Some users on the X platform have been reacting to reports of high manganese concentration found in petroleum products sold across the country.
The development comes after COPEC, IMANI Africa and other petroleum consumers raised concerns about the performance of their car engines in recent times.
For instance, the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers threatened legal action against the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) over the alleged manganese concentration in fuel products.
Executive Secretary of the Chamber, Duncan Amoah, cautioned that the presence of a high concentration of manganese in the fuel currently sold in the Ghanaian market is causing damage to the engines of cars.
“We have had to go down to do some checks to realise that there is clearly some amount of manganese in some of the products across board with the OMCs that has been quite sensitive to some of the vehicles, particularly Hyundai vehicles,” Duncan Amoah earlier confirmed.
At the present, these complaints have surged with some petroleum consumers sharing evidence of the effects of high manganese concentration in fuel.
One user on the X platform shared an image of his damaged spark plugs on November 23, 2023.
He wrote, ‘Shaking my head’ after sharing the image.
Vice president of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons also waded into the development, saying, “Ghana's gasoline/petrol & diesel regulator, NPA, says fuels being imported into Ghana nowadays have too much manganese. But they don't say what has changed. Historically, Ghana imported most of its fuels from markets that ban or heavily limit manganese. Then 'Gold 4 Oil' came.”
Another user also suggested that the rollout out of the ‘Gold-for-Oil’ program had government buying fuel from Russia, which has high manganese content of 18g/litre, resulting in grave damage of car engines.
@_edemkojo wrote, “So, in summary; #Gold4Oil has government buying fuel from Russia. Russia fuel has high manganese content of 18g/ltre which is causing various problems to your cars. So yes, you will buy cheaper fuel but you will use more than your saved cash to do repairs.”
See the tweet and other reactions below
MA/AE
Image of damaged spark plugs shows effect of high manganese content found in fuel sold in Ghana