Ronnie Lim, Business Times 1 Dec 09;
SINGAPORE's first floating oil and petrochemicals tankfarm could be built off Pulau Sebarok - 9 km south of the mainland - if the latest sea current and physical environment studies to be carried out there show it to be a feasible location.
Sebarok - already used for on-land oil storage by Dutch tankfarm operator Vopak and PetroChina-owned Singapore Petroleum Company - has been identified by JTC Corporation as a possible site for such Very Large Floating Structures (VLFS), a just- called JTC tender shows.
The island is also very close to Pulau Bukom, where the Shell refinery is, and not far from Singapore's main oil and petrochemicals hub, Jurong Island.
JTC is seeking a consultant to carry out sea current monitoring and metocean studies there - the latter referring to the physical environment near an offshore platform, such as, the wave and wind strength.
The move to build such floating oil storage has become more urgent given that Jurong Island - with 75 per cent of its 3,000 hectares already taken up or reserved - is fast running out of land needed for projects for Singapore's growing oil and petrochemicals refining and trading hub. That is why JTC earlier this year also embarked on building the $890 million first phase of the Jurong Rock Cavern to store oil underground.
Recent JTC estimates show that even with 3.5 million cubic metres of new oil storage to be added to Singapore's existing 4.6 million cu m of capacity, there will still be a shortfall of at least three million cu m of capacity.
The latest Pulau Sebarok study - part of its phase two study which includes environmental impact, engineering design, business model and security of the VLFS - follows a search in February this year for potential sites.
It will involve the consultant carrying out sea current monitoring with an acoustic doppler current profiler at the VLFS location for two months, plus conducting metocean design data analysis to establish design and operational wind, wave, sea current and water level conditions via hydraulic modelling.
JTC indicated earlier this year that it will decide whether to build the VLFS depending on the outcome of the phase two studies which will be completed in March next year.
The earlier phase one studies, completed in late-2007, showed such VLFS to be technically feasible and comparable in cost to land-based oil storage.
The studies established that to be economical, the minimum storage capacity of a VLFS should be 300,000 cu m, or equivalent to that of a very large crude carrier.
It would comprise two rectangular modules, each measuring 180m by 80m by 15m and with 150,000 cu m of capacity. Preliminary cost estimates show that a VLFS would cost at least $180 million.