Oil pilferage alert up in northern Iloilo
The Iloilo Police Provincial Office is keeping a tight watch on reports of oil pilferage in the fifth district of the province.
Senior Supt. Renato Gumban, provincial police director, said he has ordered all chiefs of police in the area to be on alert against these activities involving vessels coming from Cebu.
The siphoned fuel is reportedly dumped along the coastline of northern Iloilo.
In Carles, most of the pilfered petrol came from Masbate Island and then dumped to Jintotolo Island, the body of water that connects the Sibuyan Sea with the Visayan Sea.
It is located between the islands of Panay and Masbate, and is an important shipping route to and from the Central Visayas.
A counter-intelligence operation show that a police official is allegedly behind the oil smuggling operation in Iloilo.
The police officer has the rank of chief inspector and assigned to a unit based at Camp Delgado in Iloilo City, but police authorities refuse to reveal other
details pending their investigation.
Release
Meanwhile, Gumban said the police has released to its owner the 40 barrels of diesel fuel earlier suspected to have been smuggled off Carles town in the fifth district.
The owner, Geronimo Briones of Panitan town, Capiz, showed documents showing his legal ownership of the crude oil supply.
Briones, an operator of a gasoline station in Panitan town, transports barrels of diesel fuel to Carles town.
Last Thursday, members of Carles Police Station launched an operation after receiving information on drums of diesel fuel being unloaded from a fishing vessel.
These were to be loaded to pumpboats for delivery to the different islands of Carles when police seized it.
But Briones proved the distribution of diesel fuel in Carles has been his business for quite some time already.*
