U: How do you steal fuel from a pipeline? Here's Slate's Andy Bowers.
ANDY BOWERS: Pipeline thefts are relatively rare in the United States, where most equipment is buried at least five feet underground. Still, there are plenty of long, unguarded stretches of pipeline. Much of the maintenance and inspection is done with robots called pigs that travel through the pipelines on their own. Live workers are few and far between. In the early '80s, a sophisticated gang tapped into a 16-inch pipeline buried in California. They leased tanker trucks and hooked up their own underground pipe to the existing system. The scheme netted 10 million gallons of crude oil over a three-year stretch until the company began to notice regular and repeating drops in pipeline pressure.
: NPR's DAY TO DAY continues in just a moment. I'm Alex Chadwick. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
