Executive Secretary of the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC), Duncan Amoah has called on government to invest in the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) to prevent it from collapsing as COPEC investigations show that the situation at the refinery is dire and maintaining its day to day operations has become a challenge.
Mr. Amoah urged that efforts must be made at all cost to save the country’s only refinery from turning into a “white elephant”.
He spoke on some challenges the refinery faced saying,
“Clearly three things are involved here: we have had in the past poor management practices where you expect certain things to be done right yet they are done the other way; We have also not had the right kind of investments; and retooling and equipment, some of which were actually fixed in the ’80s and 70s.”
He then urged the government to pay attention to investing properly in the refinery since it could help run the economy.
“We think that the right investment must be made in the refinery. Refineries are profitable or else you wouldn’t see them in our neighbouring country, Nigeria. Dangote is struggling to put up a 650 barrels per day refinery. Ghana has this asset and that if we did put in the right investment, it should be able to serve all of us.
“Again, we have said that once TOR is working, you are getting fuel security. At least, if your harbour or the anchorage of where fuel comes into the country doesn’t function, your local refinery will be able to process fuel to run your economy. Unfortunately, the refinery is on its knees as we speak and we do think that authorities should pay some attention to investing properly into the refinery immediately.”
TOR Shut Down
The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) was shut down two years ago due to lack of crude oil which serves as raw material for the refinery and the managements’ inability to raise letters of credit to import crude oil for processing.
Checks at that time revealed that, the last time TOR managed to import crude was between December 2016 and January 2017. Further checks also revealed that TOR shut down the Crude oil Distillation Unit (CDU) after it finished processing the remainder of some 2 million barrels of crude it had in stock.
Between that period, the Residue Fluid Catalytic Cracker (RFCC) had been processing atmospheric residue.
In effect, both the RFCC and CDU were to be out of operation until TOR was able to raise credit to import crude oil.
But institutions like the integrated Centre for Democratic Development (ISODEC), believed the closure of the refinery was a deliberate attempt by the government to convert it into a tank farm, for the setting up of a new refinery in the Western Region.
In January 2019, government announced an ambitious plan to build a new oil refinery to replace the Tema Oil Refinery within the next three to four years.
