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MARKETING & SUPPLY BY KEITHREID Today's fuel prices have taken theft to the next level THE CHANGING FACE OF FUEL THEFT – PART 1 I Applied Petroleum products makes a strong effort to protect its sites from theft including security cameras at its facilities; daily inventory reconciliation; metal bands on its dispensers and the sites are inspected daily for any tampering. N THE 1990S THERE WAS AN INTERESTING BBC series called Daylight Robberies that humor- ously documented the "war" between squir- rels and people who took great pride in their birdfeeders. The homeowners would go to great lengths to try to put up physical safeguards to prevent the squirrels' access to the birdseed. pen when the thieves find ways to circumvent safeguards in fueling equipment or managed to gain direct access to storage tanks and remove the product in bulk. "This winter we had a guy going around pumping out fuel from card lock stations and they hit one of our competi- tors," said Brian Decker, card lock and retail operations manager for El Monte, Calif.- based DeWitt Petroleum. "Then they came and hit our Long Beach facil- ity where they used a bob- tail pump truck and pumped 4,000 gallons of fuel right out of the tank." In some cases, the thief is your generic criminal looking for a score. But all too often the thief is someone with experience in the operation or maintenance of fueling sys- tems that knows where the loopholes exist or someone who previously might've been a reliable customer. "This theft is usual- ly occurring in the owner But regardless of how elaborate the defenses— some bordering on the Rube Goldberg end of the spectrum—the squirrels always seemed to figure out the solution. With fuel prices being as high as they are today, a similar battle is being waged with fuel thieves that have gone beyond the drive off using sophisticated techniques to steal greater quantities of fuel. This is the first of a two-part article—card lock and retail—taking a look at the issue. The loss of tens of gallons in fuel theft can mean serious dollars to a petroleum marketer. The loss of hundreds or thousands of gallons is another thing altogether. That tends to hap- 14 JULY/AUGUST 2012 operator community, which is guys that own their own trucks and they lease on to compa- nies and haul 'cans' back and forth between ports," said Jim Pederson, general sales manag- er at Associated Petroleum Products in Tacoma, Wash. "You have little guys out there that are stealing fuel cards and they're getting pin num- bers and you've had that for the 20 years I've been in the industry. But, there has definitely been an uptick." And as Greg Iverson, president of the Salem, Ore.-based Pacific Pride Services card lock network notes, the theft is migrating. "People that might have been in a smaller town that NPN Magazine n www.npnweb.com