Buipe-Bolgatanga oil storage to be operational in June

Buipe (N/R), March 5, GNA - The Bulk Oil Storage Depots in Buipe and Bolgatanga, currently under construction is expected to be completed in May this year and would be handed over for use in June. Mr Francis Boafo, site engineer at the Buipe Storage Depot in the Central Gonja District disclosed this to newsmen, when the Northern Regional Minister Alhaji Abubakar Saddique Boniface visited the site on Saturday.

The minister was on a 7-day tour of the western corridor districts of the Northern Region, comprising Bole-Bamboi, Sawla-Tuna-Kalba, West Gonja and Central Gonja districts.

The purpose of the visits was to enable the minister to know at first hand the situation on the ground at the rural areas, see how best he could help solve them and to explain government development agenda to the people.

Key among the minister's message to the people in all the communities is peace, the need for the Representation of the People's Amendment Law (ROPAL), and the importance of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

Zakhem International, Lebanon-based construction firm is constructing both the Buipe and the Bolgatanga Storage Tanks for oil deposits to serve Burkina-Faso, Mali and other neighbouring countries from Bolgatanga.

Mr Boafo said laying of underground pipes from Buipe to Bolgatanga had been completed and that what was left was the three storage tanks to transport petroleum products from Buipe to Bolgatanga through the pipelines.

He said the three storage tanks, which had the capacity of 10 thousand cubic meters each, would store premium, diesel and kerosene and that the same capacity was at the Bolgatanga depot to receive the products from Buipe.

Alhaji Boniface commended workers for the rate at which the work was going and that the Buipe-Bolgatanga oil pipeline project was key in a sense that it would reduce frustration tanker drivers go through to transport fuel from Tema to Buipe and Bolgatanga.

The minister later visited various projects sites being undertaken by the Central Gonja District Assembly, which included a 2.5 billion-Cedi District Assembly hall complex, 502 million cedis two residential accommodation and some teachers' quarters. Leaders of all the communities that the minister visited appealed for infrastructure assistance such as roads, clinics, schools, and pipe borne water and income-generating facilities for the youth. The main concern of the communities was the issue of Fulani herdsmen, whose cattle were destroying farm crops and other property and appealed to the government to do something about them to save live and property. 5 March 06