Supreme Court takes note of CSE Report on Fuel Adulteration

In a dramatic development, the Supreme Court converts a CSE report and photo documentation of fuel adulteration into an Interim Application In its order, it serves notice to the Union overnment to respond

New Delhi, November 24, 2003: The Supreme Court of India today took note of an exposé by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on the deadly crime of fuel adulteration, and converted it into an Interim Application. The Chief Justice bench of the Court, shocked to see the photographs taken by CSE’s Right to Clean Air campaigners of the rampant pilferage from oil tankers and open sale of fuels to casual customers, directed the Union government to respond to the report.

These photographs, along with the Down To Earth cover story (‘Overhaul’), were presented to the Court by Amicus Curaie Harish Salve. The Right to Clean Air campaigners had tracked this crime after being alerted by news 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. Rampant adulteration was suspected.

Salve read out excerpts from the report to indicate how car companies such as Hyundai and Maruti panicked at the chronic and endemic engine problems reported in Faridabad early this year. At the initiative of these companies, the 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. Salve pointed out that appallingly, almost anything -- waste oil, surplus or pilfered solvents from nearby industrial estates, even cheap imported kerosene – is put into transport fuels.

Delivering his order, Chief Justice V N Khare said that the findings were nothing less than "shocking", since the court has always been given to believe that tankers transporting fuel in the country are tamper-proof.

The CSE report exposes the magnitude and the complexity of the problem, and the indifference of the authorities and the oil companies. While the oil industry today reports a standard failure rate of 1-2 per cent in fuel samples due to adulteration, the anti-adulteration cell under the ministry of petroleum and natural gas reports, on the contrary, a consistently high failure rate. It is as high as 26 per cent and admittedly still very conservative.

In our investigation this time, we 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.

* Oil companies are not accountable for the quality of fuels at the retail end. When caught, it is the transporter or the retailer who is hauled up. Strict liability must be imposed on 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.

* Government fiscal policies are working at cross-purposes. A warped policy that imposes lower taxes on imported kerosene makes it a cheap and easy diesel adulterant. This has led to a dramatic drop in diesel sales.

* The government has failed to enforce measures to track the use of industrial fuels like naphtha and solvents to prevent their misuse. 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 solvents that are potential adulterants.

* Today, even vigilant officials admit what CSE discovered two years ago when it had dummy samples of diesel --deliberately contaminated with 20 per cent kerosene – tested at the fuel testing laboratory, NOIDA. These dummy samples passed the tests! With lax fuel standards that allow this, it is possible to adulterate ‘intelligently’.

* Government stubbornly refuses to adopt alternative test methods such as fingerprinting of fuel samples, to detect adulteration accurately.

* 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!

This deadly but intelligent crime is damaging vehicles, increasing emissions and fouling up the air in our cities with impunity. We could tolerate adulteration comfortably as long as we were forced to live with adulteration-tolerant primitive vehicle technology. With emissions standards getting tighter, vehicle technology will transform soon. Oil companies will have to act fast. The answer to this scourge lies not in holding back on aggressive technology advancement, but in hastening it. We are 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