The Ghana government has announced moves to establish a new oil refinery in the Western part of the West African country.
The country’s energy minister Boakye Agyarko has said that the new refinery worth 4 billion dollars will be able to refine about eight times more crude in terms of quantity than the current 20,000 barrels per day by the current Tema Oil Refinery situated in the Greater Accra Region.
He revealed to journalists in Accra on Wednesday that the building of a new refinery “is to create a hub in the Western Region where you have the refining, storage, transportation and trading all happening within an enclave. It will be largely export-oriented.”
“We’ve already put in place an implementation committee which is looking at all the facets and the regulations required,” he said.
The minister, Boakye Agyarko further noted that the government “sent out the various teams to look at all the other hubs that operate in the world. I believe that in the not too distant future – two, three years you will begin to see the actual manifestations of these developments.”
The announcement came barely a week after a local Energy Think Tank, the Institute of Energy security called for government to step in and address the leadership crisis at the Tema Oil Refinery.
In a statement released on Monday the Institute said “Today, technical and operational lapses, factionalism, vindictiveness, mismanagement, absence of teamwork, lack of due diligence have consumed Tema Oil Refinery and is causing financial loss to the state.”
It said recent happenings at TOR calls for immediate action and is therefore calling on the government to as a matter of urgency.
Source: Africafeeds.com / Fred Dzakpata
