EVERY motorist fears filling up the car with the wrong kind of fuel, but if you’re a Russian billionaire and it happens to your yacht it can be a very expensive mistake indeed.

Roman Abramovich, the 38-year-old owner of Chelsea Football Club, was said to be “disappointed” last night after learning that his £72m yacht Pelorus had been filled with the “wrong type of fuel” while in Malta.

Filling up the craft, one of at least three owned by Abramovich, reportedly costs £120,000, but getting it up and running after the mistake will cost considerably more. The lengthy process will mean the engine having to be cleaned out and could cost as much as £1m, according to yachting experts.

“The engineers discovered that the fuel that had been used was ‘incompatible’ — I cannot confirm what happened exactly, we still don’t know,” Abramovich’s Maltese agent, Simon Borg, is reported to have said. “Definitely Mr Abramovich would have been inconvenienced,” he added.

The billionaire had planned to fly to meet Pelorus in the middle of last month and was intending to head for a family holiday with his wife, Irina, and their five children. The incident forced him to change his plans and abandon the trip while the damage was repaired and the family are believed to have flown instead to Sardinia and the boat followed them there at the end of last month.

Pelorus is the world’s fifth longest yacht and at 377ft it is longer than Chelsea Football Club’s home pitch at Stamford Bridge. It has a crew of 40, who reportedly once cleaned several shops in Malta out of luxury food to feed guests.

Abramovich’s Chelsea team take on bitter rivals Arsenal in today’s Community Shield and the tycoon often entertains his favourite players on board.

This summer he treated his star midfielder Frank Lampard and the player’s family to a break on the ocean wave.

Abramovich’s yachts are famous for their accessories, with one reportedly boasting its own submarine to detect mines. Another of his yachts, the 355ft £60m cruiser Le Grand Bleu, was called “big and ugly and new-fangled” by singer Shirley Bassey after it blocked the view from her Monte Carlo flat.

Abramovich also owns the £72m Ecstasea which is rumoured to have an ex-SAS crew. He currently has a fourth yacht under construction.

The tycoon, who is also the governor of the Siberian region of Chukotka, was ranked second in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List with a £7.5 billion fortune made mainly through his oil business, Sibneft.

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