Thieves Target ‘Liquid Gold’ as Olive Oil Prices Soar
- Crime wave has gripped olive oil industry in top grower Spain
- Prices have soared to a record after drought crippled harvest
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Another brazen theft of Spanish olive oil — this time worth over half a million dollars — is the latest example of how record prices are fueling a crime surge in the top grower.
Some 50,000 liters of extra virgin olive oil that were ready for bottling vanished in the early hours of Aug. 30 from a mill in Spain’s Cordoba province. Thieves loaded €500,000 of top quality oil into two tanks in the darkness, a heist that a local producer group said probably took two hours.