(TELEGRAPH) — Police are hunting a gang of thieves suspected of carrying out a sophisticated heist in which thousands of gallons of diesel were siphoned from one of Britain’s most important oil pipelines.
The gang are suspected of tapping into a pipeline that runs 130 miles from the Esso refinery in Fawley near Southampton to the West Midlands, helping themselves to at least 30,000 litres of fuel.
Detectives are investigating suggestions the thieves had rented an industrial unit near Romsey, Hampshire, above an area where the pipeline passes, and had been siphoning off the fuel for sometime before the scam was uncovered.
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The alarm was raised when the owner of one the units discovered a large amount of fuel hidden at the scene.
