Contraband fuel sits on the side of a road in Puerto Santander, Colombia, on May 31, 2019. The Venezuelan government’s lack of cash to import gasoline combined with U.S. sanctions targeting the oil sector have led to chronic fuel shortages in Venezuela. That has upended a long-running, lucrative contraband gas 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 collapsed. Many of its refineries have shut down while the government’s lack of […]