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Police say vans carrying black market gasoline are rolling bombs

RCMP are investigating after the Surrey Fire Service discovered a large gas tank in the back of a van that exploded following a hit-and-run incident in Surrey on Sunday evening.

The police call them mobile Molotov cocktails, with good reason.

Another suspected mobile black market gas van was involved in a minor collision this weekend, then burst into flames as the driver fled.

With some of the highest gasoline prices in Canada, Metro Vancouver apparently has become a lucrative place for black market fuel dispensed from rolling gas stations.

Two suspected mobile gas vans have crashed in the last month and police have arrested the drivers of two other similarly rigged vans.

The latest incident happened Sunday in suburban Surrey. An unmarked white van crashed into a pickup truck, then fled the scene. But it caught fire as it was driving away, then exploded. The driver managed to get clear and fled, according to CBC News.

Global News reported the burned-out van contained a large storage tank inside similar to one that exploded in a spectacular Oct. 7 crash on a residential street in Vancouver.

[ Related: RCMP seek suspect in firey 'gas van' crash ]

The fiery blast, caught on cell-phone video, initially led emergency responders to believe they were dealing with a mobile meth lab, CBC News reported at the time.

The two men in the van fled but later showed up at a suburban hospital with serious burns to their upper bodies, face, arms and hands. They haven't been charged yet.

About two weeks later, police arrested two men, aged 18 and 19, after reports of similar vans filling up at two different gas stations using bogus credit cards, CTV News reported.

One had a tank in the cargo area that could hold a thousand litres of gasoline. The other held 765 litres.

“We discovered that the van had been altered to take the gas from the pump directly to a tank that was inside the van,” Vancouver Const. Brian Montague told CTV News.

Police also found fake credit and debit cards that were used to buy the gas, which was then sold at a deep discount to drivers and businesses willing not to ask questions.

Besides the illegal fuel sales, police are primarily concerned with the fact there may be more unmarked vans with huge amounts of gasoline sloshing around in these make-shift plastic tanks.

As Postmedia News noted, roughly a gallon of gasoline vapour can have the explosive power of more than 10 sticks of dynamite under the right conditions.

Vancouver Fire Chief John McKearney told CBC News the problem seems to be growing.

“This is a phenomenon that seems to have just come about," he said. "I am sure it has been around underground, but it is just now hitting a peak."

[ Related: British Columbians pay highest gas prices in North America ]

The temptation for large-volume users to buy black-market gas is high. Metro Vancouver pump prices in the past have hit more than $1.50 a litre and routinely sit in the $1.35-$1.45 range thanks to nn array of taxes – federal, provincial, carbon and transit. They make up more than 38 cents of the current price of about $1.28 a litre.

“It’s hard to say how organized these particular groups are but I think there’s some level of sophistication," Montague told the Vancouver Sun after last month's arrests.

He said the drivers tend to be very young, with little or no prior contact with police.

“It’s sort of like drug dealers using young drug mules to pack the dope around who wouldn’t go noticed by police because they’re unknown to us,” Montague told the Sun.

Postmedia News said while the incidents have put Vancouver in the spotlight, black-market gas sales happen in almost every North American city.

Last year, a Bronx, New York man was arrested while driving a gutted van containing more than 400 gallons (about 1,500 litres) of gas in two plastic drums, the New York Daily News reported.

The van had two nozzles with hoses that were built into the side of the van, police said.

Police in Florida last year also busted thieves siphoning gas from a filling station's underground tanks into a storage tank built into a minivan, ABC News reported.

The Sun Sentinel also reported police discovering a 500-gallon (1,900-litre) plastic gasoline tank built into another minivan that had crashed in Boca Raton.

The driver, who police suspect stole the gas from underground tanks via pump-driven hoses running through the floorboards, managed to escape after running the van over a curb. A witness said he stumbled out of the vehicle with a beer in his hand.

Analysts linked the thefts to high local gas prices.