TOR rehabilitation begins

WORK has begun on the rehabilitation of two key units of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) to pave the way for the refinery to resume full-scale operations.

The units are the Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) and the Residual Fluid Catalytic Cracker (RFCC).

The project was made possible following the release of $30 million by the government to TOR towards the rehabilitation of its plants.

The release of the funds was in response to appeals made by TOR to the government for $67 million to address challenges at the production units of the refinery.

According to an official source at TOR, the government had assured the refinery that it would release the remaining $37 million by the end of the first quarter of this year for the company to operate efficiently on a sustainable basis.

The company has, since 2009, had major challenges at its major production units, leading to periodic shutdowns which virtually crippled its operations.

The breakdown of equipment at TOR’s utilities department has also affected its generators and steam boilers which are also major components in the production activities of the refinery.

The company had, in 2010, requested $36 million. However, damage to the furnace of the CDU Plant, coupled with damage to the steam boilers and the electricity generation plant, necessitated an increase in the figure to $67 million.

It had also sought to install automatic measuring meters to replace the manual gauging equipment currently being used.

Over the past couple of years, TOR has engaged in significant proxy borrowing to finance its activities and the injection of capital by the government is expected to provide some respite for its operations.

 The source said the maintenance work, which had taken off, would be completed by the end of February.

“We expect to resume normal production work early March, after a four-month inactivity at the CDU and RFCC plants,” it said.

The leaders of TOR’s local union who welcomed the effort after four years of widespread agitation among workers were hopeful the government would commit itself to addressing the challenges.

“We would also expect President John Mahama to keep to the promise he made on December 4, 2012 that the NDC government would put the necessary measures in place to enable TOR to operate at full capacity, as well as ‘complete the retrofitting exercise’,” the Chairman of the TOR Senior Staff Association, Mr Daniel Fugar, told the Daily Graphic.

SOURCE: Della Russel Ocloo, Daily Graphic, Tue, Jan 22, 2013