Crude Oil Blues: TOR Struggling To Secure Credit

The under fire Management of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) is racing against time to put together a credit facility of about 80 million dollars to pay for the huge quantity of crude oil imported into the country by Sahara Oil as part of a deal to help save the ailing state-owned Refinery. For the past two days, TOR has been talking to ECOBANK Ghana Limited to help it raise the needed credit to pay the oil lifting giant, after the Ghana Commercial Bank declined to help, citing shrinking reserves. Credible sources close to the Bank and TOR management say, ECOBANK is struggling to marshal the size of credit being requested by the debt-ridden Tema-based refinery. The Bank has so far managed to raise only 40 percent of the credit required. The urgency of the situation has compelled the management of ECOBANK to begin talks with the Bank of Ghana for assistance. Details of the ongoing talks between the two Banks are not clear, but sources say if a deal is reached before close of day on Wednesday, October 28, the nearly one million barrels of crude oil sitting on a vessel in Ghanaian waters, could be discharged into TOR�s storage facilities before close of the week. The current state of affairs is making Sahara Oil incur huge cost. Sources say that it costs Sahara Oil about one million dollars in the form of demurrage to keep the imported crude on board its vessel.