As personal injury attorneys who represent people injured in truck accidents involving the Eagle Ford Shale 18-wheeler traffic, we’ve long been advocating for improved roadways in South Texas. It’s no secret that local governmental authorities are trying to figure out a way to maintain and rebuild the deteriorating roads.
Part of this effort also involves private contractors who are building new roads on the Eagle Ford Shale. According to the Houston Chronicle, these new private roads constitute hundreds of miles of “uncharted pipeline” for drug traffickers – an unintended side effect of the oil boom.
While, presumably, the Texas motoring public cannot use these new private roads, enterprising drug traffickers are using them, which means that oil and gas company employees are now sharing the road with other “commercial” trucks.
As Dane Schiller reports, drug smugglers are making copies of vehicles that look as though they’re part of the oil and gas industry. That, along with “corrupting” drivers and contractors, is allowing smugglers to get drugs into the country in an unprecedented way – outside, as Schiller puts it, the last line of defense: Border Patrol.
Source: South Texas shale boom opens private highways for drug traffickers