Singapore is going ahead to build floating oil / petrochemicals storage at Pulau Sebarok.

JTC Corporation is now getting a consultant to prepare the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) tender for the very large floating structures (VLFS), with the tender possibly going out as early as year-end or early next year.

The floating storage will help boost supply of oil/ petrochemicals storage needed in Singapore’s oil refining/trading hub.

With the shortage of land here on one hand, and increased demand for oil storage by traders on the other, JTC also recently embarked on building the $890 million first phase of Jurong Rock Cavern to store oil underground.

The corporation yesterday put out a notice seeking a multi-disciplinary team of consultants ‘to develop the preliminary structural conceptual design and construct the VLFS storage facility at the proposed site at Pulau Sebarok’.

This follows its completion of feasibility studies on the VLFS in March this year.

Phase one, which started in 2007, and which developed a preliminary structural conceptual design of an attached-to-land VLFS storage, progressed to phase two – covering areas like environmental impact, marine soil investigation and engineering surveys and sea current monitoring and metocean design data analysis.

The development of the VLFS will now proceed in four stages, according to the latest JTC ‘Expression of Interest’ document.

Under stage one, the appointed consultant will review the preliminary structural conceptual design of the floating storage and redesign it such that the VLFS will have the flexibility of being constructed from concrete or steel. It will also need to provide cost comparisons for the two.

Stage two involves preparing tender documents for the calling of the EPC tender as well as that for the environmental management and monitoring plan; while stage three covers calling and evaluation of the tender; and stage four, the VLFS construction and completion.

Given the target completion dates set by JTC, the EPC tenders could go out as soon as this year-end or early next year.

The chosen site, Pulau Sebarok, is currently used for onshore storage by Dutch terminal operator Vopak and PetroChina-owned Singapore Petroleum Company. It is not far from Jurong Island, Singapore’s main oil / petrochemicals hub.

JTC studies earlier ascertained that to be economical, the minimum storage capacity of a VLFS should be 300,000 cubic metres, or equivalent to that of a very large crude carrier.

The VLFS would comprise two rectangular modules, each measuring 180m by 80m by 15m, and with 150,000 cu m capacity.