Cautionary Tale

,We shall not supply names or places because, in our opinion, the retailer concerned with the incident has already suffered enough. Nevertheless, we should be doing less than our duty, if we did not record the occurrence. It underlines a lesson that should be heeded by all who sell motor spirit.

MRS X lives in a town somewhere in the . North of England. Shortly before eight o'clock on the evening of 27th March, she noticed a strong smell of petrol that pervaded all the rooms in her house. She telephoned the local fire brigade, and an officer went round to investigate.

Eventually, the stench became so overpowering, . _. . -that -' she had to be evacuated.

-- ---. . Nearoy, there was a self-serve filling station; and this, obviously, was where the inquiries were concentrated. It did not take long to discover that there was a discrepancy of motor spirit in one of the tanks. The retailer was instructed to uplift the remaining petrol in readiness for a pressure test. The test revealed a leakage. Under Section 73 of the public Health Act 1961, the tank had to be rendered safe by filling it with a concrete slurry. This task was duly carried out. Since this call had followed a period of heavy rain, it suggested that the latent amount of motor spirit in the subsoil, due to the initial leakage, had come closer to the surface as the water table increased. The sub-officer at the fire station was in no doubt about the matter. "Having regard to the investigations carried out by the Licensing Authority", he wrote, "it is their opinion that the various calls received to the premises ... involving the smell of petrol, have arisen as a direct result of the initial leakage from tank number 2 at (name of deleted by the Editor)". Shell U. K. Oil's local region also carried out an inquiry into the matter. It soon became clear that, whilst the retailer had carried out tank dips frequently, he had not reconciled them to his stocks of motor fuel. The previous occasion on which he had made any attempt to do this had been nearly two months before Mrs X had made her complaint. on'thiS occasion, he had actually noticed a small gain in the contents of tank number 2. The following appeared in Shellman and is produced by kind permission of the Editor, it is one of a series that Shellman are loqking into entitled "With whom do you share your profi ts". A lesson learnt by a Shell Retailer and one perhaps we too should remember.

There is no knowing when he would have carried out the procedure again, had it not been for the intervention of the Fire Officer. When he did so on that unhappy March day, the results told an alarming story. According to his books, he should have had 8,433 gallons in the tank. In fact, there were only 7,690. This amounted to a stock shortage of 753 gallons. Over a period of time, some loss of stock equated at 0.4 per cent for a self-serve site - has to be expected (this is due to evaporation, overmetering or leakage). During the period in question, the filling station had sold 76,775 gallons. After the 0.4 per cent allowance for anticipated losses, there remained an unexplained loss of 370 gallons - which was more than sufficient cause for anxiety. By an unkind twist of fate, the retailer had, in fact, suspected that all was not as it should have been, when he dipped his tanks at the beginning of March. But, foolishly no doubt, he did not relate the results to his book stock. Had he done so, he would certainly have become aware of the leak.

The result of this sorry story was that the retailer was held to be responsible. Since the site was company-owned, SUKO conceded that its equipment - ie the tank - was at fault. Nevertheless, a slow but steady drain of petrol over nearly two months would have been averted, if the retailer had reconciled his dips to his stock regularly. There would, admittedly, have been some; but over no more than a week, and, probably, over an even shorter period. We discussed this matter with a member of SUKO, who advised that tanks at busy selfserve sites should be dipped daily regardless of whether or not there has been a petrol delivery. Indeed, some local authorities insist that this is done. But such procedure is valueless if it is not backed up by a three-way reconciliation. This reconciliation should compare:1. Sales recorded by the metering equipment. 2. The stock gone from the tanks 3. The money received in whatever form - by cash, credit, the use of credit cards, or by cheques.