ADNOC Mixes Up Diesel And Petrol. Woopsie.

إلى العين وعودة (Photo credit: Abdulla Al Muhairi)

Some companies will do anything to get behind a trending topic these days, which means we're all confronted with the awful spectacle of Mike and Bob down the local hardware shop doing their really amazing and totally funny version of the Harlem Shake. Two weeks too late. Do click on that link, BTW. It's worth it...

But ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Distribution Company) has gone for it in a big way. Clearly stunned by the amount of coverage the recent horsemeat in beef scandal has created (let alone donkey in South Africa and then pork in Waitrose Essentials meatballs and poo bacteria in Ikea's cakes), they've tried to get in on the act.

They've been filling petrol engined cars with diesel. This, as any fule kno, breaks them. Apparently someone filled the wrong reservoir at Al Ain's Al Yaher petrol station, resulting in the pump attendants blithely filling fifteen cars with the black stuff instead of the green stuff. You can only imagine they just kept going until the line of broken cars tailed back and blocked the forecourt so much they had to stop...

Abu Dhabi paper The National is a great deal more terse on the story than Gulf News, which rather appears to revel in it. ADNOC has offered to repair the damaged cars and pay for care hire in the meantime, which is fair enough I suppose. The station's been closed, presumably as they empty and clean the affected tank and pump.

Mind you, it's getting harder and harder to get the right thing in the right thing around here these days, isn't it? I think I might start slipping copies of Olives in Beirut covers and see if I can't drum up some coverage myself...