Adulterated petrol products discovered at BOST’s Kumasi depot
The Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST) has discovered the adulteration of petroleum products at its Kumasi depot in the Ashanti Region.
BOST, in a statement said, the discovery was made during a pre-discharge testing processes.
“As standard practice, products are tested to confirm their chemical composition before loading into trucks. Upon arrival at their destination, the same product testing is carried to ensure what was loaded onto the truck is what has been transported before discharge is permitted,” the company said.
“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”, it added.
It explained that a call for confirmation testing was done, which proved that the result of the basic test was correct: the product aboard the truck was adulterated.
Meanwhile, the driver of the truck is said to be in police 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,” the statement further noted, adding that the drivers of the vehicles were nowhere to be found, but their respective trucks were being held pending the conclusion of the investigations”.
“This brings the total number of trucks with adulterated contents to nine” BOST noted.
The adulteration of fuel products at BOST comes a few days after the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) detected the disappearance of fuel, product storage, and transfer losses at the refinery.
It was also discovered that there was a disappearance of a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) belonging to a client between 2012 and 2015, as a result of which TOR became indebted to the client to the tune of $4.8 million.
The investigations also revealed the disappearance of 105,927 litres of gas oil on September 4, 2021, belonging to a client of a Bulk oil Distributing Company (BDC).
In addition, there was a wrongful loading of 252,000 litres of Aviation Turbine Kerosene (ATK) instead of regular kerosene into BRV trucks at the loading gantry between September 21 and September 25, 2021.
The Interim Management Committee of TOR, has therefore, interdicted 14 top executives over their involvement in the alleged illegal activities at the company, including the theft of GH₵10.4 million worth of cables.
READ ALSO: TOR Rot: 14 Top Executives Interdicted Over GH₵10.4m Loot