As global Oil prices are tipped to hit record levels this year, the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers Ghana (COPEC) says the Tema Oil Refinery and the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited must absolve the public from its associated shocks.
Speaking to Citi Business News, Executive Secretary of COPEC, Duncan Amoah stated that these state institutions must mitigate the impact of the expected hike in fuel prices at the pumps.
Tema Oil Refinery hasn’t been fully operational for a while now due to several challenges while BOST hasn’t been able to live up to its mandate to keep Strategic Reserve Stocks for Ghana.
He stated that “The strategy for Ghana as a country will be to ensure BOST is very active and ensure again that the refinery is also active. Once you put these two together, you are in a very good space to get certain things running for Ghanaians. BOST has also brought down pipelines that should aid in the transportation of oil from one point to the other and reduce the pressure on our roads. We are encouraging, BOST to ensure that these pipelines are as soon as possible, fixed and made to work.”
“Once that works, the cost of fuel transportation, which we pay for in the price build-up the taxes would at least go down and fuel prices can come down a bit. This should be our key strategy, at least for 2022 bearing in mind that international market prices are set to simply go up and, so BOST again would also have to take advantage of their large capacity to hold fuel reserve.” He added.
Tema Oil Refinery hasn’t been fully operational for a while now due to several challenges including funding and staff agitations.
The energy Minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, upon assuming office had assured that the refinery will be brought back online and made fully functional.
BOST on the other hand hasn’t been able to live up to its mandate to keep Strategic Reserve Stocks for Ghana.
BOST MD, Edwin Provencal had stated that “we have about two weeks [of reserve], but there is a key point here, even though we have two weeks I will not even term them as strategic reserves.”
He then called for a new levy to be introduced to help it improve upon the country’s current oil reserves.
Global oil prices after dipping to about 68 dollars per barrel are currently inching towards 85 dollars a barrel, yet analysts are tipping the price to shoot up even further.