Business, Man

Liam Dillon: On a late Friday afternoon in February 2011, dozens of police officers carrying assault rifles arrived at Sempra Energy's $1 billion liquefied natural gas plant on the coast of Baja California, Mexico.

The officers, dressed in ski masks and body armor, cut the chains on the plant's gates. Once they had broken in, the police put their own seals on the gates.

The cops drove down a winding road through brown, brush-filled hillside. Just before reaching the facility's entrance, the officers passed a swath of land that looked as barren and uninhabited as its surroundings.

That piece of property wasn't as innocuous as it seemed.

Five years earlier, Sempra had purchased title to the land.…