Saudi oil attack: Ghana must scale-up protection of oil facilities – COPEC

The Government of Ghana must increase its surveillance on all the oil installations in the country in order to guard the facilities against possible attacks, Duncan Amoah, Executive Director of the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC-Ghana), has said.

Mr Amoah stated that the recent bombing of oil installations in the Middle East should serve as a wakeup call on all oil producing nations to protect their oil facilities.

Saudi Arabian oil facilities have been attacked twice on Saturday September 15, 2019.

Mr Duncan Amoah told Laudbusiness.com in an interview on Monday September 16 that : “Ghana should begin installation of strict and modern security gadgets across all oil installation depots capable of not only early detection of fires but also with certain trigger capabilities directly linked to security agencies.

“The advent of pipeline blasts and setting ablaze of oil installations should serve a wake up to our reinforcement of our energy installations from the current porous security arrangements around such facilities.”

He added : “The country should not be caught ball watching as the consequences of such attacks or blasts are going to be extremely on the already volatile situation prevailing locally.”

Meanwhile the strike, which the United States blames on Iran, has sparked fears of increased risk to energy supplies in the region.

The price of Brent crude is currently up about 10% at $66.64 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate is 9.5% higher at $60.06 after rising as much as 15% earlier.

The drone attacks on plants in the heartland of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry hit the world’s biggest petroleum-processing facility as well as a nearby oil field, both of which are operated by energy giant Aramco.

Together they account for about 50% of Saudi Arabia’s oil output, or 5% of daily global oil production. It could take weeks before the facilities are fully back on line.