In February 2019, Isaac Osei, who was Tema Oil Refinery's (TOR) managing director at the time, predicted that the facility would soon be fully operational.He claimed that steps had been taken to restart the oil refinery.Read the complete article written by Michael Afful and first published on February 8, 2019.

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Isaac Osei, the managing director of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), is optimistic that the refinery will soon be operating at full capacity and explains that measures are being done to properly position it.Since the facility missed the necessary shutdown for maintenance in 2009, the Isaac Osei-led administration has performed extensive work at the refinery.

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Due to the obsolete nature of some components at the refinery, the facility which resumed operations last year, and continued this year, has been shutdown as a result of a damage to the Orific, a component of the Residual Fluid Cataritic Cracker (RFCC).

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Responding to a question on when TOR would resume full operations at the Meet-The-Press series in Accra, Mr Isaac Osei, who confirmed the shutdown of the plant, however, said a new component had been brought from overseas and would be fixed in the next couple of days."I can say without fear of contradiction that we will be back by the end of the third quarter.

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Also, let me just say that 2017 when the President and his team took over, TOR had been in a situation where we had not been able to maintain the plant since 2009. In fact, TOR had missed three cycles of maintenance, so what we did was rehabilitation," he said.

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The refinery has the capacity to process 45,000 bopd, but is now only able to process 25,000 bopd as according to Mr Isaac Osei, one of the components of the facility was removed some years ago."We intend to replace that and it should come from overseas early in the second quarter after which we will install it," he explained.

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Mr Isaac Osei explained that his outfit and the Ministry of Finance, as well as the Energy Ministry, are holding discussions and considering options that would be suitable in order to revive the refinery and make it more viable.Pensioners gather at Ministry of Finance over debt exchange programme

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