A well-retooled Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) could offer Ghanaians much-needed relief in the face of a rising economic crisis that has seen pump prices of fuel products shoot up by more than 100 percent this year, the energy think-tank Institute for Energy Security (IES) has said.
In the current economic climate where countries are increasingly looking for
more home-grown solutions to weather the storm, it said there is no better time
than now to finally revamp the ailing refinery – since this could be pivotal in
transforming the country’s economic fortunes.
The IES’ comments come on the back of reports about top government
functionaries having to leave the country’s shores to hunt for what they
describe as ‘reliable and regular sources of affordable petroleum products'.
The IES, therefore, believes that government’s continual appetite for reliable
and affordable fuel elsewhere defeats the president’s proclaimed intention for
TOR and the economy of Ghana.
“Instead of giving priority to domestic refining of Ghana’s indigenous crude
oil, government is rather resorting to gambling on the importation of liquid
fuels without giving a thought to the guarantee of sufficient and reliable
supply of same,” an IES statement said.
It said the search for that heavily discounted fuel price from elsewhere is an
unrealistic hope, and the team may return empty-handed unless the
expectation/request is exchanged with something valuable to the would-be
supplier.
“It is shocking to hear that the energy ministry is actually leading a group
roaming the world looking for reliable and regular sources of affordable
petroleum products for Ghanaians, abandoning its role of urgently bringing TOR
into an operational mode to provide that reliability for an uninterrupted
supply of fuel to the country,” the statement further lamented.
It also described government’s sudden appetite for imported fuels to address
reliability and cost-related issues at the expense of revamping the country’s
only refinery as reactionary, morally indefensible, a misplaced priority and a
deliberate attempt to increase the Ghanaian economy’s fiscal burden.
Rather, it noted, the search for a reliable and affordable source of petroleum
products starts with the Tema Oil Refinery, which has been down since March
2021 due to lack of crude oil – the refinery’s main raw material.
The statement, signed by Fritz Moses – a research analyst at IES, insisted that
the state is better off prioritizing local crude refining instead of importing
refined products.
“It beats one’s imagination how an oil-producing country with a refinery
capacity of 45,000 barrels per stream day (bpsd) will have its top government
officials abandon its domestic competitive advantage and rather seek to import
refined petroleum product from elsewhere in the name of reliability and
affordability,” part of the statement said.
“Once more, the Institute for Energy Security (IES) wishes to appeal to the
president to look within – bring back TOR in the shortest possible
time, refine Ghana’s crude domestically, work to strengthen the local currency,
and ensure an adequate amount of dollars is made available to importers of
fuel,” it further added.
Source: B&FT