Govt provides support for Tema Oil Refinery
The government has injected $22 million into the operations of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) to cater for critical maintenance works, a senior official of the refinery, has said.
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The money, the second tranche of $67 million requested by the refinery’s management in 2011, but released to TOR a fortnight ago, would be used to replace damaged spare parts on the refinery’s production units.
The government, in 2011, promised the refinery some $67 million towards a plant stabilisation and profit enhancement programme but released an initial $37 in 2012 after persistent appeals by the refinery’s workers union.
Recently, the refinery carried out semi-maintenance on the Residual Fluid Catalytic Cracking (RFCC) plant, using its own Internally Generated Funds (IGF) to replace some components of the faulty re-generating machine in the plant.
A source at the refinery told the Daily Graphic that following maintenance carried out on the RFCC, the plant began the processing of residue into Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and gasoline last Friday.
“Presently, we have two months supply of residue which we will be processing into various products, while we make financial arrangements for letters of credit (LCs) for crude oil procurement to enable the resumption of production works at the Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) as well”, the source said.
Major Maintenance
The source indicated that the general maintenance could only be done from October to November, as it would not be prudent to do so during the rainy season.
The source added that although the money might not be sufficient to carry out a major replacement of machinery, considering that the cost of machinery had gone up over the period that the demand was made, the refinery’s management was determined to revive the fortunes of the company.
