The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) has pushed back against claims by a technical adviser at the Ministry of Energy and Green Transition that the facility lacks the equipment to refine crude oil produced from Ghana’s offshore fields, insisting that technical assessments confirm it can process the country’s light sweet crude.
The dispute follows a March 9 interview on Citi FM in which Dr Yussif Sulemana, Technical Adviser at the Ministry of Energy and Green Transition, disclosed that TOR’s current configuration cannot meet Ghana’s 91 Research Octane Number (RON) standard for petrol when processing Jubilee field crude without two additional processing units. He said the refinery needs a diesel hydrotreater to reduce sulphur content and an isomerisation unit to raise octane levels, and that without those units the fuel produced from Ghana’s crude does not satisfy domestic market specifications and cannot legally be sold at the pump.
TOR, in a statement signed by Corporate Affairs Executive Godwin Mahama, said the adviser’s characterisation did not reflect the full technical picture. “Comprehensive technical assessments and crude assays have demonstrated that Ghana’s light sweet crude is compatible with the refinery’s configuration,” Mahama said, adding that the refinery had previously processed crude from the Tuano Enyenra Ntomme (TEN) field in 2016, providing direct operational evidence that Ghanaian crude can be handled by the existing plant.
TOR officials said the refinery is currently operating at approximately 28,000 barrels per stream day and is preparing to connect a second furnace to its Crude Distillation Unit (CDU), a move expected to restore throughput to the facility’s nameplate capacity of 45,000 barrels per stream day. President John Dramani Mahama is expected to lead a formal recommissioning ceremony once the facility reaches full operational status.
The technical disagreement sits within a broader, unresolved policy question. Dr Sulemana acknowledged at the time that the economics of crude allocation, rather than a blanket technical incompatibility, largely drive TOR’s current practice of processing imported crude while Ghana’s own Jubilee, TEN, and Sankofa field output is exported. Ghana’s offshore crude commands a premium on international markets, and the revenue from exporting it can exceed the savings from refining it domestically under present conditions.
TOR has outlined longer-term ambitions that include increasing its crude distillation capacity to 60,000 barrels per day in the medium term and replacing its existing catalytic reformer with a larger continuous unit, though timelines for those investments remain undefined. The refinery has also said it is seeking $25 million to reactivate a key unit within its crude distillation system to improve operational efficiency in the near term.
Government has indicated that plans are advanced to direct Ghanaian crude to TOR as part of a broader fuel security strategy, though no formal supply agreement has yet been announced.
