New oil refinery to produce 150,000 barrels a day - Minister

Government is set to establish a refinery in Takoradi that will refine 150, 000 barrels of oil per-day, Energy Minister, Boakye Agyarko has revealed.

The “new TOR”, as the Minister terms it, will be will reduce significantly, the amount of oil the country imports to meets its demands, and to attain government’s vision of making Ghana a hub for refined petroleum products in the West African sub-region.

“Even though we are crude producers, we have become net importers of petroleum products. We in Ghana are running perennially short of petroleum products and it reflects in the instability of the demand-supply equation.

The idea, therefore, is to create a hub in the Western region where you have the refining, the storage, the transportation, and trading, all happening within an enclave.

The idea subsequent to this, which has been discussed with the board of TOR is to make sure that in the next three-four years, we build a new TOR of about 150,000 barrels a day, and then gradually ease out the old TOR which becomes a tank farm for the new TOR,” he said.

Mr. Agyarko, who was speaking with the media at the 2018 Downstream Colloquium organised by the National Petroleum Authority in Accra, noted: “We have already put in place an implementation committee which is looking at all the facets and the regulations required.

We have sent out the various teams to look at all the other hubs that operate in the world; Rotterdam, Singapore, Malaysia, to study and understand how it is done properly, to see who we can partner with efficiently and productively. I believe that in the not too distant future, 2-3years, you will begin to see the actual manifestation of these developments on the ground,” the Minister added.