Page 6 - AfrOil Week 03 2022

AfrOil COMMENTARY AfrOil

The Sentuo plant would be near the existing Tema refinery (Image: Ghana EPA)

Concerns about Ghana’s new

oil refinery fall on deaf ears

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

GHANA’S Environmental Protection Agency sulphuric acid, bitumen and fuel oil.
(EPA) has voiced renewed concerns about the This will comprise a 10,000 bpd atmospheric
WHAT: planned construction of a new refinery in Tema. distillation unit, a 16,000 bpd heavy oil catalytic
No environmental permit Despite the agency failing to provide a permit for unit, a 4,600 bpd diesel hydrogenation unit and
was ever issued for the development, work reportedly began in 2021. facilities for naphtha-methanol-to-gasoline
development of the Sen- However, with Ghana’s sole existing refinery (NMTG), catalytic gasoline selective hydro-
tuo Oil Refinery, but work continuing to deal with major debt and opera- genation and sulphur recovery.
appears to be proceeding tional issues, the country has become increas- The chosen plot covers an area of 217 acres
anyway. ingly dependent on refined petroleum products. (87.8 hectares) that has been leased for a period
of 60 years.
WHY: Project detail
The Environmental According to the original project proposal, Sen- Concerns
Protection Agency (EPA)
raised concerns about tuo Oil Refinery Ltd intends to build a 60,000 After screening the project and carrying out site
the plant’s proposed barrel per day (bpd) refinery – also known as inspections, the EPA said in April last year that
location in what it Tema III – at Tema Newtown, a wetland catch- the area has been identified as a wetland and a
described as a wetland ment of Chemu Lagoon. buffer zone for flooding, adding that the area is
area. The Sentuo project company’s request for a too close to Tema Newtown and would add to
permit was submitted in December 2019 as part existing congestion.
WHAT NEXT: of plans to create a plant to process light, sour As a result, the EPA’s executive director
Tema Development Corp. crude over two identical phases, each with a pro- Henry Kokofu told local media outlet Citi
(TDC) has denied that cessing capacity of 30,000 bpd. News: “We found [the project] not to be com-
the wetland designation The $796mn first phase will produce 464,500 patible with the location. Even though we are yet
is accurate, while the tonnes per year (tpy) of gasoline, 481,800 tpy of to communicate our findings … the possibility
developer has remained diesel and other petroleum products, includ- that we will not grant it is quite high, given the
tight-lipped.
ing LPG, benzene, aromatics, xylene, toluene, evidence available to us.”

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 03 19•January•2022