The Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST) says it has impounded nine tankers for carrying adulterated fuel.

This follows the discovering of product adulteration at its Kumasi Depot over the last couple of days, which it says it’s taking all required steps to rectify the anomaly. 

“The truck and its content are being held at a safe place, whilst investigations continue and the driver of the truck is in custody, helping the investigative agencies to get to the bottom of the matter. Further pre-discharge tests disclosed eight more trucks had their contents adulterated”, it said in a statement.

“The drivers of these vehicles are nowhere to be found as we speak but their respective trucks are being held pending the conclusion of the investigations. This brings the total number of trucks with adulterated contents to nine”. It added.

It assured the public that, with the current robust Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) no adulterated product will find its way into its tanks, yet alone to the market.

“The company wishes to further assure the public that, the reported incident has not affected our operations in any way and our fuel safety and security as a country is assured.”

Transportation of products

BOST depends on three modes of transport for transferring products from its primary depot at Kpone in Tema across its other depots: Kumasi, Buipe, Akosombo and Bolgatanga.

These modes are road through bulk road vehicles popularly called tankers, river barges on the Volta Lake in partnership with Volta Late Transport Corporation and pipelines between Tema and Akosombo, Buipe and Bolgatanga and from Tema Oil Refinery to the Accra Plains Depot.

The reported incident it said concerns the Bulk Road Vehicular mode of transport.

Product loading and off-loading standard procedures

As a standard practice, BOST said products are tested to confirm their chemical composition before loading into trucks.

It pointed out that upon arrival at their destination, same product testing is carried out to ensure what was loaded on to the truck is what has been transported before discharge is permitted, adding “during the pre-discharge testing of product aboard a BRV, it was discovered through the basic test that the chemical composition of the product at the destination differed from what was loaded on the truck.”

BOST therefore made a call for confirmation testing which proved that the result of the basic test was correct: the product aboard the truck was adulterated.