The Chairman of the Chamber for Oil Marketing Companies (COMAC) is urging the government and the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) to build a second Conventional Buoy Mooring (CBM) facility, in the short-term, to make it easier for vessels to discharge products quickly and eliminate the bureaucracy around Leycan allocations.

This is coming after the Bulk Oil Distributing Companies (BDCs) raised alarm over increased demurrage charges by vessels at the country’s entry point due to interference with the Laycan schedule.

Speaking at the Joy Business Economic Forum, Dr. Kumi said the government can consider investment in more storage infrastructure, especially outside of Tema in the long term to ensure more storage security for the country.

The financing for this, he said, can be based on a private sector build own and transfer model.

“Ghana currently does not even have that much in fuel storage infrastructure. The total storage infrastructure in Ghana assuming you add storage tanks in Tema Oil refinery is just about one million cubic meters which is approximately one billion litres of storage capacity or two months of fuel reserves. BOST own storage capacity is about 400,000 cubic meters or 400 million litres out of this national storage capacity”.

“To increase our strategic reserves to six months will likely be a long-term goal assuming we consider it necessary. Current BOST levy generates about 48m cedis monthly or equivalent of $4.8 million”, he explained.

He added that the Bulk Oil Storage Limited (BOST) will need $3 billion to buy six months strategic fuel reserves even if the country had six months of storage capacity.

He warned that “assuming all the BOST levy is used by government to secure a strategic fuel reserve bond, the payback period will be over 50 years”.