RAWALPINDI: Sihala police have arrested an organised gang that dug a tunnel to steal diesel from an oil pipeline, catching the suspects red-handed at the site.
The gang had installed an illegal connection on the oil pipeline running from Morgah, Rawalpindi, to the Sihala depot. The suspects were stealing diesel through an underground tunnel.
Sihala police carried out the operation and arrested the suspects at the scene. Police recovered a filling pipe, a vehicle, drums and the stolen diesel.
A case has been registered against the suspects and further investigation has begun. Police said raids were continuing for the arrest of other individuals involved in the diesel theft network.
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Product pipelines carrying refined fuel run buried at depth along fixed, mapped corridors. Theft from them requires excavating to the pipe, hot-tapping a valve into the line under pressure without triggering a leak large enough to register on flow monitoring, and running an offtake line to a collection point.
That is not opportunistic crime. It requires equipment, technical knowledge of pipeline construction, time to excavate undetected and, critically, knowledge of the pipeline’s exact route and depth. The construction of a tunnel rather than a simple excavation indicates a facility intended for repeated use over an extended period rather than a single extraction.
Morgah, on the southern edge of Rawalpindi, is the site of one of Pakistan’s oldest refineries, and pipelines radiating from the area carry refined product to storage depots serving the northern distribution network. Depot-to-depot and refinery-to-depot lines of this kind carry high volumes on a continuous basis, which is what makes even a modest percentage diversion commercially significant.
Beyond the value of the stolen product, unauthorised tapping of a pressurised fuel line creates a substantial hazard. Refined diesel and petrol pipelines operate at pressures that turn any failure at a tapped joint into a high-volume release. Vapour accumulation in a confined excavation carries an obvious ignition risk, and pipeline fires arising from illegal taps have caused mass-casualty incidents in several countries.
There is also a groundwater dimension. Product escaping from an imperfect tap into surrounding soil migrates into the water table, contaminating wells and boreholes in the surrounding area — a form of damage that persists long after the tap itself has been removed.
Pipeline operators detect theft principally through volumetric reconciliation — comparing the quantity injected at the origin with the quantity received at the destination. A persistent unexplained shortfall triggers a survey of the corridor. Pressure-drop analysis and, on modern lines, fibre-optic sensing along the pipe can narrow the location of an offtake.
The involvement of individuals with access to route information is a standard line of inquiry in cases of this type, and police have indicated the investigation extends beyond those arrested at the site.
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