The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has issued a dire public safety warning, vehemently cautioning citizens against the highly dangerous, and often fatal, practice of rushing to accident scenes to siphon fuel or LPG from overturned tanker trucks.
The warning, delivered by the Chief Executive Officer of the NPA, Godwin Edudzi Tameklo, comes amid increasing reports of residents risking their lives to collect highly volatile petroleum products leaking from crashed vehicles across the country.
Major Threat to Life: The Price of GH¢250
Speaking forcefully at the National LPG Forum in Accra on Thursday, November 27, Mr. Tameklo described the practice as “extremely dangerous” and a “major threat to public safety,” emphasizing the sheer volatility of both petrol and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) in accident scenarios.
He stressed that the economic gain from siphoning fuel—estimated by him to be a few hundred Ghana cedis—is not worth the catastrophic risk of explosions.
“The major accidents that have occurred within the downstream often tend to be associated with LPG. I want to use this platform to encourage as many of our countrymen and women that when an LPG or fuel tanker is down, please don’t go with your gallon or cylinder,” he pleaded.
He directly confronted the public’s rationale for engaging in the perilous activity:
“Your life is more important than GHȼ200 or GHȼ250. If you have life, [you can get the GHȼ250], but you go and fetch petroleum products simply because there is an accident. Beyond it being a question of theft, why do you want to risk your life because at that point anything can happen.”
High Volatility and Historical Disasters
The NPA’s caution is underpinned by historical tragedies where such incidents have resulted in mass fatalities and severe burns.
When a tanker carrying thousands of liters of highly combustible product is compromised, any spark—from a dropped metal canister, a running engine, or even static electricity—can trigger a massive explosion.
LPG, in particular, poses an acute threat. It is stored under pressure and, when released, rapidly creates an invisible cloud of gas that is heavier than air, settling in low areas. This gas cloud is intensely flammable and can be ignited by a source far away from the crash site.
Mr. Tameklo’s intervention serves as a necessary reminder that public curiosity and the desire for free fuel must be overridden by an awareness of the deadly physics at play when large volumes of petroleum products are involved in a crash.
The NPA is urging citizens to maintain a safe distance (ideally several hundred meters) and allow trained emergency services to secure the scene.
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