Since man understood the importance of exchange as a means to compensate for what he needs but doesn’t have, the science of measurement began. The question of estimating the value of what I am giving in exchange for what I want and the question of ascertaining the value of what was paid for becomes critical, so critical that it is an entire industry. It is easy to accept money as a quick measurement of value for all things, thanks to the ingenuity of king Alyattes of Lydia, the Chinese Emperor in 700B.C and the European bank notes of the 16th century, money evolved and became standardised.
While money has gained standardisation from barter to banknotes, money is still evolving into the digital space of ones and zeros. Money’s acceptability as a unit of exchange is predicated on the assumption that it would be accepted by the other person as a unit of exchange. This brings me to my next line of thought, “ascertaining the value of what is to be purchased”. I will try to answer this in two schemes.
The question of what was paid for and how to know if one got value for what was paid for is ubiquitous across all industries and the LPG business is no different. Custody management and custody transfer are common ways by which LPG retailers lose money. The above average plant owner installs the weighbridge as a means to ascertain the quantity of product receipt in her storage. This is done by establishing the weight of the truck on full load and the weight of the truck after unloading. The difference is the net weight of the product received. The challenge with this method is that no two weigh bridges read the same.
From differences in tolerances to differences in calibration methodology, the weighbridge of the supplier is often usually going to read different from that of the supplied, the challenge is often reconciliation. If I as the supplied record a reading on my weighbridge that is different from the claims on the waybill of my supplier, say the difference is a negative difference and I just recorded a loss, is my supplier meant to balance me the net loss or is my supplier going to contend the accuracy of my weighbridge reading? How does the supplier meet the buyer halfway?
Growing up in Warri, against my wish, I accompanied my mum to the market. Common among market women is an agreed container of measurement usually referred to as a basket. This basket had no holes like a typical basket would, because it was used to measure grains such as beans, rice, corn and/or garri granules. The equivalent in the south west and north is the mudu. In all the times my mum bundled me to the market, I never saw her carry her own basket to the market and insisted that her preferred measuring container (her basket) be used to measure her grains.
Applying this logic of the sellers measuring device usually dominating the choice of device used –although with the inspection and consenting of the buyer- the LPG retailer shouldn’t ascertain quantity received by readings from her weighbridge or should they not? Unlike my mum a typical plant owner might situate her plant thousands of miles away from the LPG depot where the trucks are being loaded, thus preventing observation of the loading process by the buyer. In business of trust, someone has to give.
Should the burden of establishing accurate quantity supplied not be on the supplier? The capital outlay in building a depot is huge; from engineering, to works, to personnel and safety. But would it not be better for all LPG carrying trucks to have attached to it, a mobile meter that can measure the quantity of liquid that has left it? What if LPG trucks came with factory fitted or custom retrofitted load cells that could measure the weight in kg of LPG in its tanks per time? That way, the mutual suspicion between plant owners and depot owners on how faulty the other persons measuring device is, is eliminated and like the rice seller in Warri, I can see the basket you are using to measure my rice and we can both agree that we both saw 1kg written on the scale, which is what I paid for. The benefit of observation that most plant owners lack hitherto would be granted on the installation of a measuring device deployed at the point of discharge. This brings me to the end of my first scheme.
Every LPG shipment ideally carries a test analysis of the product it contains. This test reveals properties of the LPG it carries, chief among them is the density of the product. The density of the product (LPG) if accurate, is critical in estimating the net weight of the LPG in a typical truck all things being equal. Lack of standard laboratories at depots to ascertain the true molecular content and properties of LPG shipment, makes the parameters, especially density of the product false. If the density of the product is untrue, estimating the content in kilogram of the truck would be inaccurate. The benefits of what a complete petroleum analytical laboratory would do for our depots as it pertains to regaining the confidence of product buyers, especially LPG plant owners, cannot be over emphasised. If you have come this far in this article, you are looking for answers, solutions to an age long challenge and like you, I want one. The ideas prescribed here in are random musings of an engineer who found himself selling cooking gas.
Ekele Onuh Oscar
