Is kerosene creeping back into petrol and diesel?
What you need to know:
- Kenya consumes tens of millions of litres of petrol and diesel per day, so even a two per cent contamination with kerosene adds up to a huge loss to the exchequer.
- The latest engines with computerised engine management systems could suffer almost immediate difficulty if there is a trace of contaminant.
- How often are official spot checks conducted on fuel purity and pump calibration? And how often are their findings double-checked by an independent inspectorate?
It may be time to send sniffer dogs into some of our petrol stations. There’s a whiff on the grapevine and in our noses that contaminated fuel might be making a comeback.
And the problem is not just among back-street bandits working out of jerrycans. Some of the funny smell is near mainstream outlets. As a reminder, this is the deal: For tax reasons, kerosene is significantly cheaper than petrol or diesel.
So mixing a little kerosene into these other products is a potentially profitable business scam. In either case the pure product is somewhat degraded but, if the level of dilution/contamination is very small, the difference is almost undetectable to the average user.
Half-a-litre of kerosene in a whole tankful of petrol is like a teaspoonful of water in a glass of milk, or about a tot of water in a whole bottle of whisky. But that does not make minor contamination harmless.
Kenya consumes tens of millions of litres of petrol and diesel per day, so even a two per cent contamination with kerosene adds up to a huge loss to the exchequer.
And although your car may still start and run reasonably well, it will lose some performance, it will consume more fuel, it will suffer more engine wear (especially diesel engines), it will have more toxic exhaust fumes and over time it will be more likely to break down.
The downsides in each of these respects may be so fractional that they are almost undetectable to the average user, but they are cumulatively significant even to an individual motorist, multiplied by more than a million motorists multiplied by every kilometer they travel.
And if the scam is allowed to start at two per cent, does it stop there? Why not gradually “up” the proportion to four per cent, or ten! Old fashioned engines were extremely tolerant of incorrect fuel specifications and mixtures.
The original Volkswagen Beetle or a Series 1 petrol Land-Rover could run on almost pure kerosene if they were given just a squirt of petrol in the carburettor to help them start.
MORE MODERN ENGINES
More modern and higher compression engines can’t do that, but they can cope with some mixing. The latest engines with computerised engine management systems could suffer almost immediate difficulty if there is a trace of contaminant.
Anyway, knowing that the fuel we buy is the correct specification and absolutely pure is a reasonable expectation. Few individuals are in a position to monitor fuel purity, so it is up to national systems, institutions and the oil industry to be vigilant watchdogs.
How often are official spot checks conducted on fuel purity and pump calibration? And how often are their findings double-checked by an independent inspectorate?
The job can be done with a very simple test kit and measuring jug. It could be done by the industry itself, to ensure their dealers are complying with their own brand standards and it could be done by a State institution.
We’ve got about 1,000 petrol stations with an average of about four pumps/tanks each. It would not require an army of technicians to ensure they were all visited, randomly and quite frequently.
That and seriously deterrent penalties – published, would go a long way towards protecting motorists from malpractice.
