Oil Theft is Burining a Billion-Dollar Hole in the West Texas Economy

Bloomberg Businessweek

by Ella Feldman

Opportunistic equipment thefts have long dogged West Texas oil fields, which are often located in remote areas and left unmanned for weeks on end. But in recent years, crude theft has become more sophisticated and frequent.

Today's Permian Basin thieves might instead connect vacuum trucks to storage tanks in broad daylight and siphon it out, sometimes covering their license plates or swapping vehicles to evade law enforcement, authorities say. In one popular ploy, they pose as waste haulers, which companies hire to remove toxic water from storage tanks, then make off with the crude. Skilled perpetrators can often hide in plain sight, syncing up their hits with an oil field's busiest hours.

"The old joke in the oil field used to be that if it wasn't bolted down, it would get stolen," says Michael D. Lozano, who runs government affairs and communications for the Permian Basin Petroleum Association (PBPA). "Now they're unscrewing the bolts, and they're stealing those too."

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