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Ghana is planning to increase the capacity of its only refinery, The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), from 45,000 barrels a day(bpd) to 145,000 bpd in a 200 million dollar expansion programme.

Dr Kofi Kodua Sarpong, Managing Director of TOR, said the project is expected to begin late this year and is scheduled to be completed in two years.

TOR currently refines crude oil into marine fuel, gasoline, diesel, liquefied petroleum gas, kerosene, aviation turbine kerosene (Jet A1) and cracked fuels.

On completion, Sarpong said the refinery management would consider the production of other products such as bitumen and other petrol chemicals,

Sarpong also raised concerns regarding Ghana’s ability to police its oil resource citing the case where a tanker loaded with oil was stolen from the Saltpond oil field recently. He suggested the Armed Forces should be empowered to protect the nation's oil resources.

At the beginning of the year, Aegean Marine Petroleum S.A. stationed its own floating storage tanker M/T Fos off the coast of Ghana and began making deliveries of marine fuel on January 15. The vessel, which has a total storage capacity of 70,000 metric tonnes is anchored off Tema.

Aegean also has two bunker vessels, M/T Aegean Tulip and M/T Aegean VII which are able to make delveries in various locations including Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.