General News of Tuesday, 15 February 2005

Source: GNA

Fuel Crisis: No cause for alarm - TOR

Tema, Feb. 15, GNA - The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) says it has enough fuel to supply and that the public has no cause to panic. "Our plant is still working so there is no cause for alarm because we have never stopped supplying in a day," said Mrs Aba Lokko, the refinery's Public Affairs Manager.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), she said TOR would continue to fill over 300 fuel tankers daily and that any shortage may have come from the retail stations.

She said TOR was currently not only supplying regularly but had also increased the quantity of its daily supplies to the market.

For instance from February 6, to February 11, this year, the refinery increased its daily average petrol supply from 2.5 million litres to between 3.1 and 3.9 million litres.

She said diesel supply for the same period also increased from 2.8 million litres per day to between 3.2 million litres and 4.1 million litres.

When GNA visited some filling stations around 1000 hours, there were small queues, which according to some drivers, was because some retail stations had refused to sell the products over the weekend in anticipation of price increases.
A driver at 'Community five' taxi terminal, on condition of anonymity, said it was an artificial shortage due to hoarding by some fuel station owners.