Petroleum product losses within the state-owned Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) in the Republic of Ghana appear not to be ending anytime soon as condensate worth US$2.5 million is said to have gone missing in the refinery in the last couple of weeks.
Condensate is a mixture of light liquid hydrocarbons, similar to a very light (high API) crude oil. It is typically separated out of a natural gas stream at the point of production (field separation) when the temperature and pressure of the gas is dropped to atmospheric conditions.
It is not clear how the product got missing but Ghana’s Minister for Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, who broke the latest news from the refinery on Accra-based Citi FM, said his outfit directed the Ghana National Gas Company to push all the condensate to the refinery for them to blend it with premix fuel but said $2.5 million worth of the product has been unaccounted for.
“I gave TOR a new business opportunity in the premix fuel market that all the condensate from Ghana Gas should be used for blending premix fuel. The last time I heard, over 2.5 million dollars worth of condensate had gone missing from TOR. If we all want TOR to work, and we don’t want another ECG in TOR, [we should do the right thing else] it will break the back of government.
“TOR has over $500 million worth of debt sitting on its books and go and look at how the debt is accumulated– people bring their crude to refine and then they record crude losses.
“You don’t pay taxes for it to go down the drain. You pay taxes for an efficient running of government. The government, I can tell you, is doing so much work to bring TOR to work. Proposals are lying up in TOR, SIGA, Attorney General and Finance Ministry all having a look. Getting it right is a difficult proposition we are working on. And we will work diligently to get Ghanaians what is good,” the Energy Minister added.
Workers of the refinery, last Tuesday, accused the Akufo-Addo administration of failing to revive the 45,000 per stream day refinery built in the 1960s by the Nkrumah administration.
To recall, in 2022, 14 staff of the refinery were interdicted for product losses running into over US$ 14 million.
The interdicted staff were, however, cleared by an internal committee and were made to assume their post.
The company has been struggling to get a strategic partner due to over $500 million in digests sitting on its books.
An attempt to reach the Managing Director of TOR to speak to the latest development has proven futile.
