Lawmen in East Texas Tuesday began arresting 17 people accused of stealing or conspiring to steal condensate from gas wells in the area.

Fifteen have been charged by a Panola County grand jury for alleged participation in the condensate theft crime ring. The grand jury returned 65 felony indictments. In Rusk County a grand jury indicted two others.

Spanning seven Texas counties, the investigation is among the largest oilfield theft cases to date, said the office of Panola County District Attorney Danny Buck Davidson. The investigation found thieves had stolen several million dollars in product over two years. Theft in the oilpatch also has been prevalent in North Texas, where criminals often steal the commodity and sell it for profit, the DA’s office said.

“We worked with the natural gas industry and investigators throughout East Texas to indict this group,” Davidson said. “We think there may be more people involved, and we are working to narrow our investigation and bring this activity to a halt.”

A law enforcement task force with representatives from Panola, Shelby, Nacogdoches, Rusk, Harrison, Smith and Gregg counties composed of Texas Rangers, local sheriffs and local district attorneys’ investigators conducted the investigation. They were assisted by corporate security departments at Devon Energy and other natural gas companies operating in the area that were victims of the thefts.

“Oilfield theft affects more than natural gas companies,” said Devon’s Kent Chrisman, director of global security. “It also affects landowners, royalty owners and taxpayers.”

Devon spokesperson Alesha Leemaster told NGI that the producer was the first among affected companies to notice the thefts about a year ago. She said Devon is the largest operator in the area and some of the other affected companies are quite small. The crime ring was a sophisticated operation, she said, and involved industry employees and falsified reports to the Texas Railroad Commission.

To steal the condensate the thieves drove tanker trucks up to the facilities and pumped the condensate from storage tanks, Leemaster said. Because people from the industry were involved in the thefts, buyers of the stolen condensate could have assumed they were buying product from its rightful owner.

“It was pretty sophisticated,” she said. “It was really organized and a guy could make $300 a night selling [the condensate] up to $12,000 a night from stealing it…That’s industrywide; that didn’t come all from Devon’s side.”

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