The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) would start processing Ghanaian crude oil in June 2026, according to President John Dramani Mahama, as part of initiatives to boost local value addition and lessen the nation’s reliance on imported refined petroleum products.
He described the action as a resumption to a project started during his previous administration and said that a shipment of crude oil from Ghana’s offshore reserves would be transported to TOR for processing in June.
Speaking on Sunday, May 31, 2026, during a diaspora town hall meeting in London, President Mahama stated that Ghana must process its natural resources locally in order to reap greater benefits from them.
“We are just about to make history again. We did it in my first term but after we left office it didn’t continue. We are about to start to refine our own crude. In June we are delivering a parcel of Ghanaian crude from our own oil fields to the Tema Oil Refinery to process,” he said.
He contends that Ghana still exports raw minerals like manganese, gold, and bauxite for processing overseas, only to import final goods at a higher price.
“We process manganese, bauxite, gold and everything and then we ship them out to be processed by somebody else. In that processing we are creating jobs in that other person’s economy and then the products for which we sent the ores abroad are made into finished products and those finished products are exported back to us,” he said.
According to President Mahama, when his administration took office, the energy industry owed an estimated US$1.5 billion.
He said that before his government took office, a US$500 million World Bank Partial Risk Guarantee covering payments to the Italian energy giant ENI and its partners for gas supplied from the Sankofa Field had run out.
According to President Mahama, the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Finance have since taken steps to restore the guarantee to its full amount.
“At the time we took over that World Bank guarantee had been drawn down to zero. Today, through the work of the Minister of Energy and the Minister of Finance, we have restored that World Bank guarantee fully to US$500 million. As a result they have also expanded the amount of gas they are giving us which we use to generate power,” he said.
Additionally, the President highlighted new investment pledges from current partners in Ghana’s upstream petroleum industry.
He stated that ENI would invest an additional US$1.5 billion in the Offshore Cape Three Points (OCTP) project, and Jubilee Field partners had committed to invest US$2 billion in drilling more wells to boost oil and gas output.
“The Jubilee partners, we signed an agreement for them to invest another US$2 billion in drilling new wells offshore Ghana in order to increase the amount of oil and gas that we produce. We have also signed with ENI to invest another US$1.5 billion in the OCTP field to increase the amount of gas and oil that we produce,” he said.
Regarding debts owing to independent power producers (IPPs), President Mahama stated that the government had established a payment schedule and refinanced liabilities estimated at US$1.5 billion.
“We have refinanced that debt, given them a payment plan and we have met every single payment to them. They too are happy and producing power and our power sector is stable,” he said.
Source: newsthemegh.com