west africa. fuel why. the flame of. west africa is selling all feeds good crude oil going to why. risk companies involved in this business of. her. own. post play. the flame. her for it's a big day for puma energy the oil company has acquired additional oil market shares in ghana and it's spreading the news. of. official representatives and several v.i.p.'s have accepted the invitation. of. the media here as well. because that's just what you're sure to get. to do it but i figured i. was already live you know so. the minister of transport has officially inaugurating several kerosene tanks dedicated near the airport so this will make refueling more efficient it's a strategic move for ghana which aims to become the rising star in the region if you please visit here. meanwhile the p.r. visit is going ahead at full speed. the next stop this brand new filling station in puma energy commas who now owns forty one service stations in guyana that might not seem a lot but the company is very ambitious you're welcome to. the way to do it for your service. that's stepping in fuel. credits are you have a chance to come back. for that good sound i just got show they have clean fuel to do it go they go would help me to figure out what's the robot. what did he say good . clean the facts maybe but the fuel itself the sulfur level is the issue and it's measured in p.p.m. parts per million countries decide their limits individually in europe it's ten ppm for diesel for example jannah it's been three thousand ppm this diesel fuel is so dirty that it's sale would be prohibited in much of the world to. what is the pima energy boss think about that. did you know that the standard in ghana is rather poor especially in terms of cell phones right yes so you're aware of that absolutely this is true for many african countries and even if you were to look at a very large market like south africa the standards here are higher than elsewhere . in ghana the highest level allowed is three thousand people yeah that's a lot so yes that's a lot it poses a health problem so for the poor yes it poses a problem aims to comply with national standards and improve the products we import if we can. put a kind of what. are they trying to do better as we said geo says that's not the case. this was petroleum traders have a deliberate strategy clay are exploiting the weaknesses of the standards that apply in africa and bringing high quality fuel to europe as are trying very inferior very dirty products to africa and retarded for the the crim worst. of. it all that is perfectly legal so what's the. yes it is perfectly legal within the permissible limits and we think that it is unacceptable for swiss oil traders to benefit from weak regulation in africa to make profits at the expense of millions of people. that strategy is at the heart of the accusations the investigation by the ngo public eye focuses on swiss based crude oil traders like traffic gura whose african subsidiaries puma energy as well as whose partners in africa vivo energy and shell. traffic orders revenue is close to one hundred billion dollars a year its net income is reportedly two point six billion the choice an extreme heavyweight turns over one hundred sixty eight billion in sales but that's all we know its profits are confidential. switzerland plays a major part in this thirty five percent of worldwide oil trading takes place in the geneva area. so. it is hardly known parts west companies trading in oil are present at all levels. reducing the fuel and in a fairly recent phenomenon for the past five or six years swiss oil traders have been buying building petrol stations in africa. if. there is. one case. in the course of his investigation marking visited petrol stations and took reference samples from the pumps in asia african countries. his analyses showed that the sulfur levels in more than three hundred times higher than in switzerland. he did the three year investigation on behalf of the swiss in geo public eye formerly called bet on declaration which is known for its critical stand for commodity trading. this time the investigators infiltrated the secretive world of the oil traders. the. difficult. traders strategies rely on lack of transparency in this companies are by nature extremely discreet and barely visible to the public except maybe through their petrol stations they are also active on to other names they are private companies that are listed on the stock exchange and the belong to their managers the managers are the main shareholders they're not accountable to small shareholders and not subject to securities exchange long running answerable to themselves. weeks we question traffic by email they ignored our questions they even refused to talk to us on the phone and finally declined to be interviewed referring us instead to their website when it's clearly promotional content. six it also means that our excellent services are based in our global network. we import the refined petroleum products that africa needs who is exist wherever we work we maintain the highest possible standards. v our responsibility for health safety the environment and the communities where we work is at the heart of all our processes and decisions it's what the fuel democracies use the peace through traffic or redefining trade in africa who defeated nicolas on a freak response was look at. the toll and vivo energy both respects and comply with the regulations of any jurisdiction in which they operate. under going to the regulations it is not possible for the toll to directly supply vivo energy with petroleum products in vivo energy is obliged to purchase products from a bulk distribution company and the products available from these companies comply with the local regulations. so in short some very powerful swiss companies supply west africa with fuel that couldn't be sold back out and it's legal but how can that be. our investigation led us to the oil ports of amsterdam and where we soon realized how hard it is to penetrate the world of oil. and. move in west africa we chose to focus on ghana a country where the swiss companies are involved in both the production and distribution of oil. they are the company. they own. since the swiss companies themselves are a few. to answer us we were pleased to get an interview with the representative of foreign importers in. canadian law stipulates that foreign oil importers must have local representation these local companies are grouped in a number an organization whose president is sin you see he immediately confirms that some swiss trading companies are indeed presence in ghana but they have hidden . from victrola via the of the confused volumes into gonna be all right we are very dependent on. services and after seed of being significantly professional glencore two is here you are british petroleum also here if they are investing in ghana it means that it's good business is good business it's a good business so that influence has been very very very positive traffic i think some ten years ago made about a fifty million dollars investment in their facility that enabled us to get vessels in c. and get. some pipelines and. this is a fine example of the swiss presence these morning platforms and. the main deepwater seaports capital traffic gura built them in two thousand and six. names of security hooman energy gunna manages them. this infrastructure a lot of large vessels drawing more than ten meters to one load their oil product without having to talk. very critical forgot about them that would have had large couple stream to making products available so that has been constructive i mean for. the company had a ten year contract with ghana invested in and maintained. facilities using them mainly for its own oil tankers and levying a tax on competitor to platforms reverted to the canadian government in august twenty sixth teen so everyone is getting a slice of the pie but that doesn't solve the problem of low quality fuel imports there we seem to have touched a sore spot. one of the worst. in the world is not the worst one the it's not the worst it's not the worst time that i was in p.p.m. i see you're right ok it was very bad it's not great. it's not great through the other p.p.m. is not great and we all agree it's not great it's a discussion that we have had last year and he said discussion that we think should translate to reaction in the coming. in the meantime keep on coughing the sulfur dioxide from exhaust fumes is everywhere it's a direct influence on our small risk their entry infections and even cardiovascular diseases has been known for a long time recently in the w.h.o. has confirmed something between sulphur dioxide levels and lung cancer. so why did gonna continue to stick to the three thousand ppm standard for diesel i would like to talk to judith please as it stands up executive director is it possible thank you. we're trying to get an answer from the canadian authorities. and if you didn't. know. she's not here and the doctor have been able to talk to him. he's busy judith's has already all the details we sent it remains to print the letter and we just need to reach the director and out seems so this is quite a bit thank you for your help. it's complicated so we try a new tack you eat. out of it leave. it. to my energy to traffic or a subsidiary is hosting an opening ceremony in one of the fanciest hotels in accra . the program says several high ranking officials are attending and it's true the oil minister himself is here in good company. and this is the very. poorest. thank you thank. you. thank. you just as the minister is leaving we try to get an interview. at. least to be. ok. but to day i make. out that. i have. something. to do. i. think so. we had hoped to get an in-depth interview in a quiet place to hear his arguments about the quality of fuel at the pumps and the potential responsibility of swiss companies in the sale of jetting products in his country but this was often asked at last meeting. the public eye report reveals that it all fits into a very well thought out business model. look at her believe it was serious petroleum traders supply and sell petroleum products in africa but they also manufactured in a process known as blending. the various fuel qualities are mixed. as it's a basic idea of this commercial strategy is to reproduce african fuel quality by deliberately lowering it to get as close as possible to the legal limits in africa . what did he say about the fuel quality. deliberately lowering it to get as close as possible to the legal limits in africa. that. he has an explanation refining crude oil resembles the process of distillation the product is heated and depending on the temperature various components from the cleanest to the. first petroleum gas for butane bottle for instance. gasoline for cars nothing. next in line is kerosene fare a plane followed by diesel the other main fuel for cars and trucks next come domestic heating fuel for generators and basically oil and finally the heavy fuels . the oil trading companies buy these heavy fuels at low prices then just like in a kitchen recipe they add components. to create the highest possible quantity of fuel at the lowest possible price a fuel type just on the legal limit in other words a very low so called africa. there are so many. questions we went to look for answers in the oil have known as the are a region that is in amsterdam rotterdam and. is the blending illegal. self blending itself is legal. what's illegal. is a prosecutor in rotterdam she's a member of the undone team team of experts a dutch project that brings together justice and police departments to fight against environmental wrongdoing they focus mainly on fuels used in the shipping industry which are highly polluting but the principle is always the same the tranny importer must comply with a registration pressure called before being sold in europe it's called reach it forces traders to register their products in a database to obtain equivalent to the one to come. the problem is that this procedure is so complex that nobody has really mastered it some companies take advantage of this is a fact not lost on the lawyer. has another perspective from the home tough for us from the point of view of criminal lawyers reach is a challenge. it's not only legally but also chemically complex complex can we talk about. we suspect some companies are using the reach directive to turn waste into products reach under how to off. but it's only an assumption. that we believe they're exploiting it they're misusing it to circumvent the laws on the disposal of waste product which meet all of the office to office having article. and well today jeanne. this is how they double their profits. if the waste isn't disposed of by an approved disposal company which costs money to cost at all but is instead mixed into other products it disappears in that cuts costs that's that's the first point today and today is secondly they also earn money because the resulting fuel volume is greater stay at the waist and sell it as a product so they benefit twice and this is a strike against. in almost all station says we're looking for illegal profits as part of an investigation into reach which will allow us to confiscate them here with a lot of tobacco another question has been bothering us for a long time is it possible to produce a petroleum product that is forbidden to be sold in the country and then to export it in another country when it stops poppy then is it possible to do that it's legal . yeah look yes it is possible for example to produce a product in the netherlands that contains too much of something that can't be used here but which can be sold in asia or africa or africa. there's no ethical problem with that. the commentators problems and my daughter's need there may well be an ethical problem but we focus on the legal aspects. let's lift it up walk in isolation is like public eye to cover the ethics of the issue. these blended oil products hold no secrets from marietta hard. she had already investigated the murky side of oil trade on behalf of greenpeace in a case that took place over ten years ago as part of the pro bowl koala scandal what was the massive tanker chartered by the swiss company trafigura doing this question intrigued public are the only thing you knew was that the vessel wanted to get rid of toxic waste generated by the cleaning of its tanks for months in two thousand and six the tanker approached several ports including amsterdam before choosing to dump its unpopular cargo illegally in ivory coast. they came to amsterdam they were able to actually get it processed in a proper way but they're rejecting that option because they thought it was too expensive so that actually they brought again the way to get them answered they decided to dump it in there it was stressed africa how much how much expense i think of us around half a million dollars that they had to pay and the traffic noise along. the top sick waste was intrusted to a small ivory coast business the disposed of it by any means possible. the health consequences were enormous four hundred thousand dive or eons fairly ill seventeen people died of points in. less than a year later swiss company traffic were entered into negotiations with the ivorian president two hundred forty million swiss francs were paid to ivory coast as a final settlement. was my concern is that the people are compensated. and that the state is compensated. these are my concerns. now our friends a traffic guru have agreed to our demands. the ivorian state refused any international legal involvement and the swiss company traffic who are denied all liability in the matter the company director made that quite clear at the time. first of all neither. the state of ivory cause nor traffic. accept any liability for the events which happened last august and be needed to demean element to this agreement is to help the state of ivory coast financially but the president spoke tonight at that on television and clearly. they're turning the page accept no liability corporate responsibility all these words that he's using i mean that's really the words of a company that. doesn't take any responsibility doesn't self reflex upon their own acts and turning the page maybe for them it's easy but not for the people that have been exposed. in twenty sixteen fifty thousand dive orian victims five a class action suit against traffic who are in the netherlands the proceedings are still on going. public i discovered that before cleaning its tanks prober koala carried out low quality fuel blending the n.g.o.s investigation showed that the whole process was systematic. then that is very common and legal but what is illegitimate in our eyes is if you blend if you mix you make a product that is of bad quality but you make it on purpose even software for it or you can actually see what is the most profitable. mix we can make and this is a practice that we see happening for example in part of amsterdam but also the part of contraire but also on board tankers it is. of the business model that's actually focused on making a lot of profit. the public eye expert emphasizes the fact that the bad quality oil blend was produced on purpose. the ports of amsterdam and rotterdam are considered hubs of such blending operations. one of the key reasons why it's such a big problem is because it cares but ten refineries in the area and best service storage capacity. arabs it also has a very strategic position for the west coast of africa so that's why you also see the order of the imports in west africa for the health it's coming from the outreach or. there's no official information and it's also very secretive trading industry. also the terminals don't want to disclose the clients to which they're renting their texts. in the netherlands a little known law allow citizens to demand lists of any dangerous substances stored by a company money yet are patiently invoked this law for each terminal in amsterdam. sometimes they don't want to make copies so just sit with their ak and make notes. and sometimes we were able to despite the fact that there's no official information we were able to identify some real cases where we saw that service charter tankers actually were loading gasoline and diesel for the african market so we were able to find a length recipe stis is the way we were able to see a swell of how dirty the. products were that are being sent to africa. she takes us to one of the rare places in the port of amsterdam where we can get a bit closer to the tankers. all of this take for big head has like this two two loaves of defense a little bit a are big to tank respondents could easily feel like eighteen hours or twenty hours and they're loading especially when there are a lot of lending while they are loading it's still the flows come from different techs here so they start with one and then the next one will be there will be so you see the whole infrastructure yeah this is interesting yes you can call it like highways and national roads and small roads but it up this makes the blending or the like very efficient so yeah ok so in each pipeline you have different products yes or no and it could be that those two tankers are actually commuting they call the jetty to jetty. and maybe there then if they would be commuting are they using the infrastructure of the of the terminal sometimes you see two tankers start each other and then they're only doing ship to ship operations so they don't use the infrastructure but i just are like they belong to. we ask if there are any ships chartered by swiss companies setting sail for west africa. i checked my databases to see like what ships are in the port today these two once a group does that not a light they just came from the us but we see that they correctly traits with west africa to look may or to lactose nigeria. money had to has downloaded a nap on her phone that allows her to monitor the shipping traffic in ports around the world including amsterdam. at all just a little spot the rep bots are actually seems to so. you can see there's a lot of takers and we are here and you can see the blue to us is here so let's let's see what they actually what information they get so i give them a picture of the ship so it's a crude oil tanker many times you can see black little bits to fess up truck where this ship has been and then you can see it's the flag of the tanker is from behind us it's two hundred thirty meters length almost it's in port ok but nothing about the owner of the people that trans though but it's very difficult is to find out that was actually written to get tinkered with owning the cargo and of course days at a most interesting people because they are instructing the tanker to what to do where to go but to blent it's not a public information at all that it's it's shipping intelligent database where you have to pay for as well so it so that but it's the only way to get some more information about it. that's all we learned but public guy had access to this information. this was companies maybe a dozen small amounts but also like the big ones like fee to. my curia are very big in dismissed as model actually they're very good at it they are very good in creating this very bad quality fuels and and it is because they are present all along the supply chain so they have started to capacity in strategic location to many different places they even have refineries they even have to have access to hundreds of tankers so they are able to collect all those different intermediate products and to use it whenever it's most profitable for them and they can even make a lot of money with it. there's something else most of the west african countries have crude oil deposits they even have refineries. this is another thing public eye has shed light on. six brothers because it is paradoxical but these countries are exporting low sulfur all all over the world and especially to europe and getting health endangering fuels back and retire settles with us. why does a country like ghana imported bad fuels if it has good quality crude oil and even its own refinery dance moves always make the. noise of the witnesses in and around . the good news. the good news is that this time we'll be able to ask directly why the refinery doesn't supply gonna with fuel. we discovered that it's an old state building dating back to nine hundred sixty seven well before the oil deposits were discovered in twenty ten that had previously processed crude oil from nigeria. in its heyday the refinery met up to fifty percent of domestic demand to any sell into debt before shutting down and leaving the field clear for private importers. the refinery started operating again in early twenty sixteen the liberalization of pump fuel prices and investments by international financial institutions has made it profitable again. the reopening coincided with the arrival of a new director. i'm very bullish about this reform where we came in in july last year they said it couldn't be done they said we couldn't run it for more than three weeks so it would break down where they run. it continuously since the fourth of february this year after we made certain adjustments and it's working perfectly we are getting better than expected in youth on all the imports that we've done we finished refining our first million barrels we made a decent profit on it our second million barrels is currently what is being run at the moment and we've booked our third cargo so the only thing is working well the old lady is working well but she's going to get better because there are certain adjustments that we have to make that are being made so that all it is doing well and she's going to get better that's the official position of the government of ghana everything is fine but then you who see who represents the interests of the importance including a swiss trading companies is frankly doubtful about the state refineries chances. politicians him up you know i'm a great businessman why miss comments come and governance is more of a social service it has a redistributive rule that thinking doesn't run in business if you look at profits you look at viability you have thing at the margins when you have businessman i think about competition when you're in the business man the point is not think about competition in terms of business it's about competition in terms of votes the two of them are not the same ok so a refinery is a real business and its would be viable when government takes its self out of it it will either be viable where we have swiss investors with all that you can do to run have been investing in refineries in done. the refinery produces forty five thousand barrels a day not bad for a moribund operation and surprise surprise it produces good quality fuels to the chagrin of the importance or frankly the truth is that the refined products we make here are better quality than we can ever before we are producing high grade low so for us or your diesel. again you find out the importers bread and they blend with. the p.k. dual purpose kerosene. to get to the right quantity of the right volume and spec in ghana we don't have to do that you know that they are making big money this restraint is companies with that. do you think they want to fight for their territory. well the interesting thing is that we. we don't see it as a bad thing because if you're fighting it means you're competing. and competition is good. and that's why i am i'm very pro-business i'm very pro private sector because ultimately if you up the game because your state companies have upped the game the private sector would do this or. that were five countries in eastern africa among them kenya decided at the end of twenty thirteen to adopt fuel quality standards close to european ones. they made this your appeal to the decision had no negative impact on consumer prices you have has no reduction in tax revenues or government subsidies is only simply managed to limit the profits of the traders who were supplying inferior products or for their labor for the for the produce more escape. resected if you lead a very franks to various studies conducted by organized nations such as the world bank or the united nations environment program we have been able to calculate that the cost of bringing these fuels up to the european quality level would be very low . when you would like anything or two cents per liter of gasoline or diesel do so badly truisms in two cents per lisa surely the swiss companies could try a bit harder. look take take all the swiss guys who want to do this. in for money everybody needs to make profits do you want to keep employment and also to want to push profits to just sell this who also make investment and generate employment elsewhere so even though you look up profit as money but that money is actually having an economic value and implication to everybody. so it's not just money it's an economic. situation so how are doing the east african countries they doing i think is a better answer but i think it's also so who is the agree with you it has to be done so. replied it was let's you know this is a political decision and one's political decisions are made business men follow. government wants to deliver price at the second level businessman can deliver it at that level if the quality is low and if you decide to keep the quality no you can't blame the businessman i think the people are no good because it's good to be good people are actually good because the system compels them to be good. but public i says things aren't quite as simple as that. organisation these are but there is a well organized lobby of fuel importers in canada if you know they're in this sector they're often conflicts of interest between politicians and their entourage which interferes in business or in the effects they are often directly or indirectly themselves the owners of importing companies are going to not want this to be known so they try to obscure what is sometimes ethically questionable business methods. to approach african governments need to improve their standards but that doesn't mean the swiss oil traders can do nothing they could and should begin delivering european quality to africa immediately you ain't going to treat it . as none of this is illegal the only pressure the n.-g. o. can bring to bear is to question the reputation of swiss trading companies but will they can. on the african side another solution is taking shape. for the first time. we are saying that just like you have in europe we're going to use market forces to be more efficient to be more competitive to drive the standards and the quality up to protect ourselves. if we don't do that all the more arguments all the good things that should be done cannot be done because if you. don't put yourself into a place where you can outcompete. there's no way you're going to survive because charity is a very risky business but this restraining companies they are not doing charity often on topic no they're not doing charity or philanthropy and they are exactly coming from this capitalist model as you say they are doing a capitalist model and if we don't have our own capitalist business model that is able to complete its work. then we are. trying to find back it no longer wants to accept these bad fuels and watch the profits of the trading giant sanj now each would like to join in the dance in the hope of setting its own template league. earth the home worth saving google india's tell stories of creative people and innovative projects around the world ideas to protect the climate and boost green energy solutions by global ideas been by a series of global three thousand on d. w. and online. how the germans came together in one nation from showing the monument to chancellor although fun bismark. the history of the germans has been shaped like great coolers. ice well always to bring my royal college of that to protect christendom and spread find truth. that he plays with the focus. all week to fall back a bit to the enemy in toppling and steered by courageous decisions to the bottom alcohols this you chose your masters reserve or seek the crown of our room from god and not from his presumptuous servant. this whole plan stockroom if you live tomorrow we will have defeated the enemy will never see one another again cause. we must full peace place blame the germans for every move on double play. live. this is. from berlin tonight europe you know once again by standing up to the united states over the iran nuclear deal european union leaders demanding a total exemption from economic sanctions over iran if washington says no a european walled may be used to shield european companies we'll get the latest from the e.u. leaders summit in the bulgarian capital sofia also coming up medical workers racing to contain an outbreak of ebola in the democratic republic.