Business News of Monday, 7 November 2022

Source: Maxwell Nkansah, Contributor

Float Tema Oil Refinery on stock market for sustainability - Peter Godslove

Tema Oil Refinery Tema Oil Refinery

Chief Executive Officer of PEDLO Energy Co Ltd, Peter Debrah Godslove, has stated that the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) is an operating facility that should not be politicized. According to him, not politicizing the operations of Tema Oil Refinery will help develop the production capacity the country requires. Speaking in an interview with TV Africa's Korku Lumor, he said, "If we remove the politics, we will be able to work on TOR, and it will then be able to create the capacity of the product we are seeking for 40,000 (four thousand) barrels of crude oil capacity per day and can sustain Ghana and then neighboring countries like Togo." He claims that the only way to keep TOR going beyond politics is for the government to flog it on the stock market by giving 70% of its shares to the general public and keeping the remaining 30% for the government. When this occurs, the corporation, according to him, will become private property, allowing the stakeholders to elect their own CEO to guide the company's operations. "We should focus on our local productions, revamp TOR, even if expansion is what we need; we expand TOR because 40,000 barrels per production has been the same from 1963 to now, so why don't we expand; if we do, we are looking at the landlocked areas, Niger, Togo, Burkina Faso, and Mali; they all take products from here; so what happens then?" "They will pay us in dollars; if they do, our BDC will buy in cedi which will utilize our money to support TOR, which is a storage facility. Our BDC will purchase cedi from TOR, a storage facility; if we purchase in cedi, we will utilize the foreign one to obtain the crude." He disclosed that another method the government and citizens might tolerate the fuel price increase is to eliminate some petroleum taxes. According to him, this would contribute to resolving the issue of rising gasoline prices.