The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) is set to increase its daily production capacity following a successful test run of the expanded processing units.
Per the expansion, the Crude Distillation Unit will now produce 65,000 barrels of crude oil a day from the current 45, 000 barrels’ level. The Managing Director of TOR, Kwame Awuah Darko who confirmed the development to Citi Business News described the test run as successful. “We are moving from 45,000 to 65,000 barrels a day and we had to carry out the test run to ascertain the bottlenecks that will prevent us from getting to the 65,000 barrels,” he said.
Citi Business News understands the exercise was completed last Friday, December 16, 2016. Mr. Awuah Darko further explained to Citi Business News that the move would increase the efficiency of TOR in the refinery of crude and the production other related fuels for consumption. “Based on what we’ve done, we have moved from processing a million barrels from forty-five days to processing a million barrels in a month.
So right now, TOR is going to consume three million barrels in two months versus a million barrel in a month and a half,” he observed. The expansion and test run of the refinery comes ahead of a test run for crude from the Tweneboah Entomme Nyera (TEN) oil fields. The test run will be conducted on Friday, December 23, 2016.
The process which is expected to inform TOR of the commercial value of the by-products, is also expected to influence major policy decision on the sulphur specification content for diesel.