Thaipakdee MP alleges national oil heist over 700 million litres
In Parliament, a party-list MP said March diesel shortages may reflect hoarding or corruption in the supply chain rather than public panic buying.
- Thaipakdee Party MP Dr. Warong Dechgitvigrom alleged that up to 727.6 million litres of diesel went missing during March.
- He claims the fuel disappeared from the supply chain between mid-March and the end of the month, with many petrol stations receiving significantly less than their usual supply.
- Dr. Warong dismisses government suggestions of public panic, instead attributing the shortage to potential hoarding or corruption at major refineries and distribution depots.
- He urged Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul to investigate the matter, which he described as a "national oil heist" and the "plundering of the nation's oil."
Dr Warong Dechgitvigrom, a party-list MP from the Thaipakdee Party, used the debate on Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s policy statement at Parliament on April 9, 2026, to focus on what he described as a month-long crisis of expensive and scarce oil, while questioning whether corruption in the system amounted to the plundering of the nation’s oil.
He said irregularities emerged in the oil supply chain from mid-March to the end of the month, and argued that the problem was not public panic as the government had suggested. Instead, he said, there may have been hoarding or oil-related corruption at the level of distribution depots and refineries.
Citing figures he said he had compiled, Warong claimed that huge volumes of diesel that should have been delivered to petrol stations had disappeared. Under one calculation based on average differentials, he said the discrepancy averaged 14 million litres a day between March 16 and 31, implying losses of more than 635 million litres. Under a second calculation based on state agency figures, comparing actual consumption with the volume not delivered to petrol stations, with many stations saying they had received less than half their usual supply, he said the missing diesel could have reached 727.6 million litres.
“Diesel held back at depots and not sent to petrol stations is what I call ‘fake diesel’, just like the fake rice-pledging scheme I exposed before,” he said. “You do not have to look far for the culprits. Look at the major refineries or major distributors licensed under Section 7. There are only a few of them.”
Beyond the oil issue, Warong called on the prime minister to show leadership by taking corruption seriously and cutting what he saw as unnecessary state spending, including reducing the number of MPs’ assistants and scrapping pensions for MPs and senators so the money could instead be used to help people struggling with living costs.
He ended with a warning to the government: “I say this in good faith. Anything that benefits the public, I speak about frankly. If you listen and make corrections, I believe the government can stay for a full four-year term. But if it continues to ignore or remain indifferent to corruption and the plundering of the nation, I believe this government may not last long.”
