Management of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) has initiated processes to seek strategic partners to help build a modern greenfield refinery to refine 100,000 barrels of oil per day.
The new refinery, to be located at Prampram in the Greater Accra Region, is expected to cost about $3.5 billion.
It forms part of government’s efforts to position Ghana as the petroleum hub in the sub-region in terms of infrastructure to attract the right investors.
Currently, TOR has a total capacity of about 45,000 barrels per day, which fall short of the country’s requirements of 70,000 barrels daily.
This was made known when Energy Minister John Peter Amewu toured the company in Tema.
The Manager Director of TOR, Isaac Osei, disclosed that his outfit had already spent a lot of money to rehabilitate and maintain their plants as a result of failure to conduct four rounds of maintenance since 2009.
According to him, the first has to do with the integrity of the plant.
“The plant has not been shut down for maintenance since 2009 so we missed the opportunity to shut down in 2011, 2013 and 2015. So once the furnace blew, we had the duty to close the refinery and do a major rehabilitation of the entire plant from utility to CDU and to the RFCC,” the minister revealed.
He mentioned that as part of the maintenance process, TOR would start building a new water treatment plant instead of spilling the chemicals into the drains.
Touching on financial and administrative situations of the company, the MD stated that the state refinery is bedeviled with a lot of legacy debts.
Mr. Amewu revealed that the company was in arrears when the new management took office in January and that steps were being taken to return it to profitability.
“Apart from the huge backlog of legacy debts, the government has supported us which has improved our balance sheet but not cleaned it entirely because not everything has been taken off our balance sheet. As a result of the impaired balance sheet and the fact that there was no audited account since 2012, we could not do any business because nobody will give you money or offer you facility so management and board decided that the best thing for us to do was to try to do update,” he explained.
He continued, “Through our auditors KPMG, we have completed and signed off from 2013, 2014 and finished the 2015 to be signed off. In this month when will have our board meeting. The 2016 accounts are being prepared so that before the end of next year we can finish the 2017 and work on the 2018. So I can assure Hon. Minister, by next year we will be current without account.”
He said TOR would install flow metres to know what is coming in and what is being taken out in order to help rake in the accurate revenue.
After touring the facility, the minister assured management that strategic partners would come on board, adding, “We want to see TOR back not on paper, we want to see TOR back in reality. We want TOR to work and the balance sheet of TOR to reflect the reality and not make any propaganda of the current situation.
“But this government, this current president believes that we should be able to turn the situation around; that I can give you the assurance. That is why we have no other person but Isaac handling this particular position. My appeal to the workforce here is to give him the maximum collaboration and support,” Mr. Amewu added.
Source: Daily Guide
| Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. |
