Criminal gangs are stealing fuel worth hundreds of thousands of pounds from lorries and depots as they cash in on the petrol crisis.
Vehicles have been slashed open and there have been reports of drivers being drugged or assaulted, as well as street lights being turned off so that thefts can be carried out in darkness. Sophisticated tactics have included pipes being fitted into tanks with the fuel then carried as far as half a mile.
Some police forces have shared posts on social media warning about petrol theft. Nottinghamshire police set up an undercover operation, using a decoy “capture lorry” as well as drones to catch two teenagers stealing diesel.
The crimewave comes after a sharp rise in prices, with some garages charging up to 189p a litre for petrol, since the invasion of Ukraine and sanctions imposed on Russia. Gangs are selling the fuel on the black market.
In January, fuel theft accounted for 38 per cent of all cargo crimes — nearly doubled from 2020, according to the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Police Service (Navcis). That month, there were four incidents recorded every day, compared with two before the price rise.
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Michael Dawber, from Navcis, said: “Wherever there is demand, criminals will adapt and steal.”
In some cases, gangs have used knives or wire cutters to get into vehicles. Pumps have also been attached to lorries that can empty tanks within minutes. Criminals are reported to have cloned the number plates of legitimate HGVs to escape with the fuel and used GPS scramblers to avoid being tracked.
Thomas Kiy, a driver from Norwich, fell victim as he slept on the A50 near Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, last summer. He woke up at 5.30am with no fuel and was stranded for a day and a half. Thieves had siphoned fuel worth £1,000 from his tank. His first thought was: “Damn, they’ve done it again.” It is the third time fuel has been stolen from him. “Every single driver [that I know] has had it happen to them in the past year,” Kiy said.
Haulage depots, which keep tens of thousands of litres in storage units for their fleets, have also become victims. Two weeks ago, David Hogg, 51, lost 15,000 litres of petrol stolen from the tank at his depot, Murray Hogg, in Newcastle upon Tyne. A pipe had been inserted into the drum, which contained fuel worth nearly £25,000, in the early hours. Over the course of three hours, it was then transported across half a mile of fields to a 40-tonne lorry. “I was just expecting a bloke with a hose and a couple of jerry cans, not on this scale — it’s huge,” Hogg said.
Petrol stations have also been hit. Thefts are 215 per cent higher than this time last year, according the British Oil Security Syndicate.
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Fuel Theft Solutions, based in Staffordshire, has created an app, SafePark, by which drivers can report incidents of crime across the country. These are then shared with local police. Chris Day, the company’s managing director, said: “The current spike in costs is only going to fuel this further because it is becoming an increasingly lucrative commodity for criminals — it’s liquid gold. The worst is yet to come.
“This is fully organised — they are taking out street lamps to avoid detection.”
Day has received many reports from aggrieved drivers. He said: “There was a photo of a driver who had an axe planted into his leg because he got out to check what was happening. There was another report where the driver was gassed.”
Kiy, the lorry driver from Norwich, said: “I know one driver who thought he had been gassed but hadn’t been sedated enough and woke up with blokes in the lorry. They were looking to rob him after siphoning off the fuel.”
There were rumours that criminals known as “fuel fairies” put toxic substances under the bonnet so it would seep through the vent and knock drivers out, Kiy said.
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Police say some gangs are tracking shift patterns of hauliers. Dawber said he used to think it was an opportunist crime, adding: “That was so wide of the mark.”
Last April, Moody Logistics and Storage in Cramlington, Northumberland, lost 10,000 litres of fuel stolen through a pipe half a mile long and fitted underneath a railway line. The fuel was then taken across fields and siphoned into drums stored in a white articulated lorry. It cost the company £15,000. Carolyn Moody, the managing director, said: “What we were most shocked about was the lack of interest by the police, who only called us two weeks after the theft and didn’t investigate, knowing it was organised crime.”
Revelations about the tactics deployed by gangs come as the fuel price at petrol stations continues to rise sharply despite a drop in the cost of crude oil.
The cost of Brent crude peaked almost two weeks ago at $127 a barrel in response to the US and UK banning imports of Russian oil. Since then, prices have fallen back to as low as $100 on Wednesday but at the pumps prices are still rising.
Between March 3 and March 16, the cost of diesel at the pump rose by an average of 11 per cent per litre while petrol has risen by 7.5 per cent, according to data from Petrolprices.com. Drivers are now paying more than £90 to fill an average family car.
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The Petrol Retailers Association said its members bought refined oil, not crude, and some of them faced a price lag that slowed their response to falling prices.
