TOR not responsible for fuel adulteration – Sarpong

Tema, Nov. 08, GNA - The management of Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) on Wednesday called for effective monitoring of petroleum products by dealers and Oil Marketing Companies (OMC) to prevent adulteration. Mr Kofi Kodua Sarpong, Managing Director of TOR, who made the call at a news briefing at Tema, noted that ineffective monitoring contributed to adulteration of petroleum products that left the refinery to some parts of the country.

The briefing was in the wake of reported incidents of adulteration of petroleum products with premix fuel by some dealers apparently to cheat unsuspecting customers to earn more money.

Mr Sarpong said as soon as TOR served the dealers and they left with their allocation 'we do not have any control over them and do not know what happens afterwards.'

He therefore, denied that TOR adulterated its products as being reported in certain quarters and stated that 93TOR ensures by certification that its production process and integrity of its products are not compromised.'

'Our petroleum products, namely liquefied petroleum gas, gasoline, kerosene, aviation turbine kerosene, gas oil and residual fuel oil which leave the refinery, whether locally or imported are within specifications of both the Ghanaian and international markets,=94 he added.

Mr Sarpong said soon after the complaints had been made, management conducted random checks at some selected Filling Stations in the Volta, Central and Greater Accra regions where they took some samples and drew the attention of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) and the Ghana Standards Boards (GSB) who confirmed the truth at a stakeholders meeting.

'In Ho the following stations were found to be selling petrol contaminated with premix fuel, Fraga Oil, Ho Dome Shell, Gleha, Total, Original Goil, Transport Ground Total, Ho Central Allied Oil and in the Central Region, Pedu Junction Mobil was found to be selling premix gasoline as petrol,' he stated.

=93We were convinced that the problem was not from our refinery,' he said adding that they did not have control over the situation and was waiting on the GSB and the NPA for the next line of action. Mr Sarpong said it was proved that the dealers mixed the fuel, especially 'Super' with premix and then sell to unsuspecting drivers.

To check further occurrences, he said management had instituted measures to take samples of their products and keep for over a month after which they would know as to whether there would be changes in the concentration.

According to Mr Sarpong, the deregulation exercise had brought many dealers into the fuel business and this required effective monitoring to avoid the indulgence in malpractices.

He called on the public to help TOR weed out the unscrupulous people from the system as the unpatriotic practice had the tendency to destroy components of vehicles.

Mr Sarpong assured the public of supplying good quality petroleum products to the market and would liaise with the appropriate authorities to deal with the issues.

Meanwhile, TOR has volunteered to resource GSB to take samples from all retail or filling stations to the NPA and GSB for laboratory test and suggested the phasing out of coloured gasoline to non coloured. Journalists were taken to the laboratory to witness the processing of petroleum products.