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Coast guards in the central province of Quang Ngai deported a Thai vessel on Monday after seizing 1.3 million liters of undocumented gasoline.
A group of guards spotted the vessel, with 14 people aboard, on the afternoon of November 25 in Vietnamese waters.
The ship was carrying nearly 1.3 tons of RON 92, a gasoline grade used widely in Vietnam.
Its Thai captain failed to produce documents showing the legal origin of the shipment or its legal buyer in Vietnam.
The captain was fined VND35 million ($1,540). The gasoline was seized and the money from its sale will go to the state budget, Quang Ngai coast guards said.
According to Vietnamese coast guards, oil smuggling has been rife in Vietnam’s southwestern waters bordering Thailand since 2015.
In July, they caught a Thai ship pumping 260,000 liters of diesel illegally into a Vietnamese fishing boat off the southern coast.
In March, three Thai boats were also caught smuggling around 700,000 liters of diesel into Vietnamese waters.
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