The UK “Guardian” recently reported that “Five West African countries have announced measures to end the practice of European oil companies and traders exporting “African quality” diesel — highly polluting fuels that could never be sold in Europe.”

The countries are Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Ivory Coast, which “agreed to ban imports of high-sulphur diesel fuels as part of an initiative organised by the UN Environment Programme”. It is perhaps the first time that developing countries have taken collective action to control the quality of fuels for the purpose of improving population health and the environment in general. The five countries also agreed to upgrade their national refineries to bring locally produced diesel up to the same quality by 2020.

The fuel at the centre of this action is diesel fuel and its sulphur content quality is what prompted this decision. The non-governmental organisation Public Eye published a report last September that “accused” traders of “exporting fuels to West Africa with sulphur levels that are sometimes hundreds of times higher than European levels”.

This is true, but traders had a ready answer that they were exporting the fuel according to the specification demanded by those governments and it is up to these governments to raise the standard of fuels. The so-called “regulatory arbitrage” is a result of the huge difference between European specification and those in many other countries.

Sulphur in crude oil is a permanent component with varying levels. When crude oil is refined, sulphur also goes into the products at varying levels. However, sulphur is the nemeses of fuels, and the refining industry in the last 50 years or so has made great strides to treat fuels to lower and lower levels of sulphur content.

The emissions in the exhaust of diesel vehicles are sulphur and nitrogen oxides which are acidic and affect respiratory systems causing asthma. It also contains fine particles called “particulate matter PM”, which causes cancer. The combustion of sulphurous fuels also affects engines and equipment by corrosion that increases maintenance cost and shortens the life of engines.

A recent report by the World Bank and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that “air pollution is the third-biggest cause of death in poor and lower-middle income countries” with severe economic consequences and high cost of treating pollution-related diseases. The trend in diesel fuel sulphur content specification is to ultimately produce Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel (ULSD) with 10 parts per million (ppm) sulphur content by weight.

This is not just by the desire of the industry but by the action of governments and regulatory bodies.

In the last 15 years, the level of 50- to 10 ppm has been a reason for the high level of investments in de-sulphurising facilities in refineries around the world. The American Petroleum Institute estimated that the domestic refining industry has invested over $8 billion to comply with the new regulations with its attendant impact on product prices at the pump by between 5 to 25 cents per gallon.

The OECD countries are all almost at the lower level, which will be a great improvement by itself. This is in addition to allowing the application of modern emissions control devises that treat exhaust gases to even lower emissions of particulate matter.

Many countries outside the OECD are following, sometimes slowly but surely. Some countries introduced the 50 ppm grade alongside others as an interim solution. When Dubai started its public transport network of buses in 2007, low level sulphur in diesel fuel was not available in the UAE.

The authorities imported 50 ppm sulphur diesel to protect health and the environment and the well-being of the bus engines too. This is no longer the practice as low sulphur diesel is now produced in Ruwais.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait all have a clean fuel programme that involves a number of projects to produce low and ultra-low sulphur fuels to improve the local environment, protect health and equipment and at the same time maintain export markets demanding higher specification fuels.

In Iraq, the level of sulphur in domestically produced diesel is 10,000 ppm now while in the mid-1980s it was about 2,000 ppm. The de-sulphurising process units were hit during the war in 1991 as part of the bomb now and kill later policy. While it was not possible to repair these facilities during the ensuing embargo, it is a shame that after 13 years of no embargo these facilities are still idle.

Let us hope that all the Arab countries follow the example of the advanced countries in fuel specification very soon.

The writer is former head of the Energy Studies Department at the Opec Secretariat in Vienna.