Pemex Exploracion y Produccion will be unable to recover hundreds of millions of dollars lost on Mexican condensate smuggled across the Texas border by bandits and sold to buyers such as Shell Chemical, ConocoPhillips and BASF Corporation, the news agency Bloomberg reports.

The agency cites a federal appeals court in New Orleans, Louisiana, as saying the chemical producers and other buyers were unaware that the feedstock had been stolen.

In 2014, a federal judge in Houston, Texas, dismissed the claims, by Mexico's national oil company, saying it had waited too long to pursue its case against the companies after it failed to apprehend the thieves on its side of the border.

At the time, the judge argued that Pemex could not trace its stolen product to specific purchases by the US companies as the law required.