MUSCAT, JULY 13 - As part of the government efforts to ensuring safety of consumers, standard specifications have been set for unleaded fuel in the Sultanate. According to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the GSO (GCC Standardization Organization) standard will come into effect from July 21. Hiba bint Yasir bin Saud al Mazrouiya, a chemical product specification expert in the Directorate General of Standards and Metrology, said that these standard specifications are required for unleaded fuel for engines designed to operate with such fuel. “The unleaded fuel is classified excellent if octane number is 95 and normal if octane is 9, ” she said.
The standard fuel specifications were approved by the ministerial order, which was prepared to upgrade the local technical specifications as well as to meet the requirements of the new model vehicles launched in 2018.
“This was also to keep pace with the latest characteristics of fuel in the world as the international specifications follow the course of the successive modernisation of fuel from 2004 to 2012 to develop and increase the quality of fuel characteristics”.
There is no doubt that the Omani standard specifications of unleaded gasoline matched
with Euro 5 in requirements especially in terms of the proportion of sulphur supposed to be in gasoline.
According to Al Mazrouiya, the specifications included the complementary references to the methods of testing which can help in indicating the correct proportions of the fuel components.
The specification also talks about the chemical and physical requirements of gasoline such as the lower octane and allowed limits of heavy metals such as lead, manganese, sulfur, iron etc. It also talks about other requirements such as colour, evaporation pressure and corrosion rate of copper. Al Mazrouiya said that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry was keen to set conditions and technical characteristics of fuel, in line with the developments in the design of the engines of vehicles and to suit the health and safety of consumers, as well as to give priority to the protection of the environment from polluting emissions of engines.
She said that the Omani standard specification “Vehicle Fuel — Unleaded Gasoline” describes the characteristics and requirements of lead-free gasoline for engines designed to work with these types of fuel.
She said that the standard specifications included complementary references to the methods of testing which can help in the detection of correct proportions of the components of gasoline.
“For this, international references are used which are accredited by international and regional organisations”, she added.
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