A busy fuel station in southern Mexico takes in a lot of money, and much of it arrives in paper. They have to count every note, store it, and eventually drive it somewhere safe, and each step costs money and carries risk.
For years, Óscar Liévano Moreno paid other companies to handle that last step: “We relied on third-party cash-in-transit providers, which involved disproportionate logistics costs, high fees, operational delays, and unnecessary security exposure due to the stations’ high daily cash transaction volumes.”
He responded by building the service himself, then selling it to others. The decision says a lot about how he has built and taken apart businesses in a regulated industry.
A Cash Economy
The problem isn’t peculiar to his station. Mexico still runs largely on cash. In its 2024 study of cash use, the Banco de México reported: “91% of the target population (46.6 million people) said they usually use cash for their daily expenses,” against 17% who use a debit card.
The same study suggests why the habit persists. Among people who usually pay in cash, Banxico found that most do so because it is practical, easy, or fast, and a smaller share for other reasons. After all, it is the only method they have. Card and transfer payments have grown, but from a low base.
For a fuel retailer, that habit becomes a daily logistics job: large sums leave several sites, on predictable routes, in a region where outside providers set the price and timetable.
Building SIP
Liévano’s answer was Servicios Integrales Pesados, known as SIP: “I founded Servicios Integrales Pesados (SIP) in 2009 as an in-house solution. In 2012, it evolved into a specialized company with armored vehicles, highly trained personnel, and the capacity to serve both our own stations and external clients.”
His CV lists SIP as a separate line of business, a security division for protecting and transporting valuables in the petroleum sector. SIP began in 2009, while he was still running the LPG business described below, which means the security operation was built for gas distribution before it served his gasoline and diesel stations.
On the start-up cost, he says: “It cost less than MXN $1 million to launch.” Today, he adds: “SIP currently has equipment assets valued at MXN $17.8 million, including vehicles and personnel benefits.” Its billing grew with the group: “In each of 2021 and 2022, the company invoiced more than MXN $200 million.” Over the longer run, his tally reads: “From 2017 through September 2026, it invoiced more than MXN $1.031 billion.” Those figures are his own. Today, he says, SIP has 785 staff and 62 vehicles, serves 60 corporate clients, and has billed outside clients since 2009 and service stations since 2017.
The reason it exists is simple, says Liévano: “In running service stations, cash logistics is the point of greatest vulnerability.”
On savings, he is precise: “Under Mexico’s tax rules I have to charge my own companies the same price as anyone else. What I gain is control: I decide what time, which days and how many times a day.”
He adds: “Instead of relying on inefficient third parties, I set up SIP, a security firm specializing in armored logistics, to protect the group’s cash flow. It solved an internal bottleneck and became a business in its own right.”
Justo Félix Fernández Chedraui, Vice Chairman of the Board of Comercializadora HAMSE, a fuel marketing and supply company that works with Liévano’s stations, describes SIP the same way: “SIP was created in response to a practical problem that Mr. Liévano identified while operating his fuel businesses.”
Chedraui explains that service stations generate large volumes of daily cash and that relying entirely on outside security and cash-in-transit providers was costly and logistically difficult, so Liévano developed his own security operation for his petroleum companies and other organizations.
Chedraui adds that the pattern goes beyond security. In his view, Liévano looks for a weakness that affects the whole group and then builds a business to close it.
How the Pieces Fit
SIP is one layer of a larger arrangement. Liévano owns and operates the stations; HAMSE supplies them. He describes his role precisely: “I am a strategic business partner and owner/operator of the service stations that receive the supply, working directly with Comercializadora HAMSE to secure the fuel value chain.”
The daily mechanics, he says, depend on keeping the parts in step: “Through a centralized vertical-integration model in which procurement and wholesale supply (through authorized marketers such as Comercializadora HAMSE) are synchronized in real time with inventory logistics at our service stations, which are simultaneously supported by our own security and cash-in-transit infrastructure.”
The group has grown. He says his first gasoline station opened in 2017, supplied directly by Petróleos Mexicanos; the relationship with HAMSE, a fuel marketing company, began in October 2021.
According to HAMSE, operations with Liévano began in October 2021 with one service station and 57,723 gallons of storage, and by September 2026 had reached seven stations with 321,232 gallons. Liévano puts the current scale this way: “In 2025 alone, we operated a volume of over 18 million gallons sold, representing transactions exceeding $88.7 million USD.” His CV gives the exact figures as 18,004,954 gallons and USD 88,688,574, and HAMSE gives the same dollar value for 2025.
Chedraui makes a related point about risk. According to him, running several stations means coordinating supply, inventory, delivery schedules, pricing, compliance, and many daily transactions at once, and a failure in any one of them can hit the whole group, not just one site. Owning the supply relationship, the stations, and the cash logistics reduces that exposure.
The First Company
The habit of filling gaps started earlier, in liquefied petroleum gas. From 2006 to 2018 Liévano was general director and sole administrator of two related companies. Liévano explains the split: “There are two separate companies. Operadora de Gas is the LPG marketing company; it sells the product directly to consumers through established routes. Fletes Opergas transports the gas from the storage terminal to Operadora de Gas’s facilities.”
He summarizes those twelve years this way: “I led the company strategically, operationally and commercially through to its sale to SONIGAS.”
Liévano did not found them. The shareholders incorporated Operadora de Gas Chiapas in 2003 and appointed him sole administrator in 2006. He was in Spain then, finishing postgraduate law studies and planning an academic career, when his father asked him to review the company.
He says he found a business with permits but no operations, heavy debts, and 40% of the family’s capital at risk, and he stayed.
Coming home was hard for Liévano: “When I came back from Spain to Chiapas, it was very, very difficult. It was the jungle.”
But he has no regrets: “I don’t miss anything. I’m very happy with my family in Mexico.” He then took charge of both companies: “I restructured them completely, through their biggest expansion and on to the sale.”
The transport company itself was a response to cost: “The business was established to meet the need to supply its own product while controlling the entire supply chain and reducing transportation costs by acquiring vehicles and establishing its own logistics operation.”
Under his management, Liévano adds, the operation grew, and he puts numbers on it: “The initial investment was MXN $4.6 million.” He says that money went in during 2005, and the growth strategy began in 2006. By the time of the sale, he says, its assets were worth slightly more than MXN 12 million and it operated in several cities in Chiapas. Storage followed the same path: “It began with a 150,000-liter tank, and its storage capacity was later increased to 300,000 liters.”
The Sale
In January 2018, the national LPG group SONIGAS bought the business. Liévano says: “I standardized operations and expanded the infrastructure until closing its sale to the national corporation SONIGAS for $5.6 million USD.”
The sale contract, signed in Tuxtla Gutiérrez in January 2018 and recorded that day before Notary Public No. 33 of Chiapas as deed 16,255, sets it at MXN 105 million: MXN 21 million on signing and twelve monthly payments of MXN 7 million through February 2019.
Outside counsel on the deal puts the price at more than USD 5.6 million; Liévano says that is the same amount converted at 18.75 pesos per dollar, a 2018 FIX rate he explains is the midpoint between buying and selling quotes.
Mario Alberto Trujillo Cortez, the outside counsel who represented Operadora de Gas Chiapas in the transaction, was involved from the negotiations to the final payment.
He describes Liévano’s part: “Mr. Oscar Liévano led the principal stages of the transaction: commercial negotiations, due diligence, corporate and regulatory review, asset valuation and transfer, and closing.”
Cortez adds that Liévano’s knowledge of the companies and his authority as General Director and Sole Administrator allowed him to resolve significant matters and make the decisions that brought the sale to completion.
Cortez adds that the buyer’s review went well beyond the price, covering whether the companies were fully operational, whether their permits were current and valid, and the state of their infrastructure, transport, and customer relationships.
In Liévano’s description, the transfer was broad: “The sale included the real estate (facilities and offices) and operating assets, including vehicles, cylinders, and storage tanks, among other items.” The contract shows an asset sale: Operadora de Gas Chiapas and Fletes Opergas sold SONIGAS the land, buildings, LPG plant, refueling station, transport units, fixed assets and permits, and assigned their trade names and marks.
Liévano trained as a lawyer, with postgraduate studies in tax and criminal law, and he connects that background to how he handled the deal. He says the mix of training and operating experience gave him work spanning legal, financial, and operational matters.
Asked what the buyer valued, Liévano points to the unglamorous parts of the business: “The established infrastructure, strategic position in the regional LPG market, the network’s operational efficiency, and strict regulatory compliance, which ensured a transition without hidden liabilities.”
He also credits the commercial side: “Its customer base and expansion plan were what interested SONIGAS.”
The Lesson
Liévano’s view of what made the company saleable is less about growth than about cleanliness. His advice to other operators is practical: “Build a business with impeccable corporate governance, legally sound contracts, owned infrastructure, and complete tax and regulatory compliance, so that the company’s value lies in its ability to generate stable, transparent cash flows without legal risks.”
SIP and the transport company follow the same reasoning. Each began as a cost that someone else controlled, and each became something the group owned. SIP began with less than MXN 1 million, by his account, and now runs on equipment he values at MXN 17.8 million. The habit is consistent: when a service is expensive, unreliable and essential, Liévano’s instinct has been to own it.
Since October 2021, the stations supplied through HAMSE have grown from one to seven, backed by the group’s own cash-logistics company, after the group sold its earlier gas business to a national buyer for MXN 105 million.
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