Viva Energy Australia Low Aromatic – Shell Unleaded Low Aromatic Video Transcript
Duration: 3.15min
Sue Smith, Fuels Product Quality Lead – Viva Energy Australia: Shell Unleaded Low Aromatic is a fuel which has been specially formulated for use in the communities in Australia that need the health benefits of this fuel.
Catherine Ellis, Biofuels and Low Aromatic Fuel Manager – Viva Energy Australia: We won the tender with the Federal Government back in 2011 and we’ve been working on it ever since then to roll out Low Aromatic fuel across the top end of Australia. We had been long aware of the damaging health effects that standard unleaded petrol can have in particular areas. Yes it has an effect on the Indigenous community but it’s not just confined to the Indigenous community.
Sue: The difference between Shell Unleaded Low Aromatic and other fuels is that is has the same components that you find in the refinery put into it except less of the component that contains the aromatic compounds that you normally associate with the sweet smell in petrol. This way, people will not be inclined to want to smell this fuel because the aromatics have been taken out.
Catherine:Across the community, we know that different people have different concerns. Some want to know about the health effects of the product. Others want to know about the manufacture of the fuel. Technically what do we do to make it different? Others want to know about the performance in their engines. So right across the community consultation we’ve had to address quite a lot of those issues. We haven’t done it alone.
Neil Coplin, Orbital Engineering Manager – Orbital: Shell had a new product, the ULP Low Aromatic product and they wanted to understand whether there was any difference between that and the mainstream petrol available in Australia. Emission wise and consumption wise, there really wasn’t anything to differentiate the fuels. The Low Aromatic fuel product was equivalent to the ULP fuel product. When it came to durability and the performance of that fuel in terms of cleanliness of the engine and cleanliness of the fuel injection components, the low aromatic fuel did have some clear benefits there. It was not only a fuel which did not produce as many deposits inside the engine intake manifold or on the fuel injectors, but it was actually able to remove some of those deposits that were formed by running the normal petrol that you would buy at the bowser.
Catherine: I’m personally very excited about the difference that we can make. We won’t know for a little while how much difference we are able to make on the ground. This program will take some time to roll out to have those community consultations, but I think we’ve all seen some dreadful pictures of young kids petrol sniffing. We’ve all heard from IndigenousElders about the damage that it does to their communities. It takes out almost a whole generation of people from those communities and they don’t know how they can replace those. So, let’s get to the root of the problem and see what we can do. I hope that we can look back in three to four years’ time and say ‘that was the turning point’ for some of these communities.
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