IOCL estimates theft of 40,000 litre from pipeline
Nitish Sharma
Tribune News Service
Kurukshetra, November 16
At least 40,000 litre oil has been stolen from the Kurukshetra-Roorkee-Nazibabad Pipeline (KRNPL) of Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL). The exact loss will be known after getting data from the Panipat refinery. This was stated by Shyam Sunder Gupta, senior engineer, IOCL, Ambala.
The theft from the KRNPL of the IOCL was detected by a line patrol man at the Shiv Nagar Colony of Bazidpur village yesterday.
“Putting a clamp on the pipeline and withdrawing oil from it was not an easy task. It is a very dangerous act and could have led to a major disaster as a minor mistake could have burst the pipeline. A team of experts is involved in the act. These people have been targeting the IOCL pipelines on different locations,” said Gupta.
“It has also been suspected that the house from where the tunnel was dug and the oil was being withdrawn is constructed precisely for stealing oil,” he said.
The IOCL team started repairing the pipeline today.
Pankaj Kumar, an engineer at the IOCL Panipat refinery who was a member of the maintenance team in the Begumpur village incident, also reached the spot today.
“The modus operandi in the Begumpur incident and here in Bazidpur are similar. There also a long pipe was used to withdraw the oil.”
On August 4, the IOCL authorities had detected a leakage of fuel in Begampur village of Karnal district and found a 500-ft-long tunnel with a 2-inch-wide pipe to draw fuel from the Mathura-Delhi-Ambala-Jalandhar pipeline of the IOCL.
Kewal Singh, SHO, Sadar police station, said, “The Sonepat address of Surjeet Singh, the house owner, is being verified. We have received some clues and investigations are on.”
