Source: Folha de Carajás - Redenção / PA - NEWS - 04/08/2010

The headache of filling up with “baptized” fuel or pollutants is a serious problem that harms many vehicle owners in Pará. Many do. It is because Pará has one of the highest rates of gasoline, ethanol and diesel samples that do not comply with the standards established by the National Petroleum Agency (ANP). In the southern region of Belém, for example, 16,7% of the diesel collected showed some kind of adulteration, mainly in relation to distillation. In the interior of Pará, the main concern is with the Santarém region, in western Pará, where 30% of gasoline presented non-compliance problems. These figures are well above the national averages of the ANP, which are 1,5% for gasoline and 3,5% for odiesel. The last balance made by the ANP, of collections made in June and released this week, shows the negative result for the Pará consumer. The research is divided into three categories: ethanol, diesel and gasoline. In Pará, the one that stood out negatively was gasoline, which had a big increase in the number of samples with adulterations in the last quarter of 2010, in relation to the year 2009. In 2009, only 1,9% of the gasoline samples presented some problem , however, this year, the number rose to 5,8%. In the diesel oil samples collected, the percentage dropped to 3,6%. On the other hand, in the same period, the ethanol adulteration rate varied from 0,9% in 2009, to 3,6% this year. In Belém, the result differs slightly from the general overview of Pará. In the southern region of the capital alone, 16,7% of diesel oil adulteration level was registered. A percentage considered quite high for the standard of normality, of 3,5%. With regard to all of Belém, gasoline had a percentage of 10,1% adulteration, whereas diesel had a total of 20,5%. That is, of the 156 samples, 10 of them showed some kind of adulteration. Finally, with the lowest level of adulteration, ethanol remained, with 9,1%. According to the ANP, non-conformities in Pará refer mainly to the distillation of fuel or the presence of dirt.