Underground push pays off
SINGAPORE — One of Singapore’s most ambitious industrial projects, the S$950 million Jurong Rock Caverns (JRC) — South-east Asia’s first commercial underground rock cavern storage facility for crude oil and petroleum products — were officially opened yesterday after nearly eight years of rigorous construction.
SINGAPORE — One of Singapore’s most ambitious industrial projects, the S$950 million Jurong Rock Caverns (JRC) — South-east Asia’s first commercial underground rock cavern storage facility for crude oil and petroleum products — were officially opened yesterday after nearly eight years of rigorous construction.
Located 150m under the seabed at Jurong Island, the mammoth project was hailed by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as an embodiment of Singapore’s spirit of innovation and determination.
The engineering marvel demonstrates the need for Singapore to be bold in tackling challenges such as land constraints, he said, noting that JTC Corp — the developer of JRC — is now exploring building an underground science city, as well as an underground warehousing and logistics facility.
“It is not just that the sky is the limit, but there are also fewer limits than we think to the depths we can go. We are limited only by our own imagination,” Mr Lee said at the opening ceremony yesterday.
JTC said it will conduct feasibility studies for the underground science city that will likely be located at Science Park 1 and 2 in Kent Ridge. Tanjong Kling will be the preferred location for the underground warehousing facility pending feasibility studies, it added.
While it cost 30 per cent more to build the JRC below ground compared with reclaiming land, the Government decided to go ahead with the project as it would free up 60ha of surface land — about the size of 85 football fields — for higher value-added facilities, Mr Lee said.
“Sixty hectares of land is enough to house up to six petrochemical plants ... the JRC show we are determined to develop the petrochemical industry here, despite our land constraints and also despite the potential impact of a United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change arrangement on carbon emissions,” he said. “The (petrochemical) industry provides good jobs for Singaporeans, it contributes significantly to our economy — the chemicals industry comprises a third of our manufacturing output.”
The JRC, with a total storage capacity equivalent to 600 Olympic-sized swimming pools, were conceptualised as a key plank of the petrochemicals industry with the aim of overcoming land constraints in Singapore and supporting long-term economic growth.
Their location under Jurong Island complements refining plants and infrastructure on the surface and reinforces Singapore’s position as a leading global energy and chemicals hub. Jurong Island hosts more than 100 energy and chemicals companies, including the largest in the world such as ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron, with collective investments of more than S$47 billion. With the JRC’s massive storage capacity, petrochemical plants in Jurong can rely on a stable and uninterrupted supply of feedstock.
While similar underground storage exists in countries such as Japan, South Korea and the United States, most of them are used to hold strategic stockpiles of oil instead of being used for commercial purposes.
In Singapore, the JRC are also not the first subterranean storage space. The Ministry of Defence’s Mandai Underground Ammunition Facility served as an inspiration for JTC to go below the surface.
Construction of the JRC started in January 2007 beneath the waters of Banyan Basin in Jurong Island, facing tough challenges such as high humidity and water ingress that threatened to delay the project. But after excavating close to 3.5 million cubic metres of rock, the first two caverns were completed in March this year and have been leased to Jurong Aromatics Corp, which will store condensate that will be used as a feedstock for its new aromatics plant.
The other three caverns are scheduled for completion by the end of 2016.