Chamber of Petroleum Consumers unhappy with GOIL CEO’s dismissal

The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers in a statement registered its dissatisfaction with government’s dismissal of Patrick Akorlie, Managing Director of Ghana Oil Company (GOIL). According to them, the chief executive whom they tagged a performer has two years to retirement and should have been left to continue till retirement.

In the statement signed by Duncan Amoah, its Executive Secretary, the group said it remains “optimistic about the future.”

They are hopeful that the replacement would “not have cause to miss or regret the tinkering that has gone on with GOIL.”

“A weakened GOIL not only becomes a danger to the unsuspecting public but serves to pave way for domination of the downstream by multinationals who will not only make super profits but repatriate same at the end of the accounting year”, the statement said.

Ghana entered a very crucial phase of its downstream development on the 1st of July 2015, when price liberalization was introduced. This policy which not only is targeted at huge savings for the government in excess of $40 million /monthly in losses that it previously had to pay to the bulk distribution companies ( BDCS ) but also introduced with it the needed competition by the over 87 oil marketing companies.

The first six months of this new pricing regime saw very stiff competition by all the OMCs such that fuel prices continuously dropped from the regions of ghc17.055/gallon to ghc11.92/gallon until the introduction of the energy sector levies that pushed prices back up above ghc16/gallon following which fuel prices have never dropped to anything below ghc15 till date.