Residents of Poase, a fishing community in New Takoradi, are having sleepless nights because of the fear of explosion from fuel storage tanks which have been installed in the middle of the town.
The tanks of the company is located in the area without the approval of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the town planning department of the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA).
The residents are kept awake in the night as the heavy duty trucks keep disturbing them, always in fear that if what happened at the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) should occur, they would be the victims.
The company has connected its pipeline to that of TOR and currently has two vessels docked at the Takoradi Port with imported petroleum to be offloaded through TOR pipelines to its facility when the current stock runs out.
The company, Cyrus Petroleum, according to the officials of the EPA, was not supposed to start operating, as there are many questions to be answered concerning its application.
The EPA explained that the company had submitted a report and its drawings and that the agency had not yet approved its request, for which reason it was illegal for it to start operations.
When the Daily Graphic got to Poase, it was seen that residential facilities were about 10 metres away from the storage facility containing fuel and marked ‘highly inflammable’.
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