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| Ghana has started exporting fuel and gas oil to the Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Benin Republic and Nigeria from the Bolgatanga Petroleum Depot |
Ghana has started
exporting fuel and gas oil to Nigeria, Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Niger and
Mali from the Bolgatanga Petroleum Depot.
Media
report continues:
The
West African country has moved to extend the exports to Liberia in the coming
months Ghana has started exporting fuel and gas oil to the landlocked countries
of West Africa, including Nigeria. The state-owned Bulk Oil Storage and
Transportation Company (BOST) Limited, is also supplying petroleum products
from the same depot.
This
was disclosed by Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, Ghana’s Minister of Petroleum at the
meet-the-press series in Accra on Thursday, October 7.
Buah
said there were plans to extend the exports to Liberia in the coming months.
The
minister said the vision of the government was to make Ghana the hub for the
distribution of petroleum products in the West African sub-region, even as he
added that Ghana had been ushered into a new gas era that would guarantee its
energy security for the next two decades.
He
said: “Despite the global downturn in the oil industry, we have managed to
increase production.
“Ghanaians
have been empowered to be at the forefront of the industry and a liberalized
petroleum downstream sector with strong private sector participation where
product availability, competition, better customer service and lower prices are
making Ghana the preferred destination for doing business in the sub-region.”
He
said the Ghana Gas Company (Ghana Gas) had completed the extension of its
pipeline to the battery limit of the West Africa Gas Pipeline Company’s
(WAPCo’s) Regulatory and Metering Station at Aboadze and indicated that Ghana
Gas was awaiting WAPCo to interconnect.
“In
the long term, a 290-km onshore pipeline to ensure gas supply reliability and
downstream infrastructure expandability is planned.
“Additional
volumes will, in the long term, provide the opportunity for Ghana to realize
its vision to utilize gas for the other industrial uses, beyond power
generation, such as fertilizer and petrochemicals,” he said.
Buah
said Ghana’s strategic stock was at an all-time high, with about one million
metric tonnes of petroleum products imported from January to June 2016.
According
to him, this achievement is due to the restructuring of BOST, which had been
successful in ensuring the availability of petroleum products in the country.
He said: “The restructuring of BOST has resulted in a turnaround in the
performance of this strategic national asset which is now successfully
fulfilling its mandate of ensuring the availability of petroleum products.”
The
Bolgatanga Petroleum Depot, with a capacity of 46 million litres of refined
gasoline and gas oil, was re-inaugurated in August 2015.
The
discovery of oil in Ghana in 2007, added to its gold and cocoa wealth and its
other major asset, stable democracy, gave it a chance to start catching up with
oil giant Nigeria and regional West African economic powerhouse Côte d'Ivoire.
While Nigeria
on the other hand, has entered a recession and it’s largely the work of the oil
industry. The country’s economy contracted by 2.06% in the second quarter,
between April and June, this year, according to figures from the Nigerian
Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
That’s the second straight quarter of declining growth or “the usual definition of recession.” Declining oil prices have hurt a number of countries worldwide, like Brazil or Russia, as well as U.S. towns that saw massive growth amid a fracking boom. Nigeria was hit especially hard by the decline in oil since crude oil sales account for 70% of government income.
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