Highway on Jurong Island diverted for petrochem cracker

Charmian Kok, Business Times 28 May 08;

JURONG Island will go to great lengths to accommodate the petrochemical industry - as shown by the near-$100 million Jurong Island Highway diversion project.

About a kilometre of highway was diverted so that ExxonMobil could build a second cracker next to its current site. This way, the new cracker needs only 11 ha of land instead of 30 ha had it been built elsewhere on the island. This saves the company capex and operational costs - and saves Singapore precious space.

The director of the specialised parks development group at JTC Corporation, Heah Soon Poh, said that if further petrochemical projects require road diversion, JTC would consider it if their investment would benefit Singapore. 'One third of our manufacturing GDP comes from chemicals,' he said. 'We can safely say the bulk of that comes from Jurong Island. If it is an investment that is important to the Singapore economy and adds to the whole value chain, I don't see why we would not divert roads to accommodate it. We need to look at the bigger picture.'

The ExxonMobil project also required the diversion of pipelines on Jurong Island - a complex procedure that involved more than 17 pipes carrying natural gas, industrial water and carbon monoxide. In all, 25 companies on the island were affected.

The road diversion works, which started in January 2006, are expected to be completed by August this year. Pipeline diversion works started in November 2006 and were completed in January this year.