Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh – Energy Minister
Government is vetting proposals from strategic partners who are seeking to help revive Tema Oil Refinery.
A committee made of officials of the Public Enterprise, State Interest and Governance Authority (SIGA) and Ministry of Energy is vetting the proposals to select the best out of them.
The 45,000 barrels per stream refinery, established by Ghana’s first president Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, is not in the position to refine crude, thereby forcing the oil-producing West African nation to rely largely on imported petroleum products.
The refinery currently rents its storage tanks to Bulk Distribution Companies for a fee.
Since 2017, the refinery has had four Managing Directors with the current being Jerry Kofi Hinson who assumed the post earlier this month.
In October 2021, Ghanaians were shocked following the massive rot uncovered by a three-member Interim Management Committee (IMC) at TOR.
The IMC was constituted by the Energy Ministry after the dismissal of the Managing Director, Francis Boateng, and his deputy Ato Morrison.
The IMC discovered the disappearance of a BDC client’s 105,927 litres of gas oil on September 4, the disappearance of another 18 drums of electrical cables worth GH¢10.4 million from the Technical Storehouse of TOR in April 2021, the wrongful loading of 252,000 litres of Aviation Turbine Kerosene (ATK) instead of regular Kerosene into BRV trucks at the loading gantry between September 21 and 25, the disappearance of the product (LPG) belonging to a client between 2012 and 2015, as a result of which TOR was indebted to the client to the tune of US$4.8 million, as confirmed by an Ernst and Young audit, and loss of naphtha to a BDC client.
In the process, fourteen top management executives were interdicted and are under investigation by the Economic and Organised Crime Organisation (EOCO).
Speaking at a press briefing last week, Energy Minister, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, said “as a country, we must collectively make every effort to put our refinery back to work.”
The Energy Minister, unhappy about the current state of the refinery, added that “every effort must be made to ensure that TOR comes back to work.”
In his view, if TOR had been refining crude, the benefits to the Ghanaian economy would have been huge.
Apart from guaranteeing job security for the workers, the minister said Ghana would have gotten residual products like kerosene, naphtha and bitumen from processing the crude.
By Vincent Kubi