CSE exposé on the deadly crime and science of fuel adulteration in India

New Delhi November 12, 2003: As Right to Clean air campaigners of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) set out on the fuel adulteration trail, they were stunned by the magnitude and the complexity of the problem and the indifference of the authorities and the oil companies. Even today the ‘official’ failure rate in fuel samples due to adulteration in the satellite towns around Delhi -- Faridabad, Gurgaon and beyond -- is as high as 26 per cent. Ironically, vehicles with advanced engine technology that promise cleaner emissions are more vulnerable to this scourge.

CSE was greatly concerned about news that was pouring in from around Delhi and other parts of the country. That a large number of new vehicles were reporting engine failures even before the expiry of their warranty period due to rampant adulteration. Car companies like Hyundai and Maruti panicked at the chronic and endemic engine problems reported in Faridabad early this year. At the initiative of the car companies, Research and Development Centre of the Indian Oil Corporation in Faridabad and Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun tested fuel samples from Faridabad and found traces of dry cleaning solvents like chloropentane. Appalling but true -- almost anything -- waste oil, surplus or pilfered solvents from nearby industrial estates, even cheap imported kerosene, are bunged into transport fuels.

We tracked this crime – we went back to Bijwasan oil terminal Delhi from where oil is transported to retail outlets in tankers. We photographed rampant pilferage from oil tankers outside the oil terminal and witnessed the open sale of fuels to casual customers. We visited Yamuna Pushta in Delhi where adulterated fuels are sold from drums in garages, tea stalls and roadside workshops. A similar saga prevails even in smaller towns like Meerut.

(Link to photographs: http://www.cseindia.org/campaign/apc/fuelphoto.htm).

In its investigation this time, CSE found that little has changed in two years despite the Supreme Court’s intervention in November 2001, when the Court had directed the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) to conduct an independent investigation into the problem of fuel adulteration in Delhi. CSE was selected by the EPCA to undertake this independent study and the findings were submitted to the Court in February 2002. In its latest exposé, CSE shows how fuel adulteration is so easy:

• Enticing gaps in the price of fuels and potential adulterants continues to fan greed. Government policies are working at cross-purposes. A warped policy that imposes lower taxes on imported kerosene makes it a cheap and easy diesel adulterant. Officials blame the dramatic drop in diesel sales in the country largely to its widespread adulteration with cheap imported kerosene. For once even the oil companies are worried, and their patron ministry has shot off a salvo to the Ministry of Finance to increase duties on imported kerosene. There is still no attempt to examine ways to reduce the gaps in the price of fuel and potential adulterants.

• The government has failed to enforce measures to control and track the use of industrial fuels like naphtha and solvents. Users of scheduled solvents are required to file an ‘end-use certificate’. The onus is on the user to prove the legality of the product; the government does not verify users’ claims, nor does it monitor the use of these potential solvents. In fact, Delhi’s food and civil supplies department does not have on record any license application for naphtha, which is otherwise commonly sold in Delhi. In fact for some mysterious reason, when the government issued the scheduled list of solvents in 2001, it excluded some common solvents that are widely used for adulteration like propane, benzene, toluene and xylene.

• Today, even vigilant officials admit what CSE discovered two years ago when it had dummy samples of diesel -- deliberately contaminated with 20 percent kerosene – tested at the fuel testing laboratory, NOIDA. The test standards -- unchanged to date -- are so lax that these dummy samples passed the tests. Lax fuel standards that allow a wide range can easily cushion some amount of adulteration. It is possible to adulterate ‘intelligently’ without transgressing the standards, and still earn unholy profits.

• Government stubbornly refuses to adopt alternative test methods to detect adulteration accurately such as fingerprinting of fuel samples. Worse, authorities are still clueless about the nature of the solvent mix of the largest ever seizure of 0.28 million litres of solvents in Delhi by the food and civil supplies department. Even the lab to which suspect samples are sent, view their mandate as testing only transport fuels and not solvents and that too only against the BIS specifications.

• Even more shocking is the fact that while the country endures huge losses and public health is compromised on account of this illegal business, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has further weakened penalties for this deadly crime. The earlier penalty of Rs 1,00,000 and suspension of sales and supplies of all products for 45 days for the first offence of adulteration has been lowered to Rs 20,000 and suspension of supplies to 30 days. Unbelievable!

• Oil companies are not accountable for the quality of fuels at the retail end. Accountability and penalty is broken across the fuel supply chain. When caught, it is the transporter or the retailer that is hauled up, not the oil company. Strict liability must be imposed on the oil companies to take ultimate responsibility for the quality of fuels they sell. This is possible by ensuring independent inspection, testing and audit of the retail outlets and public broadcast of the results to influence consumer preference for retail outlets. Only this will discipline the entire supply chain.

This deadly but intelligent crime is damaging vehicles, increasing emissions and fouling up the air in our cities. We could tolerate adulteration comfortably as long as we were forced to live with adulteration-tolerant primitive vehicle technology. If the raging mood of the customers who are investing in new generation vehicle technologies is any indication, the answer to this scourge lies not in holding back on aggressive technology advancement, but in hastening it. CSE is convinced that the ultimate push for change will come not from policing but from consumer protest against this crime as we begin to modernize our vehicle technology.

For more information, visit: http://www.cseindia.org/campaign/apc/fuelphoto.htm