The Managing Director of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), Edmond Kombat, has been named Energy Sector Recovery Programme (ESRP) Champion of the Year 2026 for the petroleum sector, following the resumption of refining operations and improvements in the state-owned refinery’s financial performance.
Minister for Energy and Green Transition, Dr John Abdulai Jinapor, presented the award at the ministry’s 2026 annual retreat, an energy sector performance review held at the Volta Serene Hotel in Ho.
Introduced in 2025, the ESRP Champion Award recognizes heads of energy sector institutions who make significant contributions to revenue generation, cost reduction, operational efficiency and good governance. The Electricity Company of Ghana’s Managing Director, Kwame Kpekpena, received the inaugural award.
The citation for Mr. Kombat highlighted the completion of major maintenance works on TOR’s Crude Distillation Unit (CDU), which paved the way for refining to resume after several years of inactivity. It also recognized the processing of one million barrels of Ghana’s Jubilee crude by August 2026.
“This recognition belongs to the entire TOR family,” Mr. Kombat said in a statement, commending staff for their dedication, resilience and sense of national duty.
“A refinery that was not refining”
The award marks a sharp reversal.
“We met a refinery that was not refining,” Mr. Kombat told media fellows touring the plant in March, describing what his management team inherited. He said debt had climbed back to about US$517 million, losses between 2017 and 2024 had reached about GH¢10 billion, and the company had gone six years without audited accounts.
Management repaired the CDU from internally generated funds, he said, raising cash by extending loading hours at the gantry and drawing private and regional firms to store and lift products at Tema. Refining resumed on December 19, 2025, after nearly five years offline.
The numbers have since moved. The State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA) said in a communiqué reported in June that TOR posted a profit before tax of GH¢1.24 billion for 2025, its first profit in a decade. The refinery also cleared a six-year backlog of audited financial statements, bringing its accounts up to date to 2025.Trade and other payables fell from GH¢7.1 billion to GH¢5 billion, according to SIGA, and the time taken to collect receivables dropped from 1,099 days to 652.
Between May and the end of July, TOR took delivery of three one-million-barrel crude cargoes: Bonga, Baleine and Ghana’s own Jubilee. President John Dramani Mahama commissioned the refurbished CDU on August 1 and said the recovery had been achieved without government money.
What remains
The recovery is not complete. SIGA cautioned that liquidity constraints, accumulated deficits and the need for further balance-sheet restructuring still require sustained attention. Its figures also put TOR’s foreign exchange gain for 2025 at GH¢1.3 billion, more than the pre-tax profit itself.
The government, meanwhile, wants more from the refinery. At the August commissioning, President Mahama directed Dr Jinapor to work with TOR’s board and management on a strategic plan to raise capacity to 100,000 barrels per day, more than double its nameplate 45,000. He also pledged to restructure TOR to end political interference in its operations.
Mr. Kombat, a lawyer and co-founder of the Institute for Energy Security, has led the refinery since 2025, when he was elevated from Deputy Managing Director. The ESRP honour follows the Outstanding Public Sector Leadership Award he received from the Ghana CEOs Network at the 10th Ghana CEOs Summit earlier this year.
He struck a cautious note on the latest recognition. “We are grateful for the recognition,” he said, “but we recognize that there is still much more work to be done.”
