Protecting fuel oil and heating oil from theft
With oil prices going through the roof at the moment it isn't rare to find cars which cost over £100 to fill up. People using heating oil for their central heating have also felt the pain of high prices. A 2500 litre tank of domestic heating oil now costs around £1,500 to fill.
Farmers using red diesel for their agricultural machinary are also sitting on a valuable asset, 2500 litres of red diesel relates to in excess of £3,000 at road prices for a would be thief prepared to use it in their car or van.
Petrol stations have long been aware of the problem of fuel theft and are now fitting substantial CCTV systems to try and catch motorists who drive off without paying. But what about farmers and people who use heating oil, what can they do to protect themselves against thieves?
People using heating oil present a particularly interesting problem when it comes to theft prevention. A padlock fitted to the heating oil tank will provide little or no protection against a pair of £10-20 bolt croppers, so that line of defence is scuppered. The very fact that the people are using heating oil in the first place means that they are most likely to be in a rural or semi rural location, often with no immediate neighbours and they go out to work during the day. This makes them easy pickings for a would be fuel thief.
To make things even worse most people have their heating oil topped up on an automatic basis by one of the heating oil supply companies. Every 6 weeks or so a tanker comes round, checks the tank level and if need be tops it up. So a tanker turning up when there is no on at home raises no suspicion. What if the tanker removes rather than adds fuel! Even small time heating oil thieves can get away with several hundreds of pounds worth of fuel using a van and some oil drums.
For many people CCTV is proving to be the answer and it doesn't have to be overly expensive. Well under the cost of a tank of fuel and you get to protect the rest of the property with additional cameras into the deal.
Here is a screen shot image from one of our
B6 series day night cctv cameras fitted with the versatile 2.8-11mm varifocal lens. Not only does it cover a downstairs toilet window which is often left open for obvious reasons, but also the heating oil tank. If you wanted to you could zoom the camera further into the tank to get a better quality image. The camera also provides a high quality night time image.
A camera covering a window and also a heating oil storage tank
Here the camera is zoomed in more to help detail capture
And here is a night time image from the same camera
With our
4 camera DVR recorder you would still have 3 other cameras to place around the property capturing people arriving and leaving to try and identify vehicles and so on. All footage is stored securely on a hard drive which can even be remotely accessed over the internet if needed. Features such as motion detected recording and email alert are also standard on the unit.
When looking at different ways of protecting fuel oil and heating oil from theft mechanical methods can usually be bypassed, especially if you are not bothered about the amount of collateral damage caused. Alarms require not only someone to be present but also prepared to confront the thieves. CCTV offers a solution which requires no risk to individuals and offers the chance to prosecute individuals involved. For help or advice feel free to call us during normal office hours.