Black gold. Texas tea.

I check every morning when I go to the parking lot to get in my car to go to work. Since I live in a condo, and my place is on the opposite side of the parking lot (thanks, ex-wife) it's impossible to know if someone has been fiddling with my car while I sleep. So far, I've not noticed that there is anything missing.
The soaring price of crude oil has turned gas tanks into a cache of valuable booty, and repair shops have replaced several tanks punctured or drilled by thieves thirsting for the nearly $4-a-gallon fuel inside. "That's the new fad," said Dale Forton, the co-owner of Dearborn Auto Tech in Detroit. "I'd never seen it before gas got up this high."
While gas station drive-off's and siphoning are far more common methods of stealing gas, reports of tank and line puncturing are starting to trickle into police departments and repair shops across the country.

"Gas is liquid gold these days, and has been for the last year-and-a-half," Troy Police Lt. Gerry Scherlinck said. "I would anticipate seeing more of these kinds of incidents as the price continues to go up."

More on that later...
Of course, maybe I'm not looking in the right place. I come from the generation who merely siphoned gas during the oil embargo of the late 1970s when gasoline was ... gasp ... over 60 cents a gallon. Now, they're using power tools...

Denver Police Detective John White sees this "new way of siphoning gas" as a bigger problem.
"What made this particular method so dangerous and concerning for us was the way in which they were doing it - using cordless drills to puncture holes in these tanks," he said of the rash of cases his department has investigated this spring. "The heat, friction generated could have easily sparked a fire. It just made for a dangerous situation for the suspects and the Tank puncturing has yet to reach the radar screens of law enforcement organizations such as the National Sheriffs' Association, or the Automotive Service Association, a group that represents independent garage operators community."

The cost of replacing a metal tank on passenger vehicles is between $300 and $400, and the plastic tank common on newer vehicles would be at least $500.

Now ... a little math.
For the record (as if that matters) 1 gallon of gasoline weighs 8.66 pounds, or (for argument's sake) 140 ounces. Gold is $907 an ounce, and at $4 a gallon that makes gasoline 3 cents an ounce - or not quite "liquid gold".

The quote about gasoline being "liquid gold" might be a bit of an exaggeration (might?) but it's certainly easier to find, so one would think that the lack of effort and the relative simplicity of acquiring it would make up for some of the price. Plus the fact that gasoline is ... well ... useful in everyday life and gold is ... well ... not. While we're at it, how much is bottled water per gallon? Never mind.

Maybe stealing gasoline ain't that bad an idea? Buy some Sears stock and pass the power drill.

Meanwhile, keep your eyes on that puddle beneath your car.