Forget siphoning, these wildcatters are drilling for gas

Sacramento’s Tahoe Park area got hit by a late-night oil drilling expedition this week, as thieves made off with gas from several residents’ trucks by drilling holes in the tanks.

Wednesday morning, when resident Anthony Vera tried to start his pickup, the fuel gauge showed empty and the pavement under the truck smelled of gas. He discovered a neatly drilled round hole near the bottom of the truck’s plastic tank.

Checking the neighborhood, he found two more trucks of the same model with empty tanks and similar holes. Two of the pickups were parked in the neighborhood northwest of Broadway and 65th Avenue, and another farther south on 21st Avenue.

“I thought, Oh, they got him, and him too,” Vera said. “The tanks on these trucks are pretty easy to get to.”

The irony, he said, is that the trucks have an anti-siphoning device so that thieves can’t push a hose into the tank from the filling tube. He said he heard a new gas tank will cost him $500.

“Crazy,” Vera said. “It would have cost me less if they had just been able to siphon it.”

Sacramento Bee