The qual­i­ty of fu­el in this coun­try is again be­ing called in­to ques­tion, this time it seems to be cen­tred on diesel.

The is­sue was raised by the own­er of a Toy­ota Hilux Ve­hi­cle who called Guardian Me­dia to high­light the mat­ter.

An­drew Bha­gan said the prob­lem for him oc­curred two Wednes­days ago. “Mine shut down the oth­er day I start­ed to get some rough idling af­ter fill­ing fu­el in Siparia.”

Bha­gan said he took the ve­hi­cle to a tech­ni­cian and the di­ag­no­sis point­ed to the fu­el. “He scanned the ve­hi­cle and said every­thing else was work­ing good. It was re­ceiv­ing fu­el the pump work­ing, every­thing work­ing. He said it has to be that the in­jec­tors were not giv­ing a sig­nal; the in­jec­tors were de­fec­tive at that point in time and that was caused be­cause of what­ev­er the com­po­si­tion in that fu­el was that caused it.”

In or­der to get a sec­ond opin­ion, Bha­gan ex­plained that he and the tech­ni­cian took the ve­hi­cle to a com­pa­ny that spe­cialis­es in such mat­ter and again the qual­i­ty of the fu­el was blamed.

He said it cost $5000 and he still has to pay his tech­ni­cian.

But Bha­gan is not alone.

Al­lis­ter Phillip, the own­er of a Maz­da BT50 ve­hi­cle said,

“Last Thurs­day I filled up diesel in Vista­bel­la, af­ter that I went to pick up my daugh­ter and whilst wait­ing my van be­gan vi­brat­ing heav­i­ly. I was con­fused be­cause my van is brand new. I was still able to make it home. The next day I checked the parts store for an air fil­ter be­cause I as­sumed that could be the cause. He told me at least 6 cus­tomers com­plained with the same prob­lem in­clud­ing his own new van. He told me it seems a bad batch of fu­el passed through.”

Phillip said yes­ter­day he asked the gas sta­tion own­er about it “but they de­nied any knowl­edge of bad fu­el.”

Now he is with­out a ve­hi­cle at the mo­ment.

A fe­male mo­torist, who owns a Hyundai San­ta Fe re­count­ed that the same thing hap­pened and her en­tire fu­el sys­tem had to be changed at a cost of 50 thou­sand dol­lars at the lo­cal deal­er.

There were sev­er­al oth­er sim­i­lar com­plaints re­ceived. Now the ve­hi­cle own­ers are ask­ing who is go­ing to pay for their re­pairs.

“We want to know how we could go about get­ting com­pen­sat­ed for this,” An­drew Bha­gan asked.

See­ing that the prob­lem is not unique to any par­tic­u­lar gas sta­tion, Guardian Me­dia reached out to Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, the provider of the fu­el.

In a state­ment, Paria said it has not re­ceived any for­mal com­plaints from our cus­tomers/clients.

It said, “All re­fined fu­els im­port­ed by Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Paria) and sold in­to the lo­cal mar­ket - Diesel/Gasoil, Jet Fu­el and Un­lead­ed Gaso­line (Su­per and Pre­mi­um) have ei­ther met or, in many cas­es, ex­ceed­ed spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Paria con­tin­ues to main­tain a rig­or­ous test­ing pro­ce­dure to en­sure that prod­ucts sold on the lo­cal mar­ket meet lo­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions es­tab­lished by Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards (TTBS) for mo­tor ve­hi­cles.”

In April last year, The Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny de­fend­ed the qual­i­ty of its fu­el af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny an­nounced that it will in­ves­ti­gate claims that the fu­el has been burn­ing faster.

In Sep­tem­ber 2018 scores of an­gry mo­torists lined up at NP’s Rox­bor­ough Gas Sta­tion de­mand­ing an­swers and com­pen­sa­tion fol­low­ing the sale of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed fu­el.

NP said then that the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion was con­tained and sales at the sta­tion had stopped.