Fuels & Lubricants Magazine

Lab Corner
PHOTO: www.pixabAy.com
6th Symposium of petroleum laboratories in the region
was held in Poreč, Croatia from 11th to 12th May, 2017.
The Symposium is an annual event in organisation of one
of representative laboratory or laboratory related institutions
from the country in the region. This year Symposium
had 78 participants from ten regional countries.
The main objective of the Symposium is exchange of
experience and knowledge which are closely related to
the Good laboratory practice (GLP), optimisation of
laboratory activities and organisation of proficiency testing
schemes.
The original idea to connect petroleum laboratory
representatives in region came from Mr. Ice Rikaloski
from OKTA, Macedonia. First Symposium was held in
Ohrid, Macedonia, then next five from Novi Sad Serbia,
Sarajevo Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kotor Montenegro
to Petrol Slovenia. With each new Symposium number
of participants grew and in time Universities and related
intuitions joined. It created synergy between laboratory
experiences and scientific achievements in the field.
Through mutual cooperation and networking, laboratories
are directly influencing the improvement in
quality of products on the market, improvement in
measurement’s precision and improvement in cooperation
with regional state bodies, customs, control houses,
laboratory equipment suppliers and Universities.
This year Symposium was organised by INA Refining
and Marketing laboratories and it was opened with
presentation related to 90 years of Sisak refinery. Among
others, presentation related to their activities were presented
by INA Central testing laboratory, INA Quality
control laboratory Rijeka refinery and INA Upstream
laboratory.
The main topics of this year Symposium were: possibilities
of development of petroleum laboratory related
to environmental requests, quality control, technical
competence and participation on the market; principles
of LEAN and FMEA methodologies; experiences in
accreditation of petroleum products laboratories and
flexible scope of accreditation; interpretation of Calibration
certificates and opportunities for higher precision in
measurement and methodology of forming the prices of
laboratory analysis.
Next Symposium will be organised by Makpetrol in
Ohrid, Macedonia in May 2017.