The newly constituted board of directors of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) can turn the country’s premier oil refinery into a profitable institution if allowed to stay focused on its core mandate without irregular interference from external interests, the newly constituted board has told the media.
President Akufo-Addo on Monday, March 18, 2024, in a letter signed by the Secretary to the President, Nana Bediatuo Asante and addressed to the Minister for Energy, Matthew Opoku Prempeh (MP), announced his decision to constitute a new 11-member board to be chaired by a member of the previous board, Mr. Leon KendonAppenteng, who has over 35 years professional experience in commerce, trade and manufacturing to his credit.
The other members of the board are Kofi MocumbiTagoe, the newly appointed Managing Director of TOR; Dr. Antoinette Tsiboe-Darko; Edith Sapara-Grant; Nana AkuaBakomaPrempeh; Lorraine Crabbe Ababio; Joseph Mensah Browne; Alfred George Thompson; Paul Kwaku Kyei Ofori; Kwame Baffoe; and Herbert Ato Morrison.
The board is expected to be sworn into office on Tuesday, March 26, 2024 by the Energy Minister, Matthew Opoku Prempeh.
Union Concerns
Ahead of the formal swearing-in of the board, Bernard Owusu, the chairman of the General Transport, Petroleum, and Chemical Workers Union (GTPCWU) of the Trades Unions Congress (TUC), one of the small unions associated with the working body of TOR, is on record to have called for the dismissal of the board chair nominee, over what he claims to be his involvement in the suspended Torentco–TOR partnership arrangement.
Sources close to the TOR board explain that while it is true that the new board chair nominee was a member of the previous board, there is no evidence to show that he was engaged in any shady deal concerning the Torentco botched deal.
TOR-Torentco Deal
In June 2021, the Minister for Energy appointed a three-member Interim Management Committee (IMC) to oversee the affairs of the refinery as part of government’s effort to restructure the company.
One of their terms of reference among others was ‘Receiving and assessing viable partnerships for TOR’. The IMC during their tenure received two proposals from local and international companies. The companies were Intercontinental Energy-Dubai and Africafinch-Dubai.
The expression of interest drive continued when the new board of directors took over. The IMC had reviewed the proposal of Intercontinental Energy and approved it before the new board of directors was sworn in March 2022.
The new board received a proposal from Decimal Capital and invited all three companies to do a presentation as reflected in the board of directors’ minutes of April 7,2022. The proposal from Decimal Capital received unanimous approval from the new board.
The other proposals required a government guarantee which was rejected by the Ministry of Finance. TOR hired a transaction advisor, and a project implementation committee was set up by the management to negotiate the proposal from Decimal Capital.
This negotiation took six months and the agreed term sheet was sent to the Ministry of Energy and State Interest and Governance Authority (SIGA) for their approval. These approvals were given and the terms were to be incorporated in a lease agreement.
Decimal Capital as part of their proposal will incorporate an SPV to sign the lease agreement with TOR. This practice is very common in corporate transactions. The company,Torentco Asset Management Limited, was incorporated in January 2023 as a special-purpose vehicle.
A Daily Guide Report