OCEAN PHOENIX

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Tanker stuck off Mombasa as Govt Agency battles lawyers

The 'Ocean Tiara' with 75.000 tons of super petrol has been stuck off Mombasa for almost a month since arriving on March 19, 2020. She was ordered back after officers from the Kenya Pipeline Company on April 1, 2020, established that the fuel aboard the tanker was substandard. The shipment, cargo numbers K07/2020 was imported by Asharami Synergy Ltd., a subsidiary of a Nigerian oil conglomerate with interests in several countries within Africa. Paperwork fronted by the vessel at the Kipevu oil terminus in Mombasa indicated that the Final Boiling Point (FBP) of the fuel was 199.1 degrees Celcius which is well within the required 200 degrees Celcius required by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS). By sampling it was found that it had an FBP of 204 degrees Celsius and thus could not be allowed into the country. The tanker's owners had employed their own to witness the testing, normally conducted at the KPC laboratory. The vessel was asked to leave the Kipevu oil terminal berth to give way to other vessels and has since been moored off the Diani coast. The London based lawyers HFW wrote a letter to Nairobi, dated April 5, 2020, demanding that another test be conducted on the fuel, or samples were presented to KEBS for final determination. It was the first time an oil tanker has been rejected at Kipevu for low-quality fuel. On April 2 the KPC Managing Director Macharia Irungu in a letter to umbrella company for oil marketers in Kenya, Supplycor Kenya Ltd general manager Rachel Mulungye, stated that the fuel had been rejected for falling short of the required quality parameters.