The Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation (BOST) Company has refuted accusations by the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers, Ghana, that contaminated fuel has found its way onto the market.
BOST says the processes used in the discharge of the contaminated products was the best among several option and that contrary to claims that the fuel, known as off-spec, has found its way into some filling stations, it is still in storage at the premises of the company that bought it.
The Chamber of Petroleum in a statement on Monday said “the selfish interests and greed of some management persons including the MD seem to have taken the best part in this cruel transaction without any proper prior or post sale and discharge impact assessment done.â€
BOST in rebuttal  has strongly defended its actions. A statement from the company said the first option was to have a corrective treatment of the off-spec product at TOR but this option was not possible because TOR is not refining at the moment.
They added that the second option was to gradually inject a total of about seventy thousand (70,000) litres of the off-spec product into ten million litres (10,000,000) of normal product over a period which will take about ten (10) solid months for BOST to accomplish.
The implication of this option is, however, the opportunity cost of losing the commercial value of over five million and seven hundred thousand Ghana Cedis (GHS 5,700,000). This arrangement would have deprived the BDCs of getting space to store their products. The capacity of the tank holding the off-spec product is twenty million litres (20,000,000 lts).
The final option was involved the selling of the off-spec product at a competitive ex-depot price.
The statement continued that option 3 was most ideal from a business point of view.  BOST subsequently sold the off-spec product to Movenpina Energy at One cedi, thirty pesewas (1.30p) per litre as against the normal ex-depot rate of One Cedi, seventy –five pesewas (1.75p) for normal products. There was a 26 percent discount, which is acceptable practice in the industry.
BOST further said assertions that the off-spec product should have been sold at two cedis, fifty pesewas (2.50p) is misleading because ex-depot price and pump price are completely different. BOST only sells products at ex-depot rate,â€Â
The petroleum storage company said it is well aware that off-pec products are used by the steel, garment, petro chemical companies to run their machinery and certainly not for the running of vehicle engines.
In the discharge of the product therefore, measures were taken to ensure it did not end up being used for the wrong purposes such as getting on the market to be sold to the unsuspecting public as petrol.