At the same time, however, a farming app has been monitoring suspicious overnight fuel takes while the price of petrol was elevated during the closure of the strait.<\/p>\n
As fuel costs continue to bite, there have been more \u201csuspicious\u201d fuel takes detected.<\/p>\n
In April, a farming app was picking up a small 13.7% rise in fuel being taken from monitored tanks during the night.<\/p>\n
Palmerston North-based company Levno said that trend has continued \u2013 with a 20% rise in suspicious takes in April and May compared to the same time last year.<\/p>\n
However, there are some indications it may be petering off a little in June \u2013 and could continue if fuel prices fall.<\/p>\n
These suspicious fuel takes may not have all necessarily been thefts \u2013 there may have been legitimate explanations for withdrawals, like contractors needing fuel for urgent farm work.<\/p>\n
Levno chief executive Oscar Ellison said most of the suspicious fuel takes are sub 20 litres.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might be someone the farmer knows, or someone has snuck on and is just topping up their tank on their personal vehicle or something like that; that\u2019s the most likely culprit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen a couple of events where 500 litres has gone out, and we\u2019ve alerted the customer to those ones, but we are seeing lots of little withdrawals as well, often in the middle of the night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Levno monitors thousands of tanks across the country, and Ellison said the amount of fuel farmers are holding in storage is also higher than usual.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally they [tanks] sit around 50%, and it\u2019s up at 62 [%] so it\u2019s up about 12% on where it was a year ago in terms of the average fuel level of the tank,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n