Because of purportedly poor quality, the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has halted the sale of fuel provided by the Chinese-owned Sentuo Oil Refinery.
The Authority made this decision in response to requests from the Institute for Energy Security (IES) and the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) for the Oil Refinery’s operations to be stopped owing to suspected illegal activity.
Concerns regarding the refinery’s operations without the required NPA permit and the purported distribution of inferior fuel to the Ghanaian public were raised by COPEC and IES in a statement.
The statement went on to say that by the NPA Act of 2005, before beginning any commercial activity in the downstream sector of the industry, any entity involved must obtain a permit from the board.
Sentuo has not, however, obtained the required licenses for the processing and trading of oil, according to COPEC and IES.
The NPA’s Head of Quality Control, Ubeidalah Saed, stated that they are currently evaluating the goods supplied to different filling stations in an interview with Umaru Sanda Amadu on Eyewitness News on Citi FM on Thursday.
To decide on the next course of action, he also mentioned that the Authority and the Refinery are currently in talks. The standard procedure of the NPA Quality Assurance system is that we approve you based on the values of the certificate, and then we follow up physically to do a random check just to make sure that the claimed quality on the paper is what it is. We are still in talks with them about what exactly caused that.
“We have halted that specific product’s sales. We are paying close attention to every gas station that has been impacted. We will have access to the entire picture and be able to draw some very important conclusions.
Meanwhile, the NPA stated in a statement released on Thursday that the claims made by the IES and COPEC that the “out-of-specification products are reported as causing damage to vehicles and machinery” were false and alarmist.
It continued, “No such vehicle damage has occurred as the defect has to do with high vapor pressure.”
