West Texas Sheriffs: Oil Theft Is a Major Crime Issue

HUDSPETH COUNTY, Texas—Law enforcement in West Texas say they don’t have enough manpower to deal with the rise of oil theft.  

“Everybody’s shorthanded,” Sheriff Art Granado of Reeves County told The Daily Signal at the March Big Bend Area Law Enforcement Officers Association meeting while explaining the oil theft issue in his community.  

“There is a lot of money to be made” in oil theft, Granado said. The illegal practice requires a truck to haul the oil and a “hook up to any pipeline … or that tank battery,” he said, “and there’s always somebody else that will buy it from them.”  

An oil “tank battery” resembles a large metal jug and sits above ground. Oil theft happens daily in his county, according to Granado, who says he needs “a lot of boots on the ground” to stop it.  

Tank batteries in Midland County, Texas (Sean Hannon/iStock via Getty Images)

“Nobody wants to go into law enforcement,” Granado said, adding that the oil fields pay better.  

Just in January 2024, Reeves County produced 4,333,458 barrels of oil, ranking it among the top 10 highest-producing oil counties in Texas.  

The sheriff said many people are likely participating in the oil theft, but says he does not think the Mexican cartels are responsible, but Loving County Sheriff David Landerman thinks the cartels could in fact be involved in the nefarious activity.  

Loving County, Texas, has a population of fewer than 100 people, but it’s also among the top 10 highest crude-oil producing counties in Texas.  

“Any one day, we have between [15,000 and 20,000] people in the oil fields” driving through the county, Landerman said, adding that he thinks some members of the cartels work in the oil fields.  

With so much physical traffic moving through the county on a daily basis, Landerman says, it’s hard to have time and resources to “deal with” the cartels, because “most of the population is more concerned about being run over by a tractor-trailer than they are cartel theft.”  

Both individuals and organized criminal operations are likely engaged in oil theft in his county, Landerman says.  

Efrain Sella, who served as a Border Patrol agent for 25 years before retiring in 2019, says the oil-rich counties of West Texas deal with “a lot of oil theft, a lot!”  

The cartels “may be” involved in the left, Sella says, because “it’s a lot of money involved.”  

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