Page 10 - AfrOil Week 18 2020

AfrOil POLICY AfrOil
The Tema plant is Ghana’s only re nery (Photo: The Publisher)
Union authorities: Ghana must exploit cheap oil to help Tema refinery
GHANA
TRADE union authorities have urged the Ghanaian government to take advantage of low oil prices to buy cheap crude for the country’s sole re nery.
The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) has been operating at under half its 45,000 barrel per day (bpd) nameplate capacity since an explosion at its distillation unit in January 2017, resulting in the shutdown of one of its furnaces. e plant has also struggled to afford oil imports and would need major upgrades to process local crude.
In an open letter to Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, the Tema District Council of Labour (TDCL), part of Ghana’s Trades Union Congress (TUC), said that buying extra oil now would lead to lower fuel prices.
“ is will go a long way to help reduce the prices of petroleum products and sell at realis- tic prices, make TOR pro table and ensure that there is adequate supply of the petroleum prod- ucts on the market,” the TDCL stated.
The council has repeatedly warned that the re nery is at risk of closure, which would
increase Ghana’s reliance on fuel imports. e government has been scouting for investors to repair and modernise the plant, thus far without success.
TOR announced in December that it had reached a deal to process oil on behalf of Wood- eld Energy Resources. It is a tolling agreement, meaning that instead of buying oil itself, the re nery will charge Wood eld a fee for process- ing it, and will not own the nished products. TOR has not provided an update since then on the deal’s implementation.
The refinery was rocked by a scandal last month when its head, a former Goldman Sachs banker, was forced to step down a er US reg- ulators sued him for allegedly arranging bribes while he was working at the nancial group.
Asante Berko, aged 46, resigned a er only four months as the plant’s director. He is accused of arranging for an energy company to send at least $2.5mn through a Ghana-based interme- diary to government o cials while working at Goldman’s investment-banking unit. Berko resigned from the bank in December 2016.™
Nigeria not likely to change oil benchmark
NIGERIA
NIGERIA’S government is reportedly satis ed with a benchmark oil price of $30 per barrel for its 2020 budget, even though world crude mar- kets have remained weak.
A source in the Budget O ce of the Federa-
tion told e Punch at the weekend that the fed-
eral government was not looking to make any
more changes to the benchmark price. 
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 18 06•May•2020