Three times in the past week, a driver has pulled up to the pump at Wood Oil Co., 920 N. Second St., filled the tank and sped away without paying.

“They just get their gas and go,” manager Ruthie Bastian said. “We’ve had three in the past week and one the previous week. We hadn’t had four drive-offs in four months.”

It’s a crime that may seem especially tempting to drivers these days, with Exxon Mobil Corp. posting a record profit and prices for consumers approaching $3 per gallon.

But it’s hard to tell whether it’s happening more frequently in the Lawrence area. Lawrence Police don’t track gas thefts separately, and the drive-offs often go unreported.

Bastian, for example, said employees at the store hadn’t bothered to file police reports about the three recent thefts. The conventional wisdom, she said, is that if employees don’t catch the person’s license plate number, it’s not worth pursuing with police.

“It’s probably three-fourths of them that don’t get reported,” she said.

Lawrence Police spokeswoman Kim Murphree said it’s not true that a license plate number was needed for police to respond to a gas drive-off.

Wood Oil employee Angela Worden, left, Lawrence, and manager Ruth Bastian, Topeka, talk Thursday afternoon as the two unpack cartons of cigarettes behind the counter. Bastian explained that she has seen a significant increase in gas theft since the recent rise in prices and she is considering the possibility of offering a strict prepay service if the price continues to rise.

“If we have enough to locate the vehicle and we have an officer available and close enough, we will do everything we can to assist in that situation,” she said. “Certainly we would take the report from the clerk.”

A 2000 National Institute of Justice report noted that few gas theft cases actually are prosecuted. Information on a suspect usually is lacking, and store managers are reluctant to spend the time and effort required in prosecution, the report said.

“A lot of times they just want the money back rather than a long, drawn-out ordeal,” said Lt. John Eickhorn of the Kansas Highway Patrol.

Ravi Reddy, owner of Fast Lanes, 1414 W. Sixth St., said he and his clerks tend to pay close attention to people at their pumps to try to prevent drive-offs.

“About two months ago, it happened several times. People come about 10 to 10:30 at night or so, then they try to take off,” he said.

Reddy said his employees typically don’t authorize customers to pump gas unless they know the person. Otherwise, an employee may call and ask the person to come inside to prepay.

When prices spiked a year ago, owners of Fuel Stop, 2200 Harper St., started requiring payment before pumping.

A woman removes the gas pump nozzle from her vehicle Thursday afternoon at the Wood Oil Citgo station in North Lawrence.

“We haven’t had to deal with (drive-offs),” cashier Casey Lindenberger said.

Samuel Allen, of Wichita, had just filled up his car’s tank Thursday evening at Jayhawk Food Mart, 701 W. Ninth St., and was preparing to drive home when he was reminded of Exxon Mobil’s record $8.4 billion quarterly profit.

“I’m very much against the high dividends for oil company CEOs when we have to pay these prices for gas,” he said. “If they were good guys, they wouldn’t accept that much.”

But Allen said high fuel prices would never tempt him to drive off without paying.

“Although I’m upset about the high gas prices, I’m not sure they are going to keep me from doing the things I want to do,” he said. “I’ll complain. I’ll be glad when they go down, but I won’t do anything illegal.”