LUKOIL SOLVES THE PROBLEM OF GASOLINE QUALITY CONTROL

Friday, August 24, 2001

Today LUKOIL presented its program called "Colored gasoline" at the exhibition "Avtosalon - 2001" in Moscow. The program helps to make a reasonable solution of gasoline quality control.

In order to identify their production the oil refineries of LUKOIL in Volgograd, Perm and Ukhta started to produce colored sorts of consumer gasoline. Gasoline AU-76 is colored in red and AU-92 is colored in blue.

To prevent the falsification of colored petrol, colorless biological markers will be added to its structure. The technological chain (oil refineries - oil tank farms - gasoline stations) implies a visual control of the fuel color and the introduction of the instrumental method of defining presence and concentration of markers. Big-sized dealers and oil tank farms of LUKOIL are being equipped with special fluometres for the quantitative definition of content of these markers in gasoline.

Dyes produced by the German company BASF are used to color gasoline and Chevron Oronate company produces markers.

The usage of dyes and markers does not cause any changes in consumption properties of petrol and has no influence on its final value. The performed experiments in Russia and abroad proved that the coloring admixture has no effect on physical, chemical and operational properties of car petrol and on the work of fuel system of the engine.

Colored gasoline is sold in owned and franchised gas stations which are located in Volgograd and Perm regions, in the republic of Komi and the bordering areas. The introduction of colored gasoline throughout the country is being done according to the schedule of staged marketing of colored gasoline by the LUKOIL petroleum products supplying subsidiaries.

LUKOIL always increases the quality and competitiveness of its output, trying to support the image of the world famous company. One of the ways to do it is to introduce state-of-the-art means of protection of gasoline from falsification, Mr. Vyatcheslav Bazhenov, LUKOIL Vice-President emphasized.