French-Singapore group to design undersea caverns

The Straits Times, February 28, 2007


SINGAPORE has moved a step closer to its first undersea rock caverns for oil storage off Jurong Island.

Industrial landlord JTC Corporation has appointed a consortium, Geostock-Jurong Consultants, to design and manage the construction of the first phase of the $2 billion caverns.

The nine-storey deep caverns, part of the Republic's plans to grow its role as an energy hub, can store up to 1.47 million cubic metres of oil under the seabed when completed. They will free up about 60ha of surface land space - about the size of 60 football fields - used for storage.

A future second phase of the project will also free up about the same amount of surface land.

JTC Corp said in a statement yesterday that the consortium will design the basic engineering details and manage the construction of the first phase of the underground tunnels and its facilities. It won the tender for the project at a price of $18.9 million.

Geostock, based in France, was the consultant for 12 of the 18 caverns completed in the past 10 years worldwide. Its partner, Singapore-based Jurong Consultants, has expertise in engineering consultancy, project management and construction supervision.

Over the next few months, JTC Corp will invite interested parties to submit proposals to run the first phase of the caverns. Results of this exercise will be announced in the last quarter of the year.

It also aims to appoint a contractor for the detailed design and construction of the underground tunnels and related facilities by that time.

Work on the first phase began earlier this month. It will add about nine million barrels of oil storage space to Singapore's current capacity, which was reported last year to be at 88 million barrels.

The caverns will be completed in phases, starting from 2010.