Shell expands Bukom refinery storage by around 1.3m barrels

Singapore

SHELL has increased the storage capacity at its Singapore Bukom refinery by nearly 1.3 million barrels by building two large crude oil tanks.

Increasing its storage capacity on the island gives the oil major greater flexibility in optimising its oil-trading activities; the move is also aimed at sharpening the company's competitiveness through storage and logistics investment in its core refineries, on the back of expected increases in demand for oil products in the region and globally over the next two decades.

Shell names Singapore is its largest petrochemical production and export centre in the Asia-Pacific.

The company is also investing in storage and logistics for its other large, complex and integrated sites in Rotterdam and the US Gulf Coast.

Robin Mooldijk, executive vice-president for manufacturing, said the new facilities give Shell the leeway to buy more oil when market conditions are attractive: "This project positions Shell to capture stronger margins and to better manage market volatility over the coming years."

Shell built the storage tanks using an automated welding technology, reducing welding time by 60 per cent and reducing costs.

This is not the first time it has invested in storage capacity in its Singapore petrochemical complexes.

Last September, it inked an agreement for the lease on two more propylene storage tanks on Jurong Island with the privately-owned Oiltanking Singapore Chemical Storage, an independent storage provider that handles petrochemical products and runs a terminal on Jurong Island. Pulau Bukom hosts Shell's largest wholly-owned refinery globally in terms of crude distillation capacity.

It is also home to its ethylene cracker complex, where production capacity expanded from 800,000 tonnes to a million tonnes a year after an upgrading in 2015.