Some people hear an idea and then just can’t get it out of their heads. That’s apparently what happened to an unidentified Siberian man who read a magazine story explaining that it would be possible to dig a tunnel to an oil pipeline and siphon off the crude oil that flowed from it. After three years of work, the 52-year-old has been arrested for proving that yes, it is possible to do exactly that. As with many things that are possible, though, it’s not exactly advisable.
The man, whose name has not been released, started digging the tunnel in his garden in 2010. His target? An oil pipeline 150 feet away that carries oil between the cities of Omsk and Irkutsk. After years of labor that saw him digging the tunnel on nights and weekends, the man struck black gold earlier this year, and in the last three months, authorities say he drained more than 30 tons of oil from the pipeline. Unfortunately for him, he was arrested by local police before he could move the contraband crude.
Of course, even if he had managed to sell that oil, it wouldn’t come close to paying for the digging equipment he’s had to use to build the tunnel, much less the long hours of labor he’s spent digging the tunnel, often while covered in mud, water, and, recently, oil. Said the man in testimony to the local police department:
“The process was hard. The soil was really troublesome. It appeared to be hard to dig. Water was constantly leaking. There was a lot of fuss.”
Yeah, dude, sounds like it was a huge pain in the rear. that’s one of many reasons most of us don’t go around digging huge tunnels, unless of course we’re trying to escape from jail or journey to the center of the Earth. When you compound that with the fact that this gent is probably going to jail for a good long time — Russian oil monopolies may top the list of People You Really Don’t Want To Steal From, after all — this is one rare case in which a bit of scientific curiosity may have been better off unfulfilled.
(via RT, image courtesy of Novosibirsk Police Department)
- “Tunnel? No, officer, no tunnel here. That’s a, um, meteor crater. Yeah!”
- Russians just love tunneling into things, man
- At least this guy didn’t take any hostages while he was digging
