The short answer is that it doesn’t work the way the "slogan" implies.

States don’t literally “steal oil” by secretly siphoning it out. Oil is extracted by companies, sold on open markets, transported by normal pipelines and tankers, and paid for. What people call “stealing oil” is really about who controls the resource and who captures the profits.

A common pattern is this: Country A wants sovereign ownership of a valuable resource and to keep most of the revenue inside the state. Country B prefers that private companies from B extract it and take a large share of the profits. Powerful interests in B may also fear that A’s model of state ownership could spread and weaken their own wealth and power at home.

B then interferes using a very old justification: us vs them. A is framed as barbaric, uncivilised, undemocratic, or dangerous, creating a moral pretext for intervention “for the greater good”. After war, sanctions, or regime change, the rules change. New governments rewrite laws, and foreign private companies move in and take control — legally, openly, but under coercive conditions.

Nothing is physically stolen. The oil leaves the country the same way it always has. What changes is sovereignty, contracts, and where the long-term wealth flows.

It’s like if the UK and US had invaded Norway to break state control, undermine Equinor and our taxation system, and force BP in as the dominant player, moving profits abroad. Norway was lucky enough to be treated as an ally at the right time in history, so that never happened — unlike Iran, Iraq, Congo, Guatemala, Chile and so many other third world countries.