As Gas Prices Soar....Thieves Becoming Brazen

It wasn’t Julien’s life the gunman wanted that morning of May 5: “He said he wanted the truck. He wanted the fuel.”

The truck was recovered three days later. Police said its fuel load would probably be sold on the black market, which is thriving as average pump prices approach $4 a gallon.

With siphons, pumps, saws — and sometimes lethal weapons — gasoline thieves are on the hunt.

Video   Dangerous thieves Mike Marusarz of NBC affiliate KSHB reports from Kansas City, Mo., on the new tactics.  MSNBC

Most gas thefts are still perpetrated by motorists who drive off without paying. After seeing declines in drive-offs earlier this decade, after many stores began requiring drivers to pre-pay, the National Association of Convenience Stores says they’re rising sharply again.

Convenience stores sell more than 80 percent of the fuel U.S. motorists put in their vehicles, and stores in high-traffic areas along Interstate highways are often hit several times a day, the association said. The average store will lose more than $1,000 in stolen fuel this year, it said — and more than double that at stores that don’t require pre-payment.

“I had two of them for $131,” said Reggie Armendariz, manager of Murphy USA in Lubbock, Texas. He said he lost more than $600 last month thanks to drive-offs.

Retailers say gas thieves hurt them badly because they’re already operating at razor-thin margins of roughly 2 cents a gallon. A retailer would need to sell an extra 3,000 gallons to offset a $60 drive-off.

“If you have somebody steal $50, $60, $70 worth of gas, it’s going to take a lot of sales to make that up,” said Scot Imus, executive director of the Indiana Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association.

Individual vehicles increasingly targeted
But with the average price of a gallon of gas having more than doubled in the last two years, thieves are branching out. Across the country, drivers are waking up to find their gas caps pried open and their tanks dry.

While there are no national statistics yet tracking an increase in gas thefts, police across the country say they’re investigating more reports than ever before:

• Using an empty gas can and a siphon, thieves were able to suck 30 gallons of diesel from a bus in a Bethesda, Md., parking lot.
• In Beaver Dam, Wis., “they’re just going to cars at night and siphoning gas out of them,” said Stephanie Lehmann, who said several cars in her neighborhood had been hit.
• Police in Evansville, Ind., said thieves drained all of the fuel this month from seven trucks belonging to a local office of JBM Inc., a metal fabrication chain. They put the loss at $700.
• And police in Denver are investigating a rash of of incidents in which thieves drill small holes into gas tanks and siphon off the fuel. “This is clearly not the way it’s been done in the past, by taking a hose and putting it in a gas tank,” police Detective John White said.