Sahara to Be Put to Rest Today?

The Ministry of Energy and the Tema Oil Refinery will today answer questions from journalists on the contract between the Tema Oil Refinery and Sahara Energy Resources Ltd.

The press conference will hopefully shed light on the murky details of that contract.

On last Friday's edition of Joy FM's Front Page programme, the Energy Advisor to the Government, Dr. Charles Wereko Brobby, gave a gist into today's press conference.

He the said the Ministry and TOR would make public the about 30 activities that Sahara Energy Resources have to do under the management contract and answer any other questions on the minds of journalists.

On the programme itself, Ben Epshon of the Dispatch and Joy FM's Sonny Decker questioned Wereko-Brobby on the role of Sahara Energy resources and wondered why local entities like TOR and GNPC were not employed to do the job.

"TOR had admitted that they did not have the capability to carry out that that operation," Wereko -Brobby said. In their 40 year operation they have never carried out such a that function, they employed the services of oil trading companies to do that on their behalf, he further revealed.

Although GNPC has some expertise in the area of lifting oil, he said the track record was not good enough to let them carry out that function. He explained that GNPC had ended up with a debt of $2.3 million because they could not lift and the debt led to the suspension of the contract between Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC).

Aside that they had been barred from lifting oil since '96.

To illustrate his point, he revealed that one of GNPC's rigs has been taken over at Oman on the orders of SGS, for collateral for $40 million loss, as a result of loss in oil trading.

Another question on the lips of the journalists was why there should be another party to lift the oil since TOR had a vessel and why TOR was renting out its vessel to Sahara Energy Resources.

The Energy Advisor explained that it was industry practice to have a company to lift, " we didn't do anything that was not industry practice," he said.

His reaction to the chartering of TOR's the vessel, was similar to that of the Energy Minister, Albert Kan- Dapaah in Parliament two weeks ago, " it is all a matter of economics."