Page 12 - DMEA Week 13 2022

DMEA REFINING DMEA

Investor calls for JV to

revamp Ghana’s Tema

AFRICA THE head of a Ghanaian investment firm this country rather than simply exporting it.
week called on the country’s government to In February, Minister for Public Enterprises
form a joint venture (JV) with international oil Joshua Cudjoe said the government was seek-
companies for the rehabilitation of the Tema ing strategic partners willing to provide the
Oil Refinery (TOR). capital required to rehabilitate TOR which
Speaking during a forum in Accra on artifi- requires extensive repair work.
cial intelligence and sustainable development, “Given the revenue constraints that the state
Dr Chris Kpodar, Chairman and CEO of Solo- has at the moment and capitalisation of TOR to
mon Investments Ghana said that outsourcing enable it to turn around, the Finance Minister,
some of the responsibility for the repair work Ken Ofori Atta, would let you know and I sup-
presented a “win-win” solution. port that we won’t use tax money to go and fix
The 45,000 barrel per day (bpd) facility has it,” he said.
been plagued by issues since an explosion at its Reports in May 2021 suggested that the
distillation unit in early 2017 and was closed refinery had depleted all of its feedstock, with
completely between July 2020 and January operations halted for maintenance and repair
2021. Outages have been experienced at the works to begin.
crude distillation and fluid catalytic cracking Meanwhile, state utility ECG said in Decem-
units, while only one of the CDU’s furnaces ber that it had cut electricity supplies to TOR
is currently operational, giving the 56-year- following the facility’s failure to pay $4.3mn of
old facility an effective throughput capacity of debt. “We’ve pursued [TOR] for some time to
30,000 bpd. pay the bill, but unfortunately, all our [efforts
Dr Kpodar specified that Ghana would were] not yielding, so we were compelled to
benefit from such a relationship through cut the lines,” according to the leader of a task-
knowledge transfer in the implementation force set up to recover the missing payment. He
of the latest technologies, and by leveraging added that ECG will restore power only if the
Ghanaian crude to create further value for the state refinery pays at least 30% of the debt.™

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