The Problem
On 28 February 2007 motorists in South East England reported that their cars were breaking down. Motorists blamed supermarket petrol with most of the fuel sold by the supermarkets in the South East coming from the Vopak terminal in the Thames Estuary. Harvest Energy, which supplies Asda, shares tank facilities at the depot in West Thurrock with another oil company, Greenergy, which is part-owned by Tesco and supplies both Tesco and Morrisons.
Then on the evening of 2 March scientists who had been testing the petrol reported finding traces of silicon in the fuel which were subsequently tracked down to four storage tanks by Harvest Energy.
Morrisons immediately announced that it was to stop selling unleaded petrol at 41 outlets supplied by the Vopak terminal while Tesco was emptying and refilling tanks at 150 petrol stations but was not suspending sales. The following day Asda said it was replacing unleaded petrol at the 30 forecourts in the South East as a "precautionary measure".
By Sunday, 4 March, tests from Tesco and Asda had found contamination of silicon in unleaded fuel.
Read more about this topic: 2007 United Kingdom Petrol Contamination
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