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The specific tool used is not known, only that it required several blunt thrusts by the thief in order to puncture the gas tanks’ steel shell.

As police noted, the method could have incurred sparks that, if they had occurred within the vicinity of fuel vapours, could have ignited the car.

Although the crime took place March 19, the details were first released to the public last week as confused officers sought public tips to crack the case.

While gasoline theft is relatively common, it typically involves much larger quantities, with the preferred method being drivers who speed away from pumps without paying. Or, at the very least, a criminal will jimmy open a vehicle’s gas cap and siphon out the fuel with a hose.

And notably, the theft would have occurred at an extremely unprofitable time. The gas tanks were punctured just a few weeks after Alberta gasoline hit an all-time low of 58 cents per litre.

Said Cameron, the whole crime “is sort of unique.”

A pyrotechnics expert contacted by the National Post said it was entirely likely that an attempt to puncture a gas tank could spark a raging car fire, but that gasoline isn’t quite as volatile as movies would suggest.

What happened to people just sticking a tube in and sucking gas out of the tank?

“I would call that a hazardous thing to do, but at a very low risk,” said the special effects technician, who did not want to be named in connection with a story about gasoline theft.

He added that a much larger risk was the fact that the parking lot would be flooded with puddles of gasoline.

“What happened to people just sticking a tube in and sucking gas out of the tank?”

National Post, with files from Vincent McDermott