Accra, Ghana//-The Managing Director of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), Edmond Kombat, today announced that the recovery of the country’s oldest crude oil refinery has created more than 8,000 jobs for Ghanaians since the return of the Mahama-led government in January 2025.
Mr Kombat made this known when he took his turn at the Government Accountability Series at the Jubilee House on Monday, October 26, 2026 in Accra.
Giving the breakdown of the job numbers, he revealed that 1,657 permanent and temporary jobs were created, while more than 6,500 indirect and temporary workers were also engaged during the turnaround maintenance period.
According to him, these employment opportunities formed part of the broader economic benefits of restoring operations at TOR after years of operational difficulties.
The Managing Director of the state-owned crude oil refinery was emphatic that the recovery programme had created opportunities for young engineers, technical workers and local contractors in the country.
415 young engineers, Mr Kombat told the journalists had been recruited into permanent positions, while 301 temporary workers were engaged for Crude Distillation Unit (CDU)maintenance and another 287 for work on the Residue Fluid Catalytic Cracking (RFCC) unit.
Furthermore, he added an additional 654 workers were employed by 35 local contractors operating at the refinery, stressing that the refinery’s turnaround maintenance had generated wider employment opportunities beyond its direct workforce.
In his own words: “In effect, direct employment for 1,657 Young Ghanaian Engineers, and more than 6,500 indirect and temporary workers were engaged during the turnaround work”.
Mr Kombat emphasised that the employment figures demonstrated the potential for the refinery’s recovery to contribute to job creation and economic activity.
He explained that the current management had also addressed more than 300 outstanding staff petitions and promotion-related cases, some of which had remained unresolved for more than a decade.
His efforts to improve staff welfare included reviewing conditions of service, job descriptions and performance-management systems.
The refinery’s recovery programme also includes further work on the RFCC unit, boiler systems, crude-heating equipment and other infrastructure intended to improve operational capacity.
Mr Kombat said the planned expansion of TOR would support additional economic opportunities as Ghana sought to increase domestic refining capacity, adding that the current management intended to pursue further development projects, including a new refinery, petrochemical facilities and additional storage capacity.
The objective, he noted, was to build a more sustainable refinery that could contribute to employment, industrial development and national energy security.
Instructively, TOR had faced significant operational challenges before the Kombat-led management took office in May 2025. The refinery’s CDU had been shut down since April 2021, while its RFCC unit had also been inactive since 2019.
The shutdown of the major processing units had limited the refinery’s activities largely to storage services, reducing its ability to undertake its core function of processing crude oil.
However, the current management introduced Project Restore TOR, which prioritised the rehabilitation and restart of the CDU, improvements to financial controls and measures to rebuild confidence among workers and business partners.
