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5 hours ago
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There is no subtle way to receive heating oil deliveries in rural Northern Ireland: clearly marked tankers trundle through roads and lanes and park outside homes while they replenish storage tanks.
The trucks’ comings and goings are visible to the entire community, indicating which households have stocked up on oil, and that is a problem because criminals monitor deliveries to identify targets.
Stealing heating oil and other fuels is a decades-old practice in this part of the UK but the conflict in the Middle East has worsened it by ratcheting up the price of “liquid gold”.
“Rural homes and farms are increasingly being targeted by opportunistic thieves,” said Gary McCartney, the regional director of Countryside Alliance Ireland. “A tank can be drained in minutes.
“We urge rural residents to remain vigilant.”
Police have issued alerts and posted security tips on how to deter a crime that can leave victims facing bills of thousands of pounds to replace oil, repair broken equipment and clean up biohazards.
Gareth Kelly and Aimee Leigh Brolly, a couple in Limavady, County Derry, woke up last week to choking fumes from an oil line severed by thieves during the night. The couple, who have a newborn son, vacated their home, deeming it unsafe.
Oil thefts are not unique to Northern Ireland but as one of Europe’s most dependent regions – 62% of households use oil for heating, and in rural areas the figure is 80% – it is especially vulnerable to price shocks and theft.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland was unable to provide statistics on recent cases but the Rural Community Network, an umbrella group, believes theft is widespread. “We think it is hugely underreported, especially in rural areas and places that are isolated,” said Kate Clifford, the chief executive.
Since the US and Israel began attacking Iran on 28 February the price of heating oil has almost doubled to approximately £1,000 for 900 litres. “Theft is more noticeable when prices are high,” said Clifford. “Oil is like liquid gold. It’s highly valuable and easy to steal.”
Jonny Byrne, a criminology lecturer at Ulster University, said the phenomenon dated back decades. “There’s a history of oil as currency in Northern Ireland. People would go on holiday and come back home and go, ‘oh’. Their tanks were empty.”
Heating oil’s ubiquity and the vulnerability of isolated or unoccupied homes made the crime a lucrative “no-brainer”, said Byrne. Thieves tended to be opportunists who operated in an “ecosystem” of stolen and smuggled goods, he said. “To call it organised crime is a stretch. This is low level.”
A former police officer who worked in the border area, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed. “It is more opportunistic than organised. It would be too much like hard work for the organised crime guys to get involved in. If the war went on I could see them getting involved in hijacking oil tankers. However it hasn’t happened yet.”
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted a similar spike in oil prices and thefts, including £1,700 worth of fuel siphoned from the tank of the Rural Community Network office in Cookstown, County Tyrone, said Clifford. “We didn’t notice for a long time because there was a residual amount of oil in the tank to get us through. It wasn’t until the tank went dry one day that we realised something awful had happened.”
Police in County Fermanagh urged residents to use high-quality padlocks, motion-sensor security lighting and alarms that detect sudden drops in oil levels. Another tip was concealment. “Long term, use fencing or prickly hedging to keep your tank out of sight from the road.”
