Georgia to check quality of petroleum products

/By AzerNews/

By Laman Sadigova

Georgia plans to apply a system that will control the quality of petroleum products starting from 2016. The new monitoring system will work under the supervision of the Georgian Environment Ministry.

The inspection of gas stations will begin approximately in spring or summer of 2016. Before this, the country will hold some necessary preparatory works, particularly, it will improve the legislation and announce a tender on testing the fuel quality.

"The ministry has a supervisory service, which carries out inspections of various facilities for compliance with environmental regulations. The service deals with a variety of issues, for example, such as the fight against poaching. The supervisory service will also control the quality of fuel from now on,” said Noe Megrelishvili, the chief specialist at air protection division of the Ministry.

Penalties in the amount of 8,000 -10,000 lari are stipulated for violations in the quality of petroleum products. The Ministry of Environment has already sent a relevant bill to the Parliament.

Currently, no state agency carries out the control of the petroleum products quality.

Georgia imports oil and petroleum products from Azerbaijan, Iran and the Gulf states. In total, Georgia has imported $371.16 million worth oil and petroleum products since early 2015. The country imported 150,100 metric tons of oil and petroleum products worth $79.39 million from Azerbaijan in the first seven months of 2015, Georgia’s national statistics office said earlier.

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, addressing the UN conference on climate change, announced that Georgia intends to increase the number of forces involved in the protection of the environment tenfold.