18-08-04 Damage to electricity infrastructure, the re-routing of cables and the alteration of household meters has been an annoyance in the industry for years, but the summer peak consumption season this year has led to an upsurge in power-related theft.
Sometimes it is a simple case of stealing materials to sell on. In one incident in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, thieves broke steel supports from electricity pylons to sell off to scrap merchants, leading to a severe power failure that reportedly caused RMB 150 mm ($ 18.12 mm) in damages. In another case, workers at a power construction site in Shaanxi Province broke into a secure part of the facility and stole a canister of radioactive cesium-137.

In Heilongjiang Province, a special campaign has been launched to fight the problem of electricity theft. Since April 2004, 126 of 149 reported cases have been solved. 128 suspects have been arrested, and 3,222 buildings have been rectified after being found to violate regulations. 2,481 waste recycling stations have also been checked: 187 of them were penalized and 202 have been closed down.
Heilongjiang is not alone in the battle, as electric power related thefts have become pandemic in China. In Xiamen, thieves were reported to have been caught stealing power lines and other facilities for little profit, despite the danger of being electrocuted.

In Shanghai, a large number of ordinary residents have been caught stealing electricity by tampering with their household electric meters or other facilities. In a report, a surprise check by the Shanghai Electric Bureau found that 42 out of 110 households were stealing electricity. As well as ordinary households, some factories were also caught stealing.
In light of the situation, electric bureaus at different levels are carrying out surprise spot checks in the hope of cracking down on electric theft. According to Articles 109 and 110 of China's Criminal Law, those who damage electric power, gas or other fire-prone facilities can be sentenced to 3-to-10 years imprisonment. Perpetrators who have caused serious damage might even face the death penalty.

Thieving is actually a serious problem in China's energy industry. On some of the barren highways of northern Xinjiang Autonomous Region, the single electricity cable that links the villages to the outside world is marked with signs imploring local residents not do any damage to state property.
A "strike-hard" campaign against oil theft was also launched last year by the Ministry of Public Security and the two major oil companies, Sinopec and CNPC. The campaign led to the arrest of hundreds. It also sparked a wave of related reports in the national press, including one describing a "widow's village" in north-western China's Gansu Province, where most of the male population had been executed or imprisoned for their part in an "oil piracy gang" that had been arrested in 2001.

Problems have been particularly severe in Shandong, where members of a number of "oil theft rings" have been executed for boring holes in pipelines running from the province's Shengli Oilfield. Impoverished local populations, with few opportunities, seek to take advantage of local resources. Only two or three decades ago, they would have been given a job for life by the local Petroleum Bureau, but "rationalization" has since put paid to that.
It is a hard problem to solve when an oilfield is surrounded by millions of desperate people. As an official in Karamay, Xinjiang Autonomous Region told, the main advantage for Xinjiang is that its oilfields lie in remote desert areas, where there are few local residents. Theft is, as a consequence, much lower than that in the traditional eastern fields.

Recent reports also suggest that there is an increasing rate of coal theft. In the coal production city of Huainan in Anhui Province, thieves from neighbouring villages are said to mount the train as it stops at the Panji Station and then load their sacks full before disembarking further down the line. They sell the coal to nearby power stations, which have been running short as a result of a transportation bottleneck as well as the excessive demand for electricity.
The problem is that many local residents have depended on local energy resources for several generations. In a more commercial, market-orientated environment, many state-owned local coal or oil bureaus are now far more protective of their resources than they used to be. Furthermore, thousands of lay-offs in these traditional resource economies have left the local communities with little else to do.