Singapore oil heist: how millions of dollars of oil was stolen
SINGAPORE (ThomsonReuters) Eleven men were charged in a Singapore court in the week up to Jan. 12 in connection with a large-scale oil theft. Police seized millions of dollars in cash and a small tanker during their investigations into the heist at the Pulau Bukom industrial site.
Shell’s oil refinery on Bukom island is the company’s biggest such facility in the world. Court documents seen so far allege incidents of gasoil theft on Nov. 21, 2017 and on Jan. 5 and 7 of this year.
The "Prime South" Fuel was transferred from Pulau Bukom to a small oil tanker named Prime South at 7 p.m. local time on Jan. 7, 2018, charge sheets showed.
Recent shipping data in Thomson Reuters Eikon showed the Prime South was transporting fuel between Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Singapore on a regular basis. Its destination was also listed as Ho Chi Minh, before being seized.
The vessel also made stops at Rayong, Thailand. Like Vietnam, Thailand has been known to see large volumes of illicit fuel trading. The Prime South has frequently had its transponders switched off, which ships are required to carry in order to avoid collisions.
Although the charge sheets mention only one incident, ship tracking data showed the vessel loaded fuel from the same terminal and delivered it to Ho Chi Minh City in recent months.
Southeast Asia is a hotspot of illegal oil trading. In some cases, oil has been illegally siphoned from storage tanks, but there have also been thefts at sea and even hijackings of entire ships in order to steal fuel.The stolen fuel is generally sold across Southeast Asia, offloaded directly into trucks or tanks at small harbours away from oil terminals. However, stolen cargoes have also been known to be re-sold in the Asian wholesale fuel markets.
Source: Thomson Reuters By Simon Scarr, Jin Wu and Weiyi Cai | REUTERS GRAPHICS
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