Fact Check: Dangote Says Petrol From Refinery is Clearer, Is Petrol Colourless?

By Adedapo Adesanya

One of the many talking points from the Dangote Refinery, Africa’s largest oil refinery, which has commenced the production of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), commonly known as petrol, is that the petrol appears clearer and colourless compared to what Nigerians normally purchase. So, this raises the question: Are Nigerians consuming bad fuel due to the colour?

Speaking yesterday, the President of Dangote Group, Mr Aliko Dangote, explained with a sample of petrol from his refinery that his product is clearer than the current petrol being consumed by Nigerians.

Mr Dangote highlighted that clearer petrol is more environmentally friendly and could help reduce health issues associated with polluted petroleum products.

He noted that this new petrol would also protect engines from damage caused by the unclear petrol typically found in the market.

He said, “This is the sample of the petrol. You see it as a different colour, but that is the real deal. You are now going to have a good and genuine product.”

However, is the billionaire accurate with this assumption? The answer is no.

Business Post fact-check showed that the colour of petrol could be bright yellow, orange, or brown depending on what additives are added during production. Petrol can also be red, green, blue, pink, or even purple.

This is because petrol manufacturers have added fuel dyes that don’t damage the quality of the commodity to make it easy to identify and classify.

Other manufacturers also carry this out so they can easily identify when it is stolen and sold on the black market.

Some better metrics to identify the quality of petrol could be its octane rating, which measures the fuel’s ability to resist knocking an engine during combustion or its sulphur content which should be lower to help the environment, as well as its stability life, which refers to how it resists degradation over time in storage.

Verdict:

Dangote Refinery’s colourless petrol may not be different from the others. His strategy may have been to leave his product colourless for easy identification but that has not made the petrol Nigerians had been consuming of inferior quality.