A new oil refinery under construction in the Tema Industrial Enclave is expected to commence commercial operations in January next year.

An investment of the Sentuo Group of Companies, the $3-billion facility, with a capacity of 100,000 barrels per stream day (BPD), will be the largest refinery in the country.

It will boost local refining capacity by 60,000bpd, up from the previous 40,000bpd produced by the state-owned Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) prior to the decommissioning of its expanded plant, which got damaged in an explosion in 2017.

Furthermore, the new refinery will help the country cut its long-standing dependence on imported gasoline and diesel supplies and save the millions of dollars spent to import finished petroleum products.

According to consultants on the project, George Andoh and Albert Duncan, the first phase of the facility, construction of which began in June 2021, was expected to refine 40,000bpd into various petroleum products.

Construction work on the first phase is about 80 percent complete.

Leading the Press on a tour of the facility in Tema, the consultants said about two million tonnes of refined products would be produced when the plant was commissioned (test run) by December this year, ahead of operations.

Phase two, which is expected to increase production capacity by an additional 60,000bpd, would bring the plant’s total capacity to 100,000bpd and annual production increase to five million tonnes, in line with the country’s annual consumption demands, they said.

As of last year, Ghana’s annual domestic petroleum demand stood at 5.5 million tonnes, which meant heavy dependence on imports as a result of the inability of the state refinery to function at its optimum.