Word: hofmokel
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...ship, but none on imported oil coming in by land. The exemption made for over land imports was intended to placate Canada, which currently exports about 89 million bbl. of oil a year to the U.S. But when he read through the fine print of the 1959 proclamation, Hofmokel, who emigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1923 and has been director of the Port of Brownsville since 1936, decided that it could equally well be applied to Mexico. The only trouble was that there were no pipelines from Mexico into...
...Panama ity as to New York, it is visited each day by but one train, two planes, and practically no tourists. But thanks to a 17-mile ship channel to the Gulf of Mexico and the imagination of a profane, one-time U-boat commander named Friederich Wilhelm ("Fritz") Hofmokel, Brownsville today is a flourishing seaport that last year handled 4,685,000 tons of cargo. More than half that tonnage consisted of low-grade Mexican oil imported under a unique arrangement that Brownsville's predominantly Mexican-American inhabitants fondly refer to as "El Loophole...
...Hofmokel has remedied that lack by setting up a Rube Goldberg process that begins when tankers from Tampico sail into Brownsville loaded with residual crude consigned to the Mexican national oil monopoly in the city of Matamoros just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville. Unloaded under U.S. customs supervision into bonded tanks, the oil is transferred into tank trucks, which immediately set off on the eight-mile run to the Gateway Bridge between Brownsville and Matamoros. Once they reach Matamoros, the trucks make a wide U-turn and swing back onto the bridge, where U.S. customs officers now accept their...
Gentleman's Agreement. Though Texas oil producers howl at Hofmokel's scheme, they have no recourse against it. And mere mention of the phrase "El Loophole" visibly sends Hofmokel's blood pressure soaring. "Sonabeetch," he explodes in his German-accented English. "It's no loophole. It's the law." The Interior Department, partly as a result of prodding from the State Department, agrees. Sagely, however, Hofmokel has concluded a gentleman's agreement with the Government: so long as Brownsville limits its oil imports to 30,000 bbl. a day, the U.S. will make...
Both sides are keeping the agreement to their mutual profit. To Brownsville, El Loophole means $3.5 million a year in added income and 200 jobs. To the U.S., it means $500,000 a year in customs fees. All of this has made Fritz Hofmokel a local hero in Brownsville-a development that leaves him somewhat puzzled. "All I do," he says, "is find people who could make a profit by shipping out of Brownsville and get them together. That...
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