Kathmandu, November 8 :

Ruling out their involvement in fuel adulteration, petroleum dealers today said they have been selling the same petroleum products that the Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) supplies to them.

“We are ready to face any action if we are found guilty,” said Saroj Pandey, president, Nepal Petroleum Dealers’ Association.

He was speaking at an interaction on the quality of petrol in the capital. Samples of petrol need to be tested in fully equipped laboratories because the tests conducted by the NOC were

obsolete, he said.

Bijaya Kumar Agrawal of Nepal Auto Dealers’ Association said bike engines were being damaged due to adulterated petrol.

“Such problems are seen only in Nepal and the cases are on the rise after Dashain. Engine failures due to adulterated petrol was not associated with motorbike companies,” he said.

Digambar Jha, managing director of the Nepal Oil Corporation, said the corporation alone should not be blamed for the cases of engine failure.

“We would not accept such blame unless independent investigations find us guilty. The automobile companies should know the quality of petrol available in the market before launching new models, as the quality of petrol differs from place to place and the one NOC imports is of 88-octane,” he said.

Jha said barely two per cent of petroleum refined at Barauni of India is imported to Nepal, while the rest is consumed in India. “It is strange that the problem cropped up only in Nepal,” he said.

He, however, said there could be chances of fuel adulteration while it is transported to Nepal through a 300-km route from the Barauni Refinery.

“The NOC is helpless. It does not own any tanker and solely depends on the private sector for transportation of petroleum products,” Jha said.

“Why the Nepal Bureau of Standards and Metrology and Nepal Academy of Science and Technology are not testing the quality of fuel?” he asked.

Saying that the NOC had been earning profit now, he said the state-owned corporation would have its own testing facility in the future. “The two parameters that Nepal Oil Corporation sticks to — density and final boiling point — cannot control the quality of petro products anymore.”

The parameters could not detect the mixture of solvents like mineral turpentine, which is cheaper than petrol, he said.

The state-run sole fuel supplier also has a good news for the consumers. According to Jha, the NOC is soon bringing petrol directly from Mathura of India for the consumers of the Kathmandu Valley.

Meanwhile, National Consumers’ Forum today made public its findings of preliminary investigation into fuel adulteration.

According to the report, adulterated petrol was found in the lot imported from Barauni refinery last month and comparison was made between the petrol’s density and temperature sampled in Biratnagar and Birtamod and the statement of the Nepal Oil Corporation.

A thick foul smelling orange-coloured layer was found in the samples collected from the Biratnatar-based NOC depot, the report stated.