(Trinidad Express, Sandhya Santoo, 7.Nov.2018) — Is super gasoline burning faster?
This is the claim by some motorists who are insisting that the fuel is burning faster, leading to lower mileage per litre and higher costs.
And many taxi drivers say that the Super gasoline is causing economic hardship. Some want the State to subsidize taxi drivers.
At the pumps, car owners would pay $4.97 for super gas, $5.75 for premium gas, and 3.41 for diesel fuel.
Vice president of the St Croix/ Barrackpore Taxi Drivers Association Narine Lochan said the fuel seems to be burning faster.
He said given the higher cost of super gas and premium, using regular fuel has become a preferred choice, despite the car manual recommendation that a certain octane of fuel be used.
“Super is burning out like water and we have to mix using regular gas because the cost is too much. We can’t get the distance we cover with the super now. What we need is for the government to subsidise taxi drivers. The gas is causing havoc to the taxi industry,” he said.
Lochan said the poor road conditions was adding to the woes.
He said many drivers have fewer passengers and attributed this to an increase in unemployment.
He said: “We seeing less people travelling because they are losing their jobs. Where we could get a lot of passengers during peak times, we seeing less and it’s not because there are new taxi drivers or “ph” drivers but it is because they are not travelling like they used to.”
Lochan said the use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is not suitable for taxi drivers of the association given that there are limited CNG fuelling stations in south Trinidad.
“ By the time we go to fill our tanks with CNG and run a trip, we have to keep coming back to fill the tanks. You cannot keep running to the gas station three or four times a day. There isn’t enough stations that is even close for us to use and so you will not see many taxi drivers for our route using CNG,” he said.
The fuel being used at the pump was imported by State-owned oil refinery, Petrotrin, which received its first shipment of refiner fuel on October 27.
Sixteen shipments will be delivered over the next four months under an agreement with BP’s Latin America Integrated Sales and Trading Group.
Petrotrin Chairman Wilfred Espinet in a television interview this week said, “we do know for a fact that the fuels we imported are consistent in terms of the specifications of what we were producing in Trinidad and Tobago so there should be no effect”.
Espinet said the fuel brought in was a shipment of diesel.
Espinet said the fuel goes into an inventory and “although we may be transferring from tanks, there are times you are going to get residual in tanks that are going to mix with each other.”
President of the Petroleum Dealers Association Robin Naraynsingh said the statements being made are done so with limited and uninformed knowledge.
He said drivers must be cognizant of the size of the gas tanks, the millage and ensure that there is proper maintence of vehicles.
“They are saying things they don’t know. Every manufacture of a vehicle will tell you how much miles per gallon of fuel you get. They have to know what is the fuel consumption of their vehicles. If you say its burning out faster, are you doing city driving or highway driving? This thing is science, it’s not something you can just ‘feel’. Its burning faster, but faster to what?
People who are saying this have to be cognizant of what they are saying. What is their fuel consumption? How long you burn the engine for, the mileage.
Do proper maintenance, read the manual to car and learn about the fuel consumption of your vehicle.
The consuming public have to be more aware. Check vehicles if they are working properly, know that you are using the right octane level. If you buy regular you are using more,” he said.
***
#LatAmNRG