bowl Sunday, when demand spikes.

But they warned those shipments might not make it ahead of the game's Feb. 3 kickoff due to fuel shortages as service stations throughout the region have run dry – the byproduct of a government crackdown on fuel thefts, which have been committed by increasingly lethal criminal gangs.

“If there are limitations or delays in transport, significant losses may occur,” the Association of Avocado Producers and Export Packers of Mexico (APEAM) said in a statement. APEAM expected 1,200 truckloads a week of avocados to head north starting on Monday, but cautioned “if there are limitations delays in transportation, significant losses may occur.”

A least six Mexicans states have suffered fuel shortages, prompting service stations to close or ration gasoline and long gas lines to form – reminiscent of 1970s America. Public transportation has stopped in some states, schools have suspended classes and police forces in places have parked their vehicles or started patrolling with bicycles.

More:Six Mexican states are run short on gasoline, prompting rush to the pumps

The shortages stem from an attempt to curb fuel thefts, which have cost the country billions in lost revenue as thieves tap pipes operated by state-run oil company Pemex.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador launched the crackdown in early January by closing pipelines flowing from refineries – moving fuel by a fleet of tanker trucks instead – and deploying soldiers to Pemex installations.

“We’re going to continue taking all necessary actions,” López Obrador said Friday. “There will not be one step back, not even to pause. We’re going to confront this scourge.”

The tapping Pemex pipes to siphon fuel dates back decades. But the theft mushroomed as crime in the country escalated over the past dozen years and drug cartels got involved in the illicit fuel business.

López Obradro said fuel theft costs the country $3.5 billion annually. Pemex, meanwhile, recorded 12 illegal taps per day of its pipelines between 2009 and 2016, according to Jesús Pérez Caballero, professor at College of the Northern Border in Matamoros. That number hit 28 per day in 2017 under then-President Enrique Peña Nieto, while only 1.6 percent of the complaints presented by Pemex ended up in criminal trials.

Fuel thieves, meanwhile, have formed fearsome gangs, and Pemex pipes run through areas disputed by drug cartels. The central state of Guanajuato became Mexico’s most murderous as rival drug cartels entered the stolen fuel business. In the southeastern state of Puebla, a “subculture” of fuel theft has formed, Pérez Caballero said, with locals blocking highways when soldiers come to crack down on fuel theft.

“It’s very bad and it got worse through negligence,” David Shields, publisher of Energía a Debate, a Mexican energy industry magazine. The Peña Nieto administration did little to stop it, he added, saying they “went through a bunch of half-hearted measures to crack down on it.”

AMLO, as the president is known, took office Dec. 1 after winning a landslide election on promises to clean up corruption. A poll in the Reforma newspaper says 73 percent of respondents support his crackdown on stolen fuel.

The federal government insists there is no fuel shortage – only distribution challenges. But on Friday it issued a social media statement calling for the public to “support the president” – a possible violation of government advertising rules, which prohibit using politician’s names in promotional materials.

Public officials called for people filling up everything from jerrycans to water jugs to avoid panic purchases – common in Mexico, where the population has a history doing the opposite upon hearing politicians assure them that there are no shortages of basic staples.

Taxi driver Héctor Torres wasn’t taking any chances. He waited three hours in a Mexico City gas line to fill up his cab and a jerrycan, but seemed willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt, while disregarding the panic purchasing warning.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” he said. “We have to stop this gasoline theft. If this [shortage] is for changing that, fine.”