The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) will process between 16 and 18 million barrels of crude oil in 2017, Managing Director of TOR, Kwame Awuah Darko has disclosed.

“The plan the company has in place is to make sure that in 2017 February, we go through our turnaround maintenance and because of the expanded capacity we now have we are planning to refine between 16 and 18 million barrels of crude oil in 2017," Mr Darko told staff of the company at an end of year thanksgiving ceremony in Tema.

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He added: "We are going to be in a place which I believe will be a much stronger place by the virtue of the foundation that we have laid."

He also added that there are still challenges to surmount despite the prospect.

"The concrete which we have cast is not yet hardened so there is still a lot of fragility and a lot of work to be done,” he said.

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The process is expected to inform TOR of the commercial value of the by-products available. It is also expected to influence major policy decision on the sulphur specification content for diesel.