BOST to export petroleum products to Burkina Faso, Mali

A petroleum depot rehabilitated at a cost of GH¢150million to serve as a supply terminal for the Upper East and West regions has been inaugurated in Bolgatanga.

Following the rehabilitation of the depot, with capacity for 46 million litres, the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation (BOST) Company is now set to begin the exportation of petroleum products to Burkina Faso and Mali.

The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has already endorsed the decision of BOST to engage in the exportation of petroleum products to the two Sahelian countries.

Already BOST has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Sonabhy la Societe Nationale Burkinabe D’Hydrocarbures, a Burkinabe company, to facilitate the exportation and marketing of BOST’s petroleum products in Burkina Faso.

The depot was shut down in 2004 because of operational challenges. At the time of the shutdown, BOST had some nine million litres of petroleum products in its pipelines.
Officials were able to recover about eight million litres when the pipelines were reactivated.

Security systems

To address the perennial smuggling of petroleum products, which is on the accendancy in the region, BOST has automated the facility with modern security systems, while a 24-hour police monitoring system has been put in place to deal with incidents of product siphoning along the lines.

Speaking at a ceremony to reopen the facility for business, the Managing Director of BOST, Mr Kwame Awuah-Darko, said the facility would serve as an off-taker investment for the Ghanaian government, which presently supplied Burkina Faso 60 per cent of that country’s petroleum needs.

“Our target is to be able to supply about 50,000 metric tonnes to the Sahelian countries, having initiated processes to begin exporting 10,000 metric tonnes to Burkina Faso and 5,000 to Mali,” he hinted.

Mr Awuah-Darko said apart from the 200-metre transmission line from Buipe to Bolgatanga, feasibility studies had been concluded for the construction of a 300-kilometre multi-pipeline system to Burkina Faso to create a robot supply chain from the company’s Tema terminals to that country.

Regulate smuggling

The Minister of the Interior, Mr Mark Woyongo, for his part, expressed worry over the increasing number of unlicensed fuel vending stations in the Upper East and West regions and asked the NPA to monitor the establishment of the stations.

He, therefore, appealed to the NPA to increase monitoring in the region and further ensure that revenue for the lifting of fuel from Ghana to the neighbouring countries was not evaded.

The Deputy Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Daniel Syme, in a welcome address, expressed joy at the reopening of the facility which, he said, would create jobs for young people in the region.

While appealing to the management of BOST to use the facility to regulate smuggling, Mr Syme gave an assurance that the Upper East Regional Co-ordinating Council would ensure security patrols along the border towns to check smuggling which had become a threat to the security of the region.