China oil thieves sentenced to death

BEIJING – Two men were sentenced to death for masterminding a plan to steal oil from an underwater pipeline, a botched plot that caused tens of millions of dollars in damages, China’s state news agency reported Saturday.

Wang Yujiang and Liu Linbin were sentenced to death Friday by the Intermediate People’s Court in Dongying, a city in Shandong province in eastern China, Xinhua said.


…The court heard that Wang’s gang drilled into what they thought was an oil pipeline in the Shengli oilfield in Shandong in June 2005. Instead, they found they had drilled into a natural gas pipeline, Xinhua said.

The natural gas leak was not discovered until March 2006, it said.

The gang succeed in stealing about 65 barrels of oil from a pipeline in a different location. The hole in that pipeline was not discovered for five months, Xinhua said.

Emergency repairs and clean up at the two locations, plus damages to local fishing, cost an estimated $53 million, the court was told.

AP