HUDSPETH COUNTY, Texas—Law enforcement in West Texas say they don’t have enough manpower to deal with the rise of oil theft.
“Everybody’s shorthanded,” Sheriff Art Granado of Reeves County told The Daily Signal at the March Big Bend Area Law Enforcement Officers Association meeting while explaining the oil theft issue in his community.
“There is a lot of money to be made” in oil theft, Granado said. The illegal practice requires a truck to haul the oil and a “hook up to any pipeline … or that tank battery,” he said, “and there’s always somebody else that will buy it from them.”
An oil “tank battery” resembles a large metal jug and sits above ground. Oil theft happens daily in his county, according to Granado, who says he needs “a lot of boots on the ground” to stop it.
