Distressed workers of the Tema Oil Refinery, TOR are expected to meet their management today Monday, February 5, 2018, over plans to build a new refinery.
The Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko last week announced that government in collaboration with the private sector would shortly build a new oil refinery at the cost of $4billion. The new refinery is expected to produce about 150,000 barrels of oil per day – eight times the current production of the TOR.
According to the Chairman of the General Transport, Petroleum, and Chemical Workers Union at TOR, John Elton, the announcement by the Energy Minister was inappropriate as TOR has a development plan towards expanding the current refinery.
“Nobody has an idea what the Minister really wants to do,†he stated noting that whoever was technically advising him has not done a good job.
“Because…as it stands TOR itself has a development plan that’s going to see to it for an expansion and it is going to be the 160,000 barrels he was craving. And apparently, if he says he is going to build a new TOR I don’t know what is going to happen to the old TOR,†he to an Accra based radio station.
In 2010, TOR requested for $67.7 million for plant stabilization and enhancement projects. In response, the government in 2012 released $30 million, which was used to complete the first phase of plant stabilization and enhancement projects on the crude distillation and residual fluid catalytic cracking units.
TOR has completed the first phase of plant stabilization and enhancement projects on the crude distillation and residual fluid catalytic cracking units at a cost of $30 million. With 45,000 barrels per day capacity, TOR should be able to refine over 16 million (16,425,000) barrels of crude oil annually.
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primenewsghana.com/Ghana News