Mexican drivers flood S. Cal. gas stations to fill up

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 U.S. 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.”