Beau Vallon service station resumes full operation |27 November 2014

The Beau Vallon service station temporarily ceased operations early in the afternoon of Tuesday November 25, 2014 following a contamination whereby diesel was accidentally mixed with unleaded motor gasoline in its storage tank during one of the station’s routine re-fills.
The Seychelles Petroleum Company (Seypec) said this in a press release yesterday.

The release adds that as a result of the incident, customers who had refueled earlier at that station were experiencing problems with their vehicles.

It adds that following receipt of complaint at 12.45pm, Seypec’s technicians were on site by 1.15pm to investigate the incident and upon inspection they confirmed the mixing of two fuel products in one tank only.

As per procedure, the priority was to flush out the affected tank and replace with the correct product so that the station could resume its normal operations promptly. The station re-opened at 3.15pm except for the dispensers that were connected to the tank which contained the contaminated product. These dispensers were put back in full operation as of 4.20pm on Tuesday.

Numerous customers who had reported the problems to the station on Tuesday had also received appropriate help.

Seypec would like to reassure members of the public that clear standard procedures are in place to guide all of the company’s operational processes and reduce the occurrence of such incidents, however in rare cases there are human elements of the set guidelines which may fail, something that was noted to have been the cause of Tuesday’s incident.

According to the release, Seypec carries out an average of 6,000 deliveries of fuel by truck annually and approximately 50% of these are to the nine service stations in the country. Currently Seypec is taking the necessary measures both internally and with the service stations to ensure all parties involved comply with set procedures in place pertaining to unloading of products during a discharge.

Sepec is taking this incident very seriously and as a matter of priority the company is reiterating the need for greater emphasis on full adherence of its standards required in its delivery processes. Seypec is working in close collaboration with the service station to handle the matter and is advising any customers who have been affected to contact the Beau Vallon service station for verification and processing of their claims.