The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) is to increase production by 100,000 barrels a day and also widen its scope to include the processing of medium and heavy grades of crude oil.

Presently, the capacity of the refinery is in excess of 40,000 barrels per day and its refinery operations are largely restricted to light and sweet crude oil.

It is expected that the increased production level and widened scope of crude refined will boost the growth of the refinery, increase profitability and meet increasing national demand.

The General Manager in charge of Production at TOR, Mr Samuel Adomako, disclosed this at a workshop hosted by the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) and the Korea Petroleum Association.

It addressed issues in the petroleum sector in the two countries, with emphasis on the operations of refineries in both countries.

Key players in the sector from both countries made presentations on the prospects and the challenges facing the sector in both countries.

Mr Adomako told participants that in order to ensure that there was optimum gain with the anticipated increased production level, another Residual Fluid Catalytic Cracker (RFCC) Unit, to process the residual from the refinery into useful products, would be built.

Presently, the RFCC Unit, inaugurated in 2003, processes 14,000 barrels per day but there are plans to increase that to 18,000 barrels per day.

Mr Adomako indicated that the implementation of the project to increase the production level and also revamp the RFCC Unit started in 2008.

He also indicated that TOR had already held discussions with an American software company that produces the software that facilitates the efficient blending of light crude with heavy and medium grades of crude.

He indicated that there were also plans to upgrade storage tanks by fixing mixers to improve the blending of the different grades of crude oil.

He stressed that widening the scope of the grades of crude oil refined was very critical to optimising profit margins.
“There is the need to manage cost of production and the raw material is a major item we need to look at,” he stated.

In a presentation on Heavy Oil Upgrading Process, Byeong Jae Park of SK Energy of Korea outlined the various processes involved in upgrading heavy oil into useful products.

He stressed the fact that the upgrading of heavy oil was important to improve productivity and also increase profitability.

Daily Graphic

Tags: crude oil, tema oil refinery