Six MDs in Eight Years Contributed to TOR’s Decline – Edmond Kombat

The Managing Director of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), Edmond Kombat, has attributed the refinery’s prolonged operational and financial difficulties under the previous administration to chronic leadership instability, revealing that the state-owned facility cycled through six managing directors and an interim management committee in just eight years.

Speaking in an interview with Bernard Avle on Channel One TV’s The Point of View on Wednesday, November 11, Kombat said the rapid turnover made it impossible for successive leaders to implement and sustain long-term decisions at a refinery whose technical and financial challenges demanded continuity .

“In eight years, they had six managing directors, including an interim management committee. And an IMC of three personnel. So let’s say roughly seven MDs. You see that the turnover was very short,” Kombat said. “They were not refining, and I think they had an instability in leadership” .

A Decade of Leadership Churn

The turnover spanned the Akufo-Addo administration from 2017 to 2025. Isaac Osei resigned in December 2019 after controversies. Herbert Morrison served a brief stop-gap tenure, followed by Asante Berko, who resigned in April 2020 after being indicted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Francis Boateng was dismissed in June 2021 alongside his deputy. Edward Boateng later left under dramatic circumstances, and an Interim Management Committee was formed before Jerry K. Yinson took over, only to be removed. Daniel Appiah, a retired financial director, was later named acting MD .

The leadership churn coincided with the refinery’s operational collapse. TOR’s Crude Distillation Unit had been idle since April 2021, while the Residue Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit had remained shut since 2019 .

Audit Backlog Compounded the Crisis

Kombat also identified the absence of independently audited financial statements as a major governance failure that paralysed decision-making. Successive managements relied on management accounts rather than audited statements, leaving the refinery’s true financial position opaque for years.

“I think they didn’t really have a lot of time to make decisions. And then an audited account just piled up. It was a management account, not an independently audited account,” he said .

The current management has since worked with the Ghana Audit Service to clear the backlog. Audits for 2019 to 2024 were completed by April 30, 2026, followed by the 2025 accounts on May 30. An Annual General Meeting was subsequently held to consider statements covering 2017 to 2025—TOR’s first AGM in years .

Uncertainty Over TOR’s Future

Kombat further revealed that uncertainty within the previous government about TOR’s viability had undermined the refinery’s prospects. Some officials at the Energy Ministry, he said, did not believe the refinery was viable and considered converting it into a tank farm or divesting it entirely .

“There are indications that some of the people in the government at the Energy Ministry didn’t really believe that TOR was viable. So there was this argument about either making it a tank farm or probably giving it out,” he said .

The tank-farm proposal had surfaced as far back as 2018, when the Energy Ministry reportedly considered the conversion, drawing objections from TOR management at the time . The idea resurfaced under the previous administration, with the Minority in Parliament vowing to resist any such move .

A Strategic Asset, Not a Liability

Kombat pushed back firmly against the tank-farm argument, describing TOR as a strategic national asset whose scale dwarfs alternative storage infrastructure.

“If you have a refinery like this, the refinery of TOR, the storage is one million metric tons; it’s like three times that of BOST, and you have a refinery that is 45,000 capacity,” he said .

The Recovery Underway

The interview comes as TOR stages a fragile recovery. The refinery restarted crude processing on December 19, 2025, after turnaround maintenance on its CDU, and has since received more than five million barrels of crude—including Nigeria’s Bonga and Bonny Light, Côte d’Ivoire’s Baleine, and Ghana’s Jubilee crude .

When the current management took office in 2025, TOR had accumulated losses of approximately GH¢10 billion, debts of about US$517 million, and six years of outstanding audited accounts . The refinery has since reported a pre-tax profit of GH¢1.24 billion for 2025—its first in a decade—though the earnings were substantially supported by foreign-exchange gains rather than refining operations alone .

TOR is currently processing about 28,000 barrels per stream day, below its CDU capacity of 45,000 barrels per stream day. A newly commissioned furnace, F-61, is expected to restore higher utilisation .

Kombat’s priority, he said, is ensuring that future managements build on the progress made rather than allowing leadership instability to reverse it once more.

“If progress was made in that first term and you achieve this result and then within eight years you see a decline, now we are seeing some progress. How do we ensure that that progress is sustained?” he asked .

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Reporter’s note: The managing director count varies across sources. Kombat himself said six MDs plus an IMC, “roughly seven.” A GhanaWeb compilation from 2023 listed seven former CEOs since 2017, while an African Editors account listed eight, including interim arrangements . The discrepancy reflects differing treatment of acting and interim appointments. The GH¢1.24 billion profit figure is pre-tax and was significantly boosted by foreign-exchange gains, as SIGA’s assessment noted .