Gas stations found violating DOE rules

BACOLOD CITY ,Philippines  — A total of 139 liquid petroleum retail outlets in Negros Occidental has been found by the Department of Energy to have committed miscalibration, among other violations.

During the DOE's recent information, education and communication campaign in this city for the downstream oil industry, it was found out that 42 retail outlets here were found to have under-delivered pumps or gas pumps giving less amount of gasoline than what the customers paid for.

Energy Industry Management Division supervisor J. Rey Maleza said they inspected a total of 164 retail outlets from September 26 to October 4, with inspectors divided into six teams, each of which consisted of representatives from the DOE, the Bureau of Fire Protection, the LGU, the DTI and, in some teams, the PNP.

Using a calibrating bucket, the compliance monitoring teams inspected diesel and gasoline products of gas stations around the province.

About 1140 dispensing pumps were inspected and 88 of these failed when measured with the team's calibrating bucket. Retail outlets that were not able to present a Certificate of Compliance (COC) totaled 124.

A COC is a document given by the DOE to retailers after they have submitted all requirements such as business permits, compliance to standards such as fire standards and environment compliance certificate.

Without the COC, a liquid petroleum product outlet is considered an illegal trader, and it can be administratively charged and penalized for the offense, Maleza told The FREEMAN.

Liquefied Petroleum Products (LPP) outlets were also inspected, including dealers.

A total of 154 liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) establishments were inspected and 70 of them were found to have violated the existing rules and regulation of selling LPG.

Forty three of 143 LPP outlets were discovered to have no weighing device. The teams weighed a total of 843 cylinders and found out that 23 were under-filled.

Maleza said they will submit the results of the inspection to their legal office for validation before the violations are served.

He asked retailers to cooperate and comply with the rules demanded in this business. "We appeal that LLP retailers look at us as partners because we are here to protect their interest and of the people," he said.— with reports from Lorenzo Lambatin of PIA-6