The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) will no longer need a foreign strategic partner to turn around the fortunes of the refinery, Mr Kingsley Kwame Awuah Darko, acting Managing Director of the refinery, has hinted.
The state-owned refinery was at the concluding stages of closing a deal with PetroSaudi International, but that arrangement will not pull through based on the conviction of the refinery’s new Managing Director that local workers have the capacity to make the refinery a profit-making entity.
Mr Awuah Darko told The Finder the time for the PetroSaudi agreement has elapsed and that it was not likely a deal will be concluded.
“So we are taking legal advice but I don’t believe it is a path I personally would want to take”, he said.
He holds a strong belief that state asserts and state institutions can work and be run as profitably as any private entity.
“I don’t believe that TOR needs a foreign strategic partner to operate. I believe that the refinery has the men and women to take this to the next level”, he emphasised.
Mr Awuah made these revelations when he joined workers of the refinery at a thanksgiving ceremony to mark the changing fortunes of the refinery under his watch.
According to him, the refinery is currently producing high-quality petroleum products for Ghana and the West African sub-region.
“Our products are not only consumed locally, they are exported throughout the sub-region.”
He said the refinery, in collaboration with Bulk Oil Storage and Transport company (BOST), has been able to process almost 2 million barrels of crude oil, “non-stop, on spec., on time”.
“The major problem we have is that our barns are overflowing. So when we go for production meetings, the story that we hear are that if we don’t sell or evacuate we have to shut down the plant”.
Additionally, the company made a profit of $800,000 on its first 1 million barrels of crude out of the 2 million barrels the company has refined after it resumed production some months ago.
He noted that although accounting on the remaining ₵1 million barrels is not yet completed, indications are that the company will make a profit of $ 1.5 million.
Source: The Finder