BEIJING: Chinese customs officers have detained members of two gangs involved in smuggling 440,000 tons of fuel using retooled fishing boats or vessels done up to look like boats carrying out cleaning work on oil tankers, authorities said.
Fuel smuggling has picked up since late last year after China raised taxes on a variety of oil products, widening the margins between domestic oil prices and supplies that evade the levies, traders said.
The arrests were made earlier this month when authorities detained more than 250 suspects from two gangs who had attempted to smuggle in fuel worth approximately 2.2 billion yuan (US$355 million) in seven coastal provinces, according to the Chinese Customs Administration.
The operations involved top oil ports including Ningbo, Qingdao, Dalian, Xiamen and Shenzhen.
In one case smugglers had used converted fishing boats or unlicensed tankers to transfer fuel from bigger “mother tankers” on the high seas.
In another case, a gang with operations at multiple ports had used vessels disguised as specialist oil tanker cleaners and had bought fuel to be sold illegally.
Taxes on fuel oil have resulted in a sharp drop in China’s official fuel oil imports.
