A former Deputy Minister of Energy and Member of Parliament for Adanse Asokwa, K.T Hammond has said the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) is not working because the government lacks the political will to transform refinery to run efficiently.
‘’Why can’t Tema Oil Refinery be helped to be back on its feet since it is this same government [NDC] that crippled it,’’ he said.
He noted that the refinery has gone past the routine maintenance of its machinery and must be back producing crude for Ghana.
‘’It is long overdue for them to be back on track producing.’’
According to Minority spokesperson on energy, claims that work has stalled on the refinery due to technical challenges is untrue.
Mr. Hammond insisted that there is no ‘’bigger technical issue’’ preventing the operation of TOR.
‘’… plain negligence by government for allowing the Tema Oil Refinery to get back to work; there is no technical issue as far as I am concern.
‘’What is happening is that they [TOR] don’t have the crude/stock to [refine],’’ he said.
He blamed the governing NDC for the current state of TOR however.
Mr. Hammond further dismissed assertion that TOR cannot refine the high grade crude oil produced from the Jubilee field.
A Petroleum consultant in the Monday edition of the Public Agenda stated that TOR does not have the capacity to refine the ‘’high grade sweet light’’ crude oil produced at the Jubilee field.
The consultant added that TOR ‘’will have to do retooling or refitting before [it] can refine’’ the crude from Ghana’s jubilee field.
But MP explained that the claim from the consultant was bogus and upsetting. ‘’It gets a bit upsetting when you hear people who are not entirely trained in this matters; people who make this vicious and pretty silly statements.’’’
He opined that the Tema Oil Refinery has all this years been refining ‘’sweet light’’ crude, especially from Nigeria.
‘’…Completely untrue, they don’t need to redo anything; TOR can refine whatever that is produced from the Jubilee field.
‘’On the contrary what Tema Oil Refinery cannot refine is heavy crude,’’ he stressed.
The Tema Oil Refinery is said to need an estimated $200 million for retooling before it can refine crude from the jubilee field.
Workers at the country’s only refinery which has not been working for years say they have the capacity to refine the crude produced in Ghana and have called on government to allow them to do so.
By: Evans Effah/citifmonline.com/Ghana