The Chief Executive Officer of PEDLO Energy Company Limited, Peter Debrah Godslove, has cautioned against the politicisation of issues regarding the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR).
According to him, the depoliticisation of issues on the operations of TOR will help to develop the production capacity the country requires.
“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 neighbouring countries like Togo,” he said on Accra-based TV Africa.
Mr Debrah claimed 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. Because TOR generates 40,000 barrels of crude oil per day, it should not employ more than 1,000 people, some of whom may be idle.
As a result, when it is floated on the public market and individuals hold a bigger portion, it will be straightforward and simple to solve the issue of mismanagement in TOR and preserve the energy industry.
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“We should focus on our local productions, and 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,” he added.
He continued, “Our BDC will purchase cedi from TOR, a storage facility; if we purchase in cedi, we will utilise 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.
“For instance, we could charge at least ten pesewas from the TOR recovery levy and ten pesewas or five pesewas from the BOST merger. According to him, this would contribute to resolving the issue of rising gasoline prices.”