No adulterated fuel on market …BOST allays fear

Bulk Oil and Transportation Storage(BOST)Company Limited has allayed the fears of the public in view of the adulteration of fuel saga at the Kumasi depot saying “there is no adulterated fuel in the market.”

Ghanaian Times published in its Tuesday edition of October 12, 2021 that the Crime scene management team of the Ashanti Regional Police Command stormed the depot and arrested one tanker driver in connection with an adulteration of fuel.

Eight other tanker drivers managed to escape on seeing the police, and the nine tankers had been impounded by the police.

According to the BOST, the adulterated products had not reached the market “and would not get to the market.”

At a press briefing here on Tuesday, the Managing Director of the BOST,Edwin Alfred Nii Obodai Provencal, urged the public to discard any worry about adulterated fuel in the market following the development. 

He said the adulteration was detected in line with the company’s routine strict testing of fuel brought by tanker drivers on contract with the BOST. 

“As a standard practice, products are tested to confirm their chemical composition before loading into trucks.Upon arrival at their destinations, same product testing is carried to ensure whether what was loaded into the truck is what has been transported before discharge is permitted,” he explained. 

He said it was during such exercise that the adulteration was detected in the Kumasi depot.

Adding, further pre-discharge tests indicated eight other tankers were adulterated, but their drivers were on the run.

“BOST wishes to assure the public that, with the current robust Standard Operating Procedures(SOPs), no adulterated product will find its way into our tanks, much less get to the market,” he emphasised. 

To a question on what happens to the impounded products, he said the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) would take that decision to send them back to the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) to be refined again.

The development comes in the wake of a recent missing fuel scandal at the TOR which had triggered calls for a full-scale parliamentary inquiry into what is described as a “broad daylight thievery and embarrassing spectacle.”

That came to light when TOR publicised its interdiction of some of its staff pending the conclusion of investigations into the disappearance of fuel, product storage, and transfer losses at the refinery.

FROM KINGSLEY E.HOPE, KUMASI