What happened: state-owned oil marketing companies deny chloride contamination and excess moisture in E20 fuel

IndianOil, Bharat Petroleum, and Hindustan Petroleum rejected claims that E20 fuel (petrol blended with 20% ethanol) has chloride contamination. The three oil marketing companies (OMCs) also rejected allegations that ethanol-blended petrol contains excess moisture.

OMCs’ chloride defence: multi-point monitoring and reported ppm results

In a joint statement, IndianOil, Bharat Petroleum, and Hindustan Petroleum said chloride levels remained within prescribed limits based on intensive testing. The OMCs stated that testing included random sample checks at retail outlets, at refineries, during ethanol procurement, and at OMC terminals.

The companies reported the following sample outcomes:

100 additional random petrol samples from varied refineries showed chloride at or below 1 ppmTests of over 80 ethanol and E20 samples at OMC terminals showed chloride below 3 ppm