Assessment of Adulteration of Gasoline (MSP) and Diesel (AGO), in Selected Fuel Stations in Kisii County

Abstract

The major transport fuels in Kenya are gasoline and diesel. A complaint on adulteration of these fuels at the point of sale or during transportation is a common occurrence in the country. The present studies on analysis of petroleum adulteration does not give a scope of what is happening at the newly and upcoming petrol stations outside the capital of city. Purposeful sampling was carried out on investigating gasoline and diesel adulteration sold at selected fuel stations in in a case study of Kisii County, and whether these products are within the standards set by Kenya bureau of Standards (KEBs). Samples of gasoline and diesel were collected from selected five fuel stations and two laboratory testing methods of ASTM D86 (Distillation) and ASTM D1298 (Density determination) were conducted at Vivo Energy Company laboratory in Nairobi. Currently, the number of fuel stations selling Gasoline and diesel is enormous in Kisii region. They involve four major oil companies namely, Shell, Total, Kenol/Kobil, Oil Libya, and now KNOCK which dominate the market as well as locally owned ones. Therefore, the sampling method that was employed to select randomly five specific filling stations comprising of one major and four Minor companies representing the population with parameters of interest, for analysis in this study.