Acting Managing Director of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), Edmund Kombat has announced the company’s resumption by October 2025 to reduce Ghana’s reliance on imported refined petroleum products.
He disclosed this during an engagement with the Parliamentary Select Committee on Energy at Senchi on Saturday, June 21.
Mr. Kombat assured the public that barring any unforeseen challenges, the refinery’s Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) would be fully operational between September and October this year.
“We spend $400 million every month importing refined petroleum products. When TOR is running, we will need less than 60% of that money to import refined petroleum products because our name plate capacity is 45,000 barrels,” he revealed.
Mr. Kombat explained that TOR’s installed capacity currently stands at 45,000 barrels per stream day, but recent upgrades, including the installation of a new furnace, have increased that potential to 60,000 barrels per day.
“And nationally, we consume about 100,000 barrels per stream day, every single day. So we can do between 45 to 60% if the refinery is up,” he stated, emphasizing that the refinery remains a viable and profitable enterprise.
“The refinery is a profitable enterprise. It’s capable of refining.”
He noted that the primary reason for TOR’s shutdown in 2021 was the lack of crude oil supply, rather than technical inefficiencies.
“There has been a number of turnaround maintenance that has taken place at the refinery. And the analysis we’ve done so far, the reason why it was shut down in 2021, was actually because of lack of cruelty. So we have just put together a turnaround maintenance committee, spearheaded by the general manager, maintenance, and supervised by the deputy managing director. And every Friday, we come together to look at the steps and the things that we need to do to get the plant back,” Mr. Kombat added.
The engagement with the 17-member Parliamentary Select Committee on Energy, chaired by Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzrah, forms part of efforts to assess the performance, challenges, and prospects of key institutions within Ghana’s energy sector.
