The Chief Executive Officer of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Moses Asaga has allayed the fears that there is sub-standard diesel on the market.
“No. I don’t think that we are importing sub-standard products into the country because sulphur is one of the components in diesel so the report has been over exaggerated”, the NPA boss told Onua FM’s Yen Sempa hosted by Bright Asempa on Friday.
He was responding reports that Swiss firms have been criticized for their links to the African trade in diesel with toxin levels that are illegal in Europe.
Campaign group Public Eye says retailers are exploiting weak regulatory standards. Vitol, Trafigura, Addax & Oryx and Lynx Energy have been named because they are shareholders of the fuel retailers.
Three of the distribution companies mentioned in the report have responded by saying that they met the regulatory requirements of the market and have no vested interest in keeping sulphur levels higher than they need to be.
The fuel, according to the report, is being sold in some African countries including Ghana.
Reacting to the issue, Mr. Moses Asaga explained that “Europe is ahead of us in terms of generational use of cars so when they move away from the kind of sulphur, we cannot because we import”.
He added that “it depends on which generation of cars you are using. When they manufacture the car, it comes with its sulphur so because they use them and ship them to Africa [Ghana] years after its manufacturing, it must come with its sulphur so if the environmentalists assesses the current sulphur in diesel in Europe today and compare it to that of Africa, they will be different because they have move from that generational cars”.
Mr. Asaga said “our sulphur content in cars in Africa is higher than Europe because of the type of vehicles we use so it is overly exaggerated when they use the word inferior.”
“The quantity of sulphur in our diesel is highly insignificant and so the report has been over exaggerated because we do a conformity test whenever diesel is being imported and the moment it falls within our regulations, we allow for importation”, the NPA CEO added.
On the environmental hazards of this sulphur, Mr. Asaga explained that “China has 30-refineries and if we are talking about environmental issues on sulphur in diesel, then china should be the worse to blame”.
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