The Executive Director of the Institute of Energy Security, Kwasi Anamua Sakyi, explained that TOR is currently unable to raise its own letters of credit to acquire crude oil.
The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) has shut down again due to the shortage of crude oil at the facility.
In an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, the Executive Director of the Institute of Energy Security, Kwasi Anamua Sakyi, explained that TOR is currently unable to raise its own letters of credit to acquire crude oil.
“From the desk of IES, what we are picking is that they have run out of crude oil. Last two weeks ago, the primary plant, being the crude distillation unit was shut down for lack of crude oil so the atmospheric residue that was installed was still being fed into the RS 50…That also got finished last week and the plant had to be shut down as well, so both the CDU and the RCC as we speak are down.”
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“There is no feedstock. The information we are picking is that TOR is having challenges with the suppliers to feed them with the crude oil that is required to run the plant.”
Mr. Anamua Sakyi, therefore, called for the privatization of TOR in order to reduce the level of inefficiencies in its operations.
“We are calling for private participation because the money to invest in the refinery is quite huge. For instance, you know that we are moving to a lower Sulphur grade in Africa and it requires that the refinery desulphurizes its system."
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“Introducing this de-sulphurising unit alone will cost more than $120m. Apart from that, they need to introduce new boilers, they need to introduce additional furnace, and so investment must get to an optimum level where they can say it is running well and it can give us more money.”
The refinery, which has the capacity to refine about 45,000 barrels of crude oil a day, has been operating below capacity for some time now.