Head of Quality Control at the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Ubeidalah Saeed, says the Authority has sanctioned the labeling of pumps for petrol based on their octane grades.

This, he says, has become necessary due to recent concerns about the quality of petrol being sold at the pumps.

Several Ghanaians had shared pictures of their damaged spark plugs on social media which they attributed to the tainted petrol on the Ghanaian market.

Reacting to the situation on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, Ubeidalah Saeed who says he has also been a victim noted that the NPA has been working tirelessly to resolve the issue.

He stated emphatically that there is not tainted petrol on the market; however, vehicle owners may be buying the wrong fuel for their cars.

He explained as follows; “There are a lot of things that causes a car to jerk; one critical thing is octane level. So when a car vehicle starts to jerk, your first option is to look at the octane level of the fuel.

“It costs about 500 dollars to test for octane so we started testing for octane and realised that all the petrol we’re testing were meeting the octane levels and each of these vehicles have a minimum octane level that the fuel should meet to enable optimal performance.

“And another important point is that every particular car is designed for a certain grade of fuel so in fact the NPA at our last management meeting has sanctioned that next year we’re going to label the pumps for petrol to grade them on octane levels.

“So Ghana we have two grades of petrol, RON 91 which is the red one and the new one which is green. So a lot of people will buy it and think that it’s diesel but that’s a high grade petrol called premium petrol which is RON 95 for high performing vehicles.”