Ghana: Tor Back With a Bang - Bad News for Oil Cabals

Despite numerous attempts being made by cabals in the petroleum downstream industry to frustrate the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) from operating, the state owned refinery has managed to strike a deal with Sahara Energy Resources to supply it with crude oil for processing. The Chronicle can confirm that the refinery took delivery of 350,000 barrels of crude oil for processing late last year. Investigations further revealed that just last Sunday, January 4, 2015, Sahara Energy again delivered 450,000 barrels of crude oil to the refinery, bringing the total to 800,000 barrels. TOR has since started operations. The Chronicle further established that after refining the crude the end product would be sold through Access Bank to the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) for onward sale to the general public. Experts at the refinery told this paper that it will take one month for TOR to finish refining the 800,000 barrels of the crude oil. According to the experts, with the delivery of the 800,000 barrels, TOR is on its way to getting regular supply of crude oil, if the cabals stay off the operations of the refinery. "So from now till January ending, we will be in business and we believe that within the one month period, more crude will arrive", one of the paper's sources hinted.

Further information The Chronicle gathered indicate that as per the arrangement, Sahara will not collect money upfront for the crude delivery. "Sahara has arranged with Access Bank to provide an inspection team to monitor the refinery throughout the processing period until the finished products are sold. Sahara would then go for its money from the Bank and then TOR goes for its profit", a source said. The Chronicle was further told that the deal does not require the issuance of Letters of Credit before the crude is supplied. For now, the Bank is monitoring the operations of the refinery to ensure that there will be no loses. Workers of the company have, however, warned that they will not allow anybody to interfere with this new arrangement to bring the refinery back again. "We, as workers of the refinery will be very vigilant and anybody who would try to interfere in this new arrangement between TOR and Sahara will face our wrath; indeed we are determined to protect this new arrangement between the two companies", a worker who wants to remain anonymous noted. As to how they are going to handle the faulty machinery of the refinery, the source said TOR has an efficient maintenance team that is up to the task. "The maintenance team has worked on one of our machines, Boiler No. 6, which was down, and today we have handed it over to the production unit. By tomorrow, they would be starting it", the source explained.

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