‘Restructure TOR to be more efficient’
The Chairman of the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas (CSPOG), Dr Steve Manteaw, has urged the government to restructure the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) into a world class facility with the capacity to refine more crude oil as well as improve its efficiency.
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To do that, he said the government must look for the right investment to expand the facilities of the ailing refinery to produce about 10,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Mr Manteaw also noted that it was important for the government to subsequently merge the management of the TOR and the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST) if it was to be efficient in the petroleum downstream sector.
Speaking to the media after an encounter with Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA’s) in the oil and gas sector last Tuesday in Accra, Dr Manteaw said restructuring TOR would be a bold step towards increasing its value to the benefit of the economy for the country to integrate the oil and gas sector and the rest of the economy.
The event, which was part of the CSPOG-GOGIG 2016 elections project phase two, was on the theme: “Options for addressing governance challenges in the oil and gas sector.”
“I see no reason why the country will still import crude oil while we have the TOR,” the chairman asked.
“Even if Ghana was not producing oil, the country could still make a lot of money by providing tolling services to entities or countries that are producing oil. We could even buy the crude oil and bring to the country to refine it and re-export the refined product to increase our foreign exchange,” he added.
TOR successfully processed seven million barrels of crude oil in the 2016 fiscal year, thereby reducing the import margin of finished petroleum products, a feat its management attributed to policy reforms and the commitment of the workers.
It is also projected to refine 16 to 18 million barrels of crude oil in 2017, following the inauguration of its new 45,000 capacity furnace (crude oil heater) at the Crude Distillation Unit (CDU).
Strong case for merger
Dr Manteaw said the merger would cut down cost and facilitate operations in the refining and distribution of petroleum products in the country.
According to him, the government must formulate more effective laws and regulations to manage the petroleum resources of the country, saying that the fundamental challenges the country faces in managing its natural resources was the result of what he described as bad governance.
He faulted current and successive governments for not putting in place proper food governance systems to tap the benefits from the country’s oil and gas sector.
Adopt best practice
Dr Manteaw also urged the government to revive and use the Natural Resource and Environmental Governance (NREG) programme as an instrument to manage the country’s resources.
“The prescribed principles in the Africa Mining Vision (AMV) is one of the best practices the government could adopt to better manage the country’s oil and gas sector,” he noted.
According to him, the AMV imposes an obligation on all Africa Union (AU) member states to align their governance arrangement and approaches to the management of their natural resources to a set of prescribed principles pulled together from international best practices and lessons drawn from the continent’s century old experience in the mining sector.
The need for the AMV, he said, emanated from the governance and management challenges that African countries face in transforming their economies, using natural resources as a catalyst.
The vision was conceived by a technical taskforce meeting convened in August 2008 by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in preparation for the first conference.
The Africa Union requires natural resource-dependent member states of the AU to articulate their respective national visions of what role they expect their mineral resources to play in their economies.
