Ghana Has Cheapest Oil Price in West Africa

ACCRA (Reuters) - The government of Ghana on Tuesday blamed high oil prices for a shortage of diesel as queues of vehicles got longer by the hour at service stations in the capital, Accra.

Passengers were left stranded as many taxis and buses went to out-of-the-way service stations at villages around Accra.

``I don't want to say there's no cause for alarm, but we're doing everything possible to bring the situation under control,'' Deputy Mines and Energy Minister Simon Abingya told Reuters.

Abingya said there was no shortage of petrol, as most commercial vehicles and industries use diesel.

The paucity of diesel started early this month, when the first reports of service stations drying up came from the second city of Kumasi, 144 miles north-west of the capital.

At the main Tema port, 11 miles east of Accra, an unknown number of vessels is waiting for fuel, port sources said.

Abingya said the unforeseen rise in the world crude oil price was crippling the Tema Oil Refinery, the state-run 45,000 barrel-per-day refinery.

``It's throwing our budget out of gear because we keep having to look for money to pay for the increases every time the price goes up,'' he said.

A complicating factor is the fast depreciation of the local currency, the cedi, which has lost almost 50 percent of its value this year and was quoted on Tuesday at 6,650 per dollar.

``By the time the refinery's customers sell the fuel and pay back, they've already made losses out of the exchange rate differential,'' Abingya said.

Crude oil imports gobble up much of Ghana's foreign exchange earnings, which suffered this year from plummeting world market prices for cocoa and gold.

The government doubled fuel prices earlier this year and Abingya said another increase was imminent.

The price increase from the current 1,325 Cedi ($0.20) per liter for diesel is expected to reduce smuggling to neighboring Togo, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.

In Ivory Coast one liter of diesel costs 355 CFA francs per liter ($0.46), more than twice as much as in Ghana.