Drain out dirty fuel or go, ministry tells Gapco
The Ministry of Energy has threatened to lock out a marketer from centralised industry supply system over contaminated fuel.
Energy permanent secretary Patrick Nyoike said Gapco Kenya risks being locked out of the open tender system (OTS) unless it drains contaminated fuel from a tank at Kipevu Oil Storage Facility (KOSF).
Fifth largest dealer
If that comes to pass, it will become the second after KenolKobil was in mid July 2010, stopped from acting as a buyer and seller pending resolving of crude oil processing fees row with Kenya Petroleum Refineries Ltd.
Gapco is Kenya’s 5th petroleum firm controlling about 6.3 market share and is an active player in the Ministry of Energy supervised OTS for importation of crude oil as well as refined petrol, diesel and dual purpose kerosene.
“This is to ask you to urgently evacuate the contaminated product from the KOSF tank. Failure to do this will leave us with no option but to deny you participation in the OTS imports,” said Mr Nyoike in a letter sent to Gapco.
Industry sources on Wednesday said the oil dealer had agreed to remove the product but had raised queries as to why Kenya Pipeline Company failed to carry out standard procedure of testing hourly samples of cargo being discharged.
