Speaking to journalists after an intensive tour of the facility, Hon. Jobe said GP is a strategic national asset, while expressing his impression with the state that the facility was, as they are registering ongoing improvements.
Mr. Jobe said as a government, they would push and encourage them to do whatever is necessary to address them in the best way possible.
The Energy and Petroleum minister said: “We have brought up a number of issues to the attention of the board chair, as well as to the managing director as there are certain infrastructural improvements that they need to do as explained by the MD.”
“We have also been reliably informed that by July or August, the work will be completed and that would have a redundancy in the supply line from the vessel to the facility.”
However, Yero Jallow, managing director of Gam-Petroleum, said the facility is a private limited company with about 75% ownership of government institutions namely: Social Security, Gambia Ports Authority, Ministry of Finance, GNPC and Star Oil as private shareholder.
According to him, NAWEC is GP’s major consumer of the HFO which is a critical product when it comes to delivery because it has to be heated before being discharged.
He explained that the heating takes place in a machine called Boiler, which he said usually determines the temperature. He said NAWEC has a requirement of 50 degrees’ temperature level for the HFO.
He explained that before delivering any HFO product to NAWEC, it has to be heated to 50 degrees which he noted is a challenge in case the Boiler is not proper.
According to him, considering the fact that the Boiler has some fault, the company has recently secured one which is being installed and hopefully by the end of July, it would be ready for operations.
The GP managing director posited that part of the challenges the company is faced with is the disruption in the supply chain and because of that, the operations have slowed down drastically, hoping that the business would pick up as soon as possible.
He further disclosed that the company has about 198 staff in totality, with various departments such as finance, administration and Human Resources combined together, operations department, as well as HSSE.
He pointed out that the HSSE are the people that make sure that the security of the environment is maintained to their esteem. “We know this is a very dangerous environment and as a result, there are certain protocols that must be observed,” he concluded.
