A DRIVER told how her car broke down in the middle of a busy motorway after faulty fuel from a Greenock garage wrecked her vehicle.

Anna Blyth, 26, had her engine badly damaged after filling up with £40 of petrol at the BP garage in Branchton.

After leaving the station in Inverkip Road she made it just half a mile towards Inverclyde Royal Hospital, in Gleninver Road, before her car broke down.

It was the second time there had been a problem with fuel contamination in four months, according to Trading Standards.

Anna said: "I had to phone the AA and they towed it to Charlie Cullen Motors in Port Glasgow for me.

"The mechanic had a look at the car and removed the petrol from the tank, where we found a gallon of water with it. He told me he had just seen another car with the exact same problem after using the garage in Branchton Road.

"I visited BP at Branchton and they said it was likely to be a fault with the fuel tanker and advised me to contact BP customer services which I did." Anna got her car back from the garage three days later with a bill for £142 - but her misery wasn't over.

She said: "The next day I was driving to work in Glasgow when the car stalled twice at traffic lights, chugging randomly and losing power.

"On the advice of the mechanic, I added more petrol. On the way home from work it seemed to be chugging more, and the mechanic said to get it down the motorway slowly to him.

"The car broke down on the motorway, I had no power and was surrounded by cars doing 70mph, while I was unable to go faster than 5mph. It was only by sheer luck that I made it across into the hard shoulder." Again Anna had to be rescued by the AA, which towed her car back to the garage in Port Glasgow. The fuel tank was removed and emptied, where it was found that water and grit had now filtered all the way through to the engine.

Anna said: "I got the car back a day later and the engine management light came on during the first journey. I took it back to mechanic to check what the fault was, but he could find nothing.

"It stayed on for three months before finally going off just last week." After a wrangle with BP's head office, involving having to fax mechanic reports, call-out bills and receipts for the work done, the company agreed a £300 compensation payment for what they called 'inconvenience and disappointment'.

Anna added: "I now think maybe the cash I accepted wasn't adequate for the danger I was put in.

"What happened to me on the motorway was very scary.

"It has been a lot of bother and inconvenience which has lasted over a long period of time.

"I was left in danger and I can't help feeling this could have been easily avoided." A spokeswoman for BP admitted there had been problems at the garage but said motorists had been fully compensated.

She said: "We did experience a problem some months ago where we identified water in the tanks, we took immediate action to isolate these tanks.

"Significant work has been done to resolve the matter and everything is now back to normal. A small number of vehicles were affected.

"We are unable to go into individual claims, or action taken, but the matter was rectified as soon as possible after the problem occurred and those motorists affected compensated.

"BP is unable to say how water got into the tanks." Meanwhile, oil giant BP is still in the worldwide spotlight after it made headlines when the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded in April, killing 11 and injuring others.

With more than 5,000 barrels of oil a day escaping into the water, the environmental disaster has quickly become one of the worst in history. Despite hoping to have finally plugged the leak on Friday, experts estimate the clean-up bill could cost BP around £1 billion.