The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers, COPEC, has threatened legal action against the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) over alleged manganese concentration in fuel.

According to the Executive Secretary of COPEC, Duncan Amoah, the presence of a high concentration of manganese in the fuel currently sold in the Ghanaian market is causing damage to the engines of cars.

“We have had to go down to do some checks to realise that there is clearly some amount of manganese in some of the products across board with the OMCs that has been quite sensitive to some of the vehicles, particularly Hyundai vehicles,” Mr Amoah confirmed.

COPEC indicates that there’s a surge in such complaints and if not checked by the NPA, to ensure that the Oil Marketing Companies comply with the acceptable standards, the situation could worsen.

The Executive Secretary of COPEC gave NPA a one-week ultimatum to address the issue.

“…We are quite worried and now asking the NPA to ensure that latest by next week, whatever needs to be done to ensure that no consumer is badly affected by these challenges (is done). We would be forced to sue the NPA,” he said.

But the Head of Economic Regulation at the NPA, Abass Ibrahim Tasunti says it is aware of the situation and taking the right measures with the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) to correct the anomaly.

“We have quickly worked with GSA to address this problem and the solution is that we have to reduce the manganese level so that the consumer's problem will be resolved,” he said.

According to him, GSA has already drafted an amendment to reduce the manganese level so that for regular gasoline, the manganese level will be a maximum of six milligrams per litre from the 80 milligrams per litre that we currently have and for premium gasoline to be two milligrams per litre.