DMEA: No permit for Tema and Egypt goes green

Environmental concerns were at the heart of the downstream headlines in MEA this week with Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) saying that a proposed new refinery is unlikely to be given a permit, while Egypt is planning to establish a bioethanol plant.

Ghana’s EPA this week said that a proposed new refining project at Tema is unlikely to be built owing to environmental concerns. The proposed site of the Sentuo Oil Refinery is in the Tema Newtown Waterland, a wetland catchment of Chemu Lagoon.

Sentuo’s request for a permit was submitted in December 2019 as part of plans to create a plant with a sour crude processing capacity of 30,000-60,000 barrels per day (bpd). The chosen plot covers an area of 217 acres (87.8 hectares) which has been leased for a period of 60 years.

The EPA has identified the area as a wetland and a buffer zone for flooding, adding that the area is too close to Tema Newtown and would add to existing congestion.

Egypt’s Petroleum Ministry intends to invest $100mn into a new bioethanol producing firm. The ministry plans to establish the Egyptian Company for Bioethanol on land belonging to state-owned hydrocarbons production giant Egyptian General Petroleum Co. (EGPC) in the port of Damietta.

In recent years the Egyptian government has mandated the petroleum ministry to reduce the country’s energy and refined petroleum products’ deficit through making better use of domestic and imported crude by moving up the value-added chain of petroleum products. The petroleum ministry made great strides in fulfilling its mandate by almost closing the deficit in the second half of 2020, narrowing it down to $54mn, according to figures released by the central bank.