In September, police investigating a wave of killings in the northern Rio de Janeiro suburbs followed a tip to the isolated scrubland near the massive Duque de Caxias oil refinery. Police presumed the killings were linked to turf battles between criminal gangs in the run-up to municipal elections the following month. They found a different explanation buried beneath the grass: a system of tubes to siphon fuel from underground pipelines leading from the refinery, owned by state-run oil company Petrobras. Some of the killings, police said, were part of a power struggle between rival gangs earnings millions of dollars a year from stealing crude oil, diesel and gasoline and selling it on a thriving black market.

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