According to many of the invoices, delivery trucks arrive with "too much regular unleaded" that "would not fit" in the station's UST, said [image-nocss] the report.
At a Conoco station, records show 700 gallons of regular unleaded were pumped into the super unleaded storage tank on October 17. At a Phillips 66, 1,000 gallons of regular unleaded were pumped into higher-octane tanks on October 10. At a Shell, records show 101 gallons and 760 gallons of regular unleaded pumped into its super unleaded tanks on October 1 and October 6, respectively, the report said.
And at another Shell station, the delivery invoices indicate within a two-week period between October 3 and October 15, 500 gallons, 416 gallons and 900 gallons of regular unleaded were mixed in with super unleaded on three occasions. It added.
KHOU alleged that records show Gulshan Enterprises, which provided the gasoline and owns some of the stations, approved the deliveries.
After no one at the company returned the news outlet's phone calls, a reporter stopped by the company's offices, but nobody could or would answer his questions. An unidentified man who would also not answer the questions ran down the stairs of Gulshan's offices, and another man told the reported that he was a supervisor, but did not want to see the invoices for himself. "Talk to the concerned person, I've got nothing to do with that," he told the KHOU reporter.
"We want to ensure that the consumer in Texas gets what they pay for," Todd Staples, Commissioner of the Texas Agriculture Department, which regulates compliance at the pump, told KHOU. "We dispatched a team of inspectors to these stations," he said. The inspectors analyzed the octane levels, first using hand-held testing machines and later sending off samples to a laboratory. And anyone that doesn't comply by the rules is subject to administrative penalties."
According to the report, the commissioner's investigation includes the Pasadena company Texas TransEastern Inc., which delivered the fuel and wrote up the invoices in question. KHOU was unable to find anyone at Texas TransEastern to answer questions either.
The company's president, J.J. Isbell later declined to go on camera, but sent the news outlet a statement (click here), which in part reads: "We take these allegations seriously and are looking into this matter. We have also implemented additional training to insure that if this occurred, we can prevent further incidents."
Of the 16 gas stations in question, KHOU said that it has learned that some are owned by Gulshan Enterprises, others are leased by individuals from Gulshan, and others are independently owned.
Click hereto view a list of stations.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.