The “FUEL QUALITY – THE MONITORING AND MARKING SYSTEM” Conference

The “FUEL QUALITY – THE MONITORING AND MARKING SYSTEM” Conference

BELGRADE, April 24, 2012 – At the workshop held at Serbian Chamber of Commerce, trends were pointed out that are based on the introduction of European legislature in the area of fuel quality monitoring, as well as the experiences in fuel marking, as a method that reduces the grey economy, puts additional controls on fuel quality, and increases the budget inflow.
Dr Slobodan Sokolović, General Secretary of the National Petroleum Committee of Serbia, cited the fact that there exists a gray market in the EU as far as fuel quality is concerned, but of only 1 or 2 percent. The percentage in this country is significantly higher, which aggravates the consequences related to the quality of petrol and Diesel fuel delivered to the consumer at a petrol station. In this way, the state as well has a reduced budget inflow. It is for these reasons that the National Committee of Serbia decided to organize a technical discussion, in order to develop guidelines, to be submitted to the creators of normative solutions in this area.Dr Niek Th.M. Klooster, director of development of “Intertek Chemical”, spoke on the topic of parallel experiences in the Netherlands, Belgium and Romania. Klooster gave emphasis to the fact that in the Netherlands, their goal was to improve the environment and reduce carbon-dioxide, whereas in Belgium and Romania the fuel quality monitoring system was supposed to discover attempted fraud at public and private petrol stations. He said that in Belgium, as early as 1996, a special fund was established to analyse petroleum products and that 10,000 samples per year are taken for the purpose of analysis. In the Netherlands and Romania, far smaller numbers of samples are taken during the summer and winter seasons, they are analysed in independent laboratories, and the system of penalties for irresponsible sellers consists of direct financial penalties, whereas in Romania a public list is published of the petrol stations at which poor-quality fuel has been found.

Robert Martin of the multinational company “John Hoog”, which manufactures clean paints and markers for big consumers in 70 world countries, gave a detailed explanation of how the Euromarker system works. This is an invisible chemical compound that is used to identify fuel which is not used in traffic, with a view to preventing tax evasion. In other words, Euromarker, established eleven years ago, serves to determine whether a forwarding agent put, for instance, fuel oil in the tank instead of Eurodiesel and thus tried to avoid paying excise duties and other taxes collected by the state.

Snežana Ristić and Zoran Filipović from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy discussed the status of the project “Fuel Quality Monitoring System” and a case study regarding fuel marking in Serbia.