The Minister for Transport, Kweku Ofori Asiamah last Thursday inspected a $15 million Marine Plant storage facility being built by the management of Ghana Oil Company (GOIL), in collaboration with the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA).
The facility would be used to store marine diesel for supply to vessels that dock at the Takoradi Port. The storage capacity of the 20-meter height plant facility is estimated at 13.5 million metric tons.
The Head of Operations of Goil, Mr. Ben Tokornu, who took the sector minister round the facility said funds for the project were generated from the Internally Generated Fund (IGF) of Ghana’s leading Oil company, GOIL.
Explaining the rationale behind the project, the GOIL Operations Manager said after the discovery of oil, it became important that GOIL established and positioned itself as the leading oil company to take up the challenge of future growth of the oil industry.
As a result, the state owned Oil Company in collaboration with GPHA, put up the Storage facility. The control valve of the facility would be connected to the vessels that would dock at the anchorage for the supply of the marine diesel.
Mr. Tokornu added that the facility would be completed in the second week of April 2017. He was emphatic that when the facility was eventually completed, government could consider banning the Ship to Ship (STS) services that is currently in operation at the port.
The Ship to Ship service is a service engaged in by private commercial vessels at the GPHA where smaller vessels supply other services including marine oil amongst others to bigger vessels that has docked at the anchorage.
GPHA, which used to engage in ship to ship service has meanwhile stopped and handed over the STS to other private vessels.
What this means is that, GPHA and the state are losing millions of cedis in revenue that, hitherto would have accrued to them.
