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Emerging Africa Advisers (EAA), principal adviser to the manager of the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), has announced that EAIF committed US$12mn as part of a US$36mn long-term debt facility for Tema Offshore Mooring, a subsidiary of Trafigura Beheer, for the purpose of financing a crude oil and petroleum products import system in the Ghanaian port of Tema.


The project will greatly improve the country’s oil and petroleum products importation efficiency and will indirectly save the government of Ghana significant hard currency demurrage costs.


The project is Ghana’s first build, own, operate and transfer (Boot) concession in the ports sector, entailing the development of a single point mooring system (SPM) and a conventional buoy mooring system (CBM), both to be located in the waters outside Tema Port in Ghana.


The project also includes the laying of offshore and onshore pipelines from the SPM (36 inches) and the CBM (18 inches) to supply crude oil and petroleum products respectively to the Tema Oil Refinery, 100% owned by the government of Ghana. The construction period is 12 months and the total projected cost is US$58mn, financed by sponsor’s equity together with the long term debt facility.


The mooring points will be offshore at a designated area that will allow a 24 hour continuous operation to handle the bulk of Ghana’s crude oil and petroleum products requirements. The SPM has the ability to handle the discharging of ships of up to 150,000 MT in 23 metres of water, with the CBM servicing smaller ships up to 50,000 MT in 14 meters of water.


The US$36mn debt financing has been structured as a club loan with EAIF, Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) and Barclays Bank Ghana Limited participating in equal parts. Barclays Bank, South Africa branch acted as arranger for the transaction.


Trafigura Beheer BV, registered in The Netherlands is a leading, privately owned, diversified commodity trading group with world-wide activity in the trading of crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas, metals, minerals, electricity and other commodities. These activities are also supported by selective investments in projects related to these core businesses.


Emerging Africa Advisers (EAA) is a division of Standard Bank London and exclusive adviser to Standard Infrastructure Fund Managers (Africa) Limited (SIFMA), the fund manager of the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund.


EAIF is a US$305mn debt fund established by a group of public and private sector institutions to provide long term debt finance to commercially viable private sector infrastructure projects in sub-Saharan Africa. The signing of this transaction takes EAIF’s overall portfolio of long term debt commitments to US$104mn.