Page 4 - DMEA Week 03 2022

DMEA COMMENTARY DMEA

Concerns about Ghana’s new

refinery fall on deaf ears

Ghana’s EPA appears toothless in its battle against
the developer of a proposed new refinery at Tema.

AFRICA GHANA’S Environmental Protection Agency will not grant it is quite high given the evidence
(EPA) has voiced renewed concerns about the available to us.”
planned location of a new refinery at Tema. However, according to correspondence
WHAT: Despite the agency failing to provide a permit for between the company and the Electricity Com-
No environmental development, work is reported to have begun in pany of Ghana at the time, Sentuo had requested
permit was ever issued 2021. the relocation of two electricity pylons and was
for the development of However, with Ghana’s sole existing refinery due to pay $190,000 for the work.
the Sentuo Oil Refinery, continuing to deal with major debt and opera- Local news reports showed ongoing land
but work appears to be tional issues, the country has become increas- clearing work, which the Tema Development
ongoing anyway. ingly dependent on refined petroleum products. Corp. (TDC) said was limited to the construc-
tion of a wall.
WHY: Project detail Speaking at a dinner in Accra on January
The Environmental According to the original project proposal, Sen- 13, the EPA’s acting director of petroleum Kojo
Protection Agency (EPA) tuo Oil Refinery Ltd intends to build a 60,000 Agbenor-Efunam said that the agency’s environ-
raised concerns about its barrel per day (bpd) refinery – also known as mental impact assessment (EIA) also showed
proposed location in what Tema III – at Tema Newtown, a wetland catch- that the project site was “very close” to a residen-
it described as a wetland ment of Chemu Lagoon. tial area, reiterating the issues noted in Q2 last
area. The Sentuo project company’s request for a year.
permit was submitted in December 2019 as part “We saw that this is a refinery that you’re
WHAT NEXT: of plans to create a plant to process light, sour building about 15 metres from the nearest res-
The Tema Development crude over two identical phases, each with a pro- idence. So it is like you are placing a bomb very
Corp. (TDC) has denied cessing capacity of 30,000 bpd. close to the people and any time something goes
that the wetland The $796mn first phase will produce 464,500 wrong and there is a blast, you are going to wipe
designation is accurate, tonnes per year of gasoline, 481,800 tpy of diesel out almost everybody,” he said.
while the developer has and other productions including LPG, benzene, Agbenor-Efunam added that it would also
remained tight-lipped. aromatics, xylene, toluene, sulphuric acid, bitu- “close the buffer between the Tema Industrial
men and fuel oil. zone and the residential area”. The findings come
This will comprise a 10,000 bpd atmospheric following clarification that the TDC had desig-
distillation unit, a 16,000 bpd heavy oil catalytic nated the location for industrial uses. “We were
unit, a 4,600 bpd diesel hydrogenation unit and looking at the area as a buffer, but the TDC said
facilities for naphtha-methanol-to-gasoline the area was not a buffer but had been zoned for
(NMTG), catalytic gasoline selective hydrogena- industrial purpose. So we had no choice,” he said.
tion and sulphur recovery. “As far as we are concerned, the place is not
The chosen plot covers an area of 217 acres suitable … the planning authorities had given
(87.8 hectares) that has been leased for a period the development permit to the company and
of 60 years. they have given them authorisation to clear the
land with or without EPA permit,” Agbenor-Efu-
Concerns nam said.
After screening the project and carrying out site With the EPA appearing not to have been
inspections, the EPA said in April last year that able to counter the site work, it is hard to argue
the area has been identified as a wetland and a against public accusations of toothlessness
buffer zone for flooding, adding that the area is against the agency.
too close to Tema Newtown and would add to
existing congestion. Existing facility
As a result, the EPA’s executive director Henry Tema is the location of Ghana’s only existing
Kokofu told local media outlet Citi News: “We refinery, the struggling 45,000 bpd Tema Oil
found [the project] not to be compatible with Refinery (TOR).
the location. Even though we are yet to com- The facility has been plagued by issues since
municate our findings … the possibility that we an explosion at its distillation unit in early

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