The junior staff union of Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) has dismissed suggestions that the refinery cannot process oil from Ghana’s jubilee field in its current state.
According to some petroleum consultants, TOR will need an estimated 200 million dollars for retooling before it can refine the jubilee” high grade” crude.
Workers of the refinery recently embarked on a campaign to get Ghana’s oil refined at TOR.
Ghana loses millions of dollars annually over its failure to refine crude at the state refinery.
Citi FM’s Tema correspondent Elvis Washington visited the state owned oil refinery and interviewed the Chairman of the junior staff union of Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) Emmanuel Offoh who lamented, “those experts don’t know what they are saying! The refinery which we have can refine crude oil from any part of the world. Even this refinery has refined worse crude like what we have at Saltpond”.
The workers reveal that consistent operation of the refinery will save Ghana 2.3 million dollars.
Early on the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) demanded the state owned refinery guarantee maximum operational efficiency if Ghana’s crude is to be processed at the facility.
The refinery has over the years been saddled with debts due to mismanagement among others leading to a halt in its operations.
According to the Chairman Emmanuel Offoh the losses must be blamed on the irregular operation of the refinery.
“The losses came about due to the on and off,…… if for instance we shut down the plant and we are about to start it we spend about 2.3 million dollars to start the plant alone and these products are non recoverable products, the moment we start up we lose that product so when the plant is constantly on, the losses are minimized”, he stated.
By: Rabiu Alhassan/citifmonline.com/Ghana
