Venezuela's Fuel Shortage Upends Longtime Colombian Border Gas Smuggling Trade

Venezuela's worst economic meltdown in history has had a huge impact on neighboring Colombia, where hospitals, schools and welfare agencies are dealing with 2 million Venezuelan refugees. But the crisis has produced at least one silver lining for Colombia: the curtailing of gasoline smuggling.

For decades, Colombian motorists along the border eschewed gas stations to fill their tanks with cheaper, smuggled Venezuelan fuel. The practice gave rise to powerful smuggling mafias while local governments lost out on gasoline taxes.

Now, however, Venezuela's oil industry has on the black market and that there's no more cheap fuel left to resell in Colombia.