“Moving forward, JTC is targeting to call a tender for the technical consultant in the second quarter,” a JTC spokeswoman told Singapore’s Business Times.

“The work scope for the technical consultant would include looking into the front-end engineering design as well as calling of the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) tender,” she added.

It was not clear when actual construction of the VLFS units would commence.

A lack of land space in Singapore has prompted JTC to proceed with the VLFS project, which could help meet rising storage demands from the burgeoning oil trading activities in the island-state.

The VLFS will most likely be anchored off Pulau Sebarok, which was identified as a potential site for the project.

Pulau Sebarok is currently being used for onshore oil storage by Vopak and PetroChina-owned Singapore Petroleum Company (SPC). The island is located very close to Jurong Island, Singapore’s main oil and petrochemicals hub.

The VLFS phase two studies covered environmental impact, engineering design, business model and security aspects.

Phase one studies were completed in late-2007, proving the VLFS to be technically feasible and comparable to land-based oil storage. The estimate cost of building one VLFS unit was about $118 million (S$180 million) and it could be built in 18 to 24 months.

A VLFS unit comes in two rectangular modules each measuring 180 metres (m) by 80 m by 15 m, with 150,000 cubic metres (m³) of capacity each.