CamBay’s fuel meets national standard, PPD says

The fuel from Cambridge Bay’s tank farm is unlikely to be causing the break-downs of furnace fuel pumps in the community, Nunavut’s petroleum products division says. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

The diesel fuel suspected of causing furnace fuel pumps to break down in Cambridge Bay meets every Canadian standard for the product, officials from Nunavut’s petroleum products division said last week.

“Everything meets specifications,” said Todd McKay, the PPD’s manager of fuel operations in an April 23 interview from Rankin Inlet. “Everything is as it should be.”

If there are problems, fuel pumps made by a company called Riello may be the cause, suggests McKay.

Tests have not revealed any problems with the fuel, he said, although PPD has received some complaints about the breakdown of fuel pumps.

“If I have a problem with my furnace, it must be the fuel. If I have a problem with my engine, it must be the fuel. That’s just human nature,” McKay said.

The fuel now under scrutiny has been tested many times for its quality, he said.

The fuel was tested before it was loaded onto an NTCL tanker bound for the Kitikmeot last September, and it was tested again at anchor after it was loaded: “you don’t want to sail for 14 days only to get into the Arctic and find you’ve got a quality issue.”

All along the way, the fuel met Canadian General Standard Board’s 20 requirements for diesel fuel, McKay said.

On arrival in Cambridge Bay, samples from the fuel remaining in the tanks were also sampled before new fuel went in.

Then, after delivering the fuel, more samples were taken “for confirmation that what we have in our tanks still meets that CGS classification,” McKay said.

The 7.9 million litres of fuel delivered to Cambridge Bay all started out as what’s called dual-purpose kerosene grade fuel.

As the fuel went into the tanker, part of it was loaded into certain compartments to become diesel fuel, along with an additive for lubricity, another part went to compartments to become jet A-1 fuel, with an additive for more electrical conductivity.

Although the two fuels— diesel and jet— used to be different, now they are almost identical in nature due to tighter emissions standards, and are nearly the same product, McKay said.

“If you are to take a can of either and put them on a table at the lab, have lab coat people test them, without telling them what they are they can’t tell the difference, with the exception of a few little quality traits,” he said.

But the PPD has taken complaints about Cambridge Bay’s fuel seriously, sending the samples out to the Alberta Research Council for more analysis.

“Again, exactly the same,” McKay said. “It meets specifications. There are no little red flags, sore thumbs, anything at this point.”

All PPD knows for sure is that there are complaints in the communities from people dealing with this one brand of fuel pump, he said.

During the week of April 29, the fuel is scheduled to undergo molecular analysis.

“We’re kind of running around now randomly trying different things,” McKay. “We’re not finding anything specifically standing out that you have a failure of or a quality issue.”

“It does make you wonder about the way the pump is built,” he added.

But people in Cambridge Bay say brands of pumps other than Riello have also shown the same type of failures.

And some maintain that problems in a locally-owned diesel truck and a Qulliq Energy Corp. generator are due to the questionable quality of the fuel.