By Xinhua
Beijing : Environmental officials in China have said 144 gas stations and nine oil depots in the capital region would be closed by the end of May because of cost or safety issues connected with air quality regulations.
There are 1,442 gas stations in Beijing. So the closure will affect nearly 10 percent of the total.
All oil depots and gas stations in Beijing until the end of May will have to comply with vapour recovery rules, which are intended to guarantee air quality during the Olympics, a conference co-chaired by the environment, quality supervision and transportation bureaus was told last week.
Vapour recovery is used during the refuelling of gasoline storage tanks to reduce hydrocarbon emissions. A specially designed nozzle is used at the gas pumps to collect vapours from the vehicle’s gas tank and return these collected vapours to the service station’s underground storage tank.