DMEA: Ghana offers optimism on Tema

This week, DMEA looks at the voicing of optimism about the rehabilitation of Ghana’s only oil refinery.

Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo provided an update on efforts to repair and reinstate capacity at the country’s Tema refinery.

In a speech to mark Labour Day celebrations, Akufo-Addo said: “Intense efforts are being made to rehabilitate the Tema Oil Refinery [TOR], to enable it contribute to stabilising petroleum prices, which should see the light of day very soon.”

The 45,000 barrel per day (bpd) facility has been plagued by issues since an explosion at its distillation unit in early 2017 and was closed completely between July 2020 and January 2021. Outages have been experienced at the crude distillation and fluid catalytic cracking units, while only one of the CDU’s furnaces is currently operational, giving the 56-year-old facility an effective throughput capacity of 30,000 bpd.

Reports in May 2021 suggested that the refinery had depleted all of its feedstock, with operations halted for maintenance and repair works to begin.

Earlier this year, Minister for Public Enterprises Joshua Cudjoe said the government was seeking strategic partners willing to provide the capital required to rehabilitate TOR which requires extensive repair work.

“Given the revenue constraints that the state has at the moment and capitalisation of TOR to enable it to turn around, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, would let you know and I support that we won’t use tax money to go and fix it,” he said.