John Ankromah in Accra
Ghana’s minister of energy says the country has not put its 45,000Barrels of Oil Per Day (BOPD) refinery on the auction block.
The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) is currently under rehabilitation. It has received $30Million from the country’s Finance Ministry for the first phase of rehabilitation. It is looking toward a $37.7Million for the second phase. Ghana imported all the 1Million tonnes of gasoline and 98% of the 1.7Million tonnes of gasoil it consumed in 2013, according to figures published in April 2014 by the country’s Energy commission. At full capacity, TOR can deliver 2.24Million tonnes of petroleum products.
The country requires so much volume of gasoil to fire its thermal plants, due to dearth of adequate supply of natural gas.
Armah Kofi Buah told the Ghanaian Parliament that the Joint Venture Agreement between the country’s only refinery, located in the port town of Tema, and Petro Saudi (a private enterprise not to be confused with the Saudi Arabia state hydrocarbon company), was to bring in a player with the capital to assist the refinery to import crude oil.
“The partnership is not to divest any asset of Tema Oil Refinery”, the minister was widely quoted in the local media as saying.
“Currently, TOR is not operating at full capacity due to operational, financial and managerial difficulties”, Petro Saudi says on its website. “It has been recognized that there is room for improvement in different areas which will help increase the overall efficiency of the operations. TOR has also been experiencing difficulties securing the necessary crude oil for a reliable output.
“PetroSaudi offers to put its expertise, and insights to use in order to quickly restore the profitability of the Ghanaian refinery”.
Project agreements, Comprehensive Business Plan, Government Consent and Support Agreement (GCSA), Shareholder Agreement, Offtaker Agreements and other documents, among others, are being reviewed and negotiated by the Attorney General’s Department, Ministry of Petroleum, TOR, Ministry of Finance and PetroSaudi, Mr. Buah told the Parliament. The GCSA and other related agreements would be submitted to the Cabinet for approval and thereafter, submitted to Parliament for ratification, Mr Buah said.
He hoped that these documents would show up at the Parliament by the second half of the 2015.
