Powering the nation [Archive]

babystan03

May 10th, 2004, 05:34 AM

MAY 10, 2004

Plans to store natural gas will help secure supply, and may involve $1 billion project

By Christopher Tan

THE Government is looking at setting up a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Singapore and is commissioning a feasibility study for the maiden mega-project.

This is the first tentative step forward since the idea was first raised two years ago. If the green light is given, industry sources estimate the project to cost about $1 billion and take up to five years to complete.

Broadly, an LNG terminal stores natural gas which has been cooled to minus 160 deg C. LNG is a mere 1/600th of its gaseous volume, and thus can be stored and transported by sea viably.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), via the Energy Market Authority, is the driving force behind this initiative.

Said a spokesman for the MTI: 'This will be a project to position ourselves to meet Singapore's long-term energy needs. Because of developments in the LNG market globally, there may be opportunities to tap LNG to meet future growth in energy demand and create new economic activities from managing the LNG business.'

She also said that the tender for the study will be out 'in the next one to two months'.

Industry sources expect the Japanese to bid aggressively for the study. Corporations such as Nissho Iwai and Itochu have done similar consultancy work in other countries.

Oil companies and consultants said an LNG terminal will secure the supply of what is forecast to be Singapore's chief fuel in the coming decades. It can also position Singapore as an energy trading centre, an objective discussed at length by the Economic Review Committee in 2002.

The feasibility study will, among others, identify at least two sites for a terminal and forecast Singapore's gas demand up to 2030.

Its terms and conditions also state that the design should be flexible enough to meet future demand and responsive enough to address 'catastrophic failure in the supply of piped natural gas'.

Ownership could be in the hands of the Government or a consortium of companies or shared between the state and private enterprises.

However it turns out, industry players do not believe the terminal will eclipse the current piped supplies of natural gas from Indonesia and Malaysia. They can co-exist, said experts.

Besides, the recent gas supply disruption, which caused a blackout in the western part of Singapore, showed a need for backup supply, they added.

Said a Singapore Petroleum Company spokesman: 'Gas delivery via pipelines and LNG are not mutually exclusive.'

But the new venture has caught the eye of the oil giants.

ExxonMobil, for instance, has LNG joint ventures with a combined gross capacity of 22 million tonnes per year - nearly 20 per cent of the global industry capacity - making it a leading LNG supplier.

British Petroleum, which is involved in the building of China's first LNG terminal in Guangdong, is keeping an open mind about doing the same here.

Its president in Singapore, Dr Wu Shen Kong, said: 'BP is prepared to look at it pending the outcome of the study.'

But critics of the project said Singapore's gas is not competitively priced. And liquefaction will further add to its cost.

The long lead time and heavy investment outlay also make it risky. Said an energy consultant: 'An LNG infrastructure is insurance against supply hiccups. But if there is no hiccup, it becomes a very expensive white elephant.'

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Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

May 19th, 2004, 11:49 AM

MAY 19, 2004
Next big thing to light up energy scene: LNG
By Christopher Tan

GAS can be cool. Especially when it is at minus 162.2 deg C. That's the temperature at which unsexy methane becomes liquefied natural gas (LNG), a commodity that is becoming as liquid - literally and figuratively - as oil.

Mr Emad Khalil, 38, a partner specialising in energy projects with international law firm Jones Day in Singapore, reckons that LNG will emerge as the next big thing on the energy scene.

'Better technology, falling costs of turning gas into liquid and back to gas, as well as rising oil prices have made LNG more and more competitive,' he said.

In liquid form, gas is only 1/600th of its volume, making it storage-friendly and portable. It can then be shipped to markets where it is uneconomical to pipe gas.

'The rule of thumb is: If the pipeline is over 2,000km, LNG is more viable.'

As the world's biggest gas reserves are in Russia, Iran and Qatar - far from most consumer markets - LNG is the way to go for many would-be users.

But what about markets that are close to source, like Singapore, which is buying piped gas from Indonesia and Malaysia?

'The beauty of having an LNG terminal is: You become a master of your own destiny. It gives you a much wider array of places you can source from,' Mr Khalil said. 'Even Malaysia and Indonesia are thinking of building terminals.'

Higher prices of piped natural gas will also make LNG an attractive proposition. In the United States, for instance, gas is now trading at US$6.50 per 1,000 cubic feet (28.32 cubic metres), up from just US$2 in the late-1990s, he added.

Piped gas in the region is 'on the high side'. 'That's one of the reasons we are paying so much for power,' he said. 'That has huge implications for the economy.'

Mr Khalil said Singapore's decision to do a feasibility study on building an LNG terminal is a wise move. 'Given the long lead time it takes to develop and finance an LNG receiving terminal, it is understandable why Singapore would want to commission a feasibility study now.'

Industry sources reckon that the feasibility study, which the Ministry of Trade and Industry is commissioning soon, will cost some $2 million and take at least 12 months to complete.

The project under consideration, which could cost $1 billion and take five years to complete, is expected to whip up keen interest among energy players as well as banks.

But will the current frenzy to build LNG infrastructure be a repeat of the rush to build power plants a decade ago - a move which caused overcapacity and hence losses for investors in projects like Dabhol in India?

Mr Khalil said: 'You can't store electrons. But with gas and oil, you can store it, sell it or ship it anywhere.'

Rising environmental concerns, he added, are also a strong driving force behind LNG projects.

'When you factor in the higher health-care costs, and disability, and premature deaths, coal is not cheap. For instance, a gas-fuelled power plant emits 20 per cent less nitrogen oxides, 50 per cent less carbon dioxide, and much less fine particulates.

'At Jones Day, we have been seeing a marked increase in gas and LNG-related work over the last couple of years, particularly in Asia,' he said.

According to a report by the US Department of Energy dated December last year, global capacity for making LNG is expected to rise from last year's 139 million tonnes a year to 197 million tonnes per year in 2007. That is a 40 per cent jump in three years.

Asia, including Malaysia, Indonesia, India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and China, will account for at least a dozen new facilities in the next few years. Japan, the world's largest LNG consumer, has 23 terminals.

Mr Khalil estimates that liquefaction and regasification projects planned in South-east Asia alone are worth about US$10 billion (S$17.35 billion).

He expects China to announce more projects as the fast-developing country sources for clean energy.

GAS WHAT?

WHAT LIQUEFACTION IS: The process of turning gas into liquid by lowering its temperature to minus 162.2 deg C. This is typically done by the selling country.

WHAT REGASIFICATION IS: The process of turning LNG back into gas. Regasification facilities are usually called LNG terminals. The converted fuel is then piped into the customer network. These terminals also store LNG.

HOW LNG IS SHIPPED: LNG is shipped in double-hulled container vessels built at only eight shipyards in the world. As of late last year, there were 151 LNG tankers in the world, with 55 tankers under construction.

COST BREAKDOWN: Shipping accounts for 10 to 30 per cent of the cost of LNG, versus 10 per cent for oil. Gas production, from well to LNG plant, takes up 15 to 20 per cent. Liquefaction adds 30 to 45 per cent. Regasification and distribution contribute another 15 to 25 per cent.

TOP BUYER: Japan is the world's biggest LNG buyer, accounting for half of all LNG produced. In 2002, it imported 54.6 million tonnes of LNG, or 48 per cent of global trade.

LNG CAPACITY: LNG terminals around the world have a capacity for 311 million tonnes of LNG a year - as of October, last year. New terminals under construction will add 37.7 million tonnes by around 2007, with those in the Asia Pacific accounting for half of new capacity.

Source: US Department of Energy

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

June 1st, 2004, 01:42 PM

JUNE 1, 2004

Republic to study prospects of constructing a terminal facility here and developing a market for trading gas contracts

By Azhar Khalid

SINGAPORE, which is among the world's largest refining centres with more than $500 million worth of oil traded every day, is now looking at becoming a hub for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The Ministry of Trade & Industry plans to commission a study that will, among other things, look into the prospects of:

Constructing an LNG terminal facility here; and developing a market for trading gas contracts.

'Singapore, as Asia's oil trading centre, would be well-positioned to become a hub for LNG trade,' Minister of State for Trade & Industry and National Development, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, said yesterday.

'This is an area that is growing rapidly, an area rich with opportunities and one that we cannot afford to be left out of,' he told reporters on the sidelines of a three-day Gas Information Exchange conference and exhibition that opened yesterday.

'The same way as we have been a hub for oil, we want to explore being a hub for gas,' he added.

He did not disclose the timeframe of the study, but said in his speech that 'the results of this study should be ready by next year'.

'We have to appoint the consultants for the study first but we have to clearly signal our intent, and in due course we will appoint the consultants,' Dr Balakrishnan said.

When liquefied, natural gas occupies just about 1/600th of its gaseous volume, making it storage-friendly and portable. This also means that it can be shipped easily using tankers, instead of having to depend on more expensive underwater gas pipelines.

Dr Balakrishnan also said that having an LNG market will give Singapore 'the ability to source from different gas producers', making the gas sector here more competitive.

'Our energy infrastructure would be more robust and we would be more resilient against supply disruptions,' he added.

Some industry players at the conference told The Straits Times that it would be feasible for Singapore to develop itself into a gas hub, given its expertise and experience in operating an oil refining centre.

The Republic is generally acknowledged as the world's No. 3 refining hub for oil after Rotterdam and Houston.

'Singapore is already getting its supply of natural gas from Indonesia through the 640km-long gas pipeline from West Natuna, and moving to LNG will be just a natural progression,' said an LNG plant operations manager who did not want to be named.

Apart from a feasibility study of building an LNG terminal plant here, the Government will also look at developing an exchange where gas and LNG contracts can be traded.

'These are all possibilities that can be opened up and is part of the reason why we are conducting a study on the LNG market,' said Dr Balakrishnan.

Higher prices of natural gas is another factor that will make LNG an attractive proposition for Singapore.

For instance, in the United States, natural gas is trading at about US$6.50 per 1,000 cubic feet (28.32 cubic metres), up from just US$2 in the late-1990s, industry-watchers said.

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Stepping on the gas

-Having an LNG market will allow Singapore to source from different gas producers, making the gas sector here more competitive.

-The move will allow the Republic to be more resilient against supply disruptions while making the energy infrastructure more robust.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

June 15th, 2004, 05:52 AM

JUNE 15, 2004
Get set for an LNG explosion in the region
By Andrew Symon

HIGH oil prices are not the only big energy story of the moment. Also grabbing headlines is the great promise of liquefied natural gas (LNG), shipped across the seas from distant gas fields to demand centres in the Asia-Pacific region.

Singapore is the latest country to become an LNG enthusiast. Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister of State for Trade and Industry, told Gasex - a major international gas industry conference held in Singapore recently - that the Government wants to make the island state a regional trading centre for LNG similar to its role in oil trading, as well as possibly importing more LNG to complement its natural gas supply from Indonesia and Malaysia.

Indonesia, long a major LNG supplier to North-east Asia, is also looking at consuming LNG domestically, taking LNG shipments from fields in the far east of the archipelago to Java, to fuel desperately-needed new power generation on the country's most heavily populated and industrialised island.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, Australian Prime Minister John Howard stopped in California in the United States on his way to Washington, to visit state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, in order to promote plans by the Anglo-Australian company, BHP Billiton, to export Australian LNG to the state.

BHP's scheme is one of several competing to become the first suppliers of LNG to the west coast of the US and Mexico. Mr Howard similarly took a direct role in the ultimately successful wooing by Australia's North West Shelf LNG facility of China for the latter's first-ever LNG import contract, signed in 2002.

These are just a few developments pointing to the new forces shaping the world of LNG east of Suez. Markets are expanding, new producers from the Middle East to the Russian far east and South America are entering the industry and new buyers are emerging, from India and China in the East, to the US and Mexico in the West.

Clearly, the LNG industry is becoming bigger, more competitive and more innovative.

LNG consumption in the Asia-Pacific region could almost double by 2015. Last year, 77.5 million tonnes of LNG - at a value of nearly US$20 billion (S$34.4 billion) - were sold to Asian markets, of which 55.8 million tonnes were taken by Japan: 1 million tonnes of LNG can support approximately 1,000MW of power generation over a year. (1MW is enough energy for 2,000 five-room HDB flats in a month.)

By 2015, the Asia-Pacific trade could reach 150.5 million tonnes with the addition of new markets in China, India, the US west coast, and within South-east Asia.

The new dynamics in the industry promise to transform LNG into a commodity-like fuel for large markets similar to oil and coal, and - as is the situation in North America and Europe - in the supply of pipeline natural gas.

Until now, LNG has been only a relatively limited source of energy in Asia, geared primarily to Japanese needs, and, more recently, markets in South Korea and Taiwan. From its historical role as a high-priced fuel for niche markets, almost a 'boutique' fuel, LNG seems to be on the way to becoming a mass market fuel, attractive both commercially and environmentally.

Energy demand and supply patterns in Asia could be revolutionised if much larger volumes of LNG were supplied at a lower price and under more flexible contract conditions, similar to those now found for coal and oil.

Great benefits would flow to the region. Natural gas is a very efficient and clean fuel. There is minimal environmental impact from its production, shipment and combustion. Of all the fossil fuels, it produces the least emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and negligible sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxides.

On the supply side, producer countries would clearly gain from greater exports. Also, countries with strong financial, shipping and trading centres could also find new roles in the LNG business. The equipment supply spin-offs are also important. Already the current boom in the LNG business is resulting in order books overflowing at Japanese and Korean shipyards.

Yet, until now, natural gas supply in Asia has been limited by the distance of many demand centres from major gas fields. Long-distance pipelines have not been practical and LNG has been an expensive option. Just 10 per cent of Asia's primary energy consumption (including oil) is met by natural gas compared with 25 per cent in North America and approaching 40 per cent in western Europe. In Russia, it is more than 50 per cent.

Historically, LNG production in the region focused on Japanese demand and, more recently, markets in Taiwan and South Korea. Japan fostered LNG development after the oil shocks of the 1970s, when it turned to LNG, although highly priced, in order to diversify its energy sources. Japanese finance underpinned gas field and LNG plant development in Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia and Australia.

Until recently, LNG production was dominated by the majors, such as Shell and Mobil (now ExxonMobil), with considerable direction and participation by governments and state-owned companies, such as Malaysia's Petronas and Indonesia's Pertamina.

Buyers were also limited to the few large private power and gas utilities in Japan and the state-owned utilities and oil companies in South Korea and Taiwan. Contracts were very long term (20 to 25 years) and tended to be rigid. Prices were linked and closely indexed to changes in oil prices.

These conditions, it was argued, were necessary to secure finance for the multibillion-dollar costs of LNG production facilities, upstream gas fields, shipping and regassification plants. Buyers, in turn, accepted these as the price of energy security.

But much has changed in the last five years. The LNG industry is becoming much more dynamic as a result of new buyers and sellers. India and China have become LNG buyers. The US west coast seems certain to take LNG shortly and it must take LNG from the Asia-Pacific region, as the Panama Canal is too narrow to allow passage of LNG carriers from plants in the Caribbean, and west and north Africa. Shipments can move though from east to west through the Suez Canal. Mexico is also to take LNG, mainly to fuel power, and pipeline gas supply to California.

South-east Asia may soon become an LNG consumer with the Philippines planning to take LNG from Indonesia. Singapore is also considering taking LNG and Indonesia itself may ship LNG into Java from Indonesian Papua.

In the established North-east Asian markets, the demand side has become more diverse with more buyers, as a result of the liberalisation of domestic gas and supply industries.

Concerns to cap and reduce the growth of greenhouse gas emissions are also an advantage for LNG. The Japanese government, a signatory to the Kyoto accord of the United Nation's Framework Convention On Climate Change, is putting in place regulatory measures that promote the use of natural gas.

On the production side, an array of new projects are under way. The Middle East is sharply expanding supply, especially from Qatar. Iran, with huge gas reserves, is also intent on becoming a very larger producer. Yemen and the Russian far east are possible suppliers.

South America may also become a supplier from its Pacific coast; it has plans to pipe gas from Bolivia to Chile or Ecuador. Peru also is looking to supply the US west coast.

Technological change and economies of scale in plant size and shipping capacity are enabling LNG to be more competitive with other fuels in terms of price and ease of delivery. In 1990, the average cost of LNG after production, liquefaction, shipping and regasification was US$3.50 to US$4.20 per million British Thermal Units (BTU). By 2000 that had fallen to US$2.75 to US$3.40 per million BTU.

Greater supply and demand diversity and technological change are being accompanied by greater commercial contract flexibility. Rigid long-term contracts are being complemented increasingly by shorter term contracts and more flexible terms and conditions.

Shipping destination restrictions are being relaxed. Contract provisions have usually prevented a buyer facing a drop in demand in his domestic market from being able to ship a cargo already purchased from the producer on to another customer.

Prices are falling as links with oil prices become weaker. New contracts with China have far less weight on oil prices than the traditional Japanese long-term contracts.

Future supply to the US could force radical change to the industry in the Asia-Pacific region. Producers would sell into what is already a very large and competitive domestic gas market supplied by Canadian and US fields. They would likely have to sell cargoes on short and spot-term basis, accepting US market prices and hedging against risk with various futures and other financial instruments.

Such trade is similar to what already happens for crude oil and oil products supply in the Asia-Pacific region and, to some extent, for coal. A share of the LNG business in the Asia-Pacific region may also come to be under spot-trade conditions. The Singapore Government is one which has identified a potential role for the island state as an LNG trading centre alongside its long-standing role in oil trading.

But there are different views as to how extensive spot trade might become. Some argue that the still high capital costs of production, limited size of the LNG carrier fleet and technological constraints mean that long-term and medium-term contracts will continue to dominate the business.

On the demand side, many buyers, especially in countries such as Japan, still want contract security against price volatility and shortages.

LNG supporters say however that these arguments were once also made against oil when it was predominantly sold under long-term contracts.

In summary, the LNG industry in the Asia-Pacific region is poised for take off. The demand potential is unquestionable; the questions that remain are whether there are barriers to its progress - such as commercial practices and government regulations - that can be removed and whether there are other actions that governments and developers can take to accelerate its expansion.

The writer is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

June 16th, 2004, 10:16 AM

Business Times - 16 Jun 2004

PetroChina to expand S'pore oil storage: traders

(SINGAPORE) China's largest oil and gas firm PetroChina plans to rent more oil storage space in Singapore to boost its trading portfolio, traders said yesterday.

PetroChina, also China's second-largest refiner, had a one-year lease from June 2003 for 20,000 cubic metres (126,000 barrels) of storage tanks owned by Dutch logistics group Vopak.

'The company is set to boost the storage operations in Singapore and become a more active player in the Asian oil products market,' said a Chinese trader close to PetroChina's trading operations.

PetroChina's Singapore trading office currently focuses on exporting gasoline from China to Asian buyers, mainly Vietnam and Indonesia, as well as importing diesel and fuel oil into China to feed a rapidly expanding domestic market.

But traders said the Chinese oil major was poised to bolster its trading activities in the future.

'Gasoline is all about blending and a bigger storage will certainly add value to PetroChina's growing trading volumes. The current storage is just about enough to cover Vietnam requirement, not even Indonesia,' another trader said. - Reuters

Copyright © 2004 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

babystan03

June 17th, 2004, 08:11 AM

Business Times - 17 Jun 2004

BANGKOK
Thai plan for oil trading centre fails to take off
Official says taxes are not competitive with Singapore's

THAILAND, which wants to compete with Singapore to become the region's oil trading centre, has so far failed to attract overseas traders of crude oil and oil products because of taxes and other regulations, a senior government official said.

Thailand in January introduced Sichang island and Sriracha district, 100 km east of Bangkok, as tax-free zones for oil exports. The government also cut corporate income taxes for oil-trading companies to 10 per cent from 30 per cent.

'It's a long way to go because there are seven more current laws relating to taxes and oil exports regulations that must be changed,' said Pornchai Rujiprapa, deputy permanent secretary at the energy ministry. 'Without law changes, the country's tax charges are not competitive with Singapore.'

Thailand has imposed high tax rates on petrol imports to protect domestic refiners, which also require regulations on oil-trading transactions, he said. PTT pcl, the state-controlled energy company, is the only 'active' trader of oil and petrol in Thailand, he said.

Separately, Thailand said it's in talks with China National Chemicals Import & Export Corp, or Sinochem, about investing in a pipeline across southern Thailand to lower the cost of shipping oil to North Asia.

The pipeline, to start north of Phuket Island on the west coast, would take on crude oil and oil products from the Middle East. It would then pump the oil across the peninsula to the east coast for loading on tankers and shipping to China and Japan.

The venture includes a railway, pipeline and storage tanks and may cost as much as US$500 million, said Anon Sirisaengtaksin, a PTT official. - Bloomberg

Copyright © 2004 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

babystan03

June 18th, 2004, 09:13 AM

JUNE 18, 2004
Thailand plans refinery to rival S'pore output
The new plant - its biggest - is aimed at raising oil refining capacity to match Republic's 1.3m barrels a day

BANGKOK - Thailand plans to build its biggest oil refinery as part of an attempt to compete with Singapore as an oil-trading centre in Asia.

Together, Thailand's refineries have about one million barrels a day of crude oil processing capacity. Singapore, Asia's biggest oil trading centre, has the capacity to process 1.3 million barrels a day.

The refinery, to be built in southern Thailand, will have the capacity to process up to 300,000 barrels of crude oil a day, Vice-Energy Minister Viset Choopiban told reporters yesterday.

The US$2.5-billion (S$4.3-billion) cost reported by the Bangkok Post earlier was too high, the minister said, refusing to provide details.

'There must be a new large refinery in the south to have gasoline for exports,' he said.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government wants the country to become one of South-east Asia's main oil-trading centres, taking advantage of its central location in the region and its proximity to China.

Rising car sales in China have led to a surge in fuel demand in the country, the world's largest oil consumer after the United States. The Thai refinery will be built along the planned oil pipeline in the southern part of country, Mr Viset said.

Thailand plans to invest as much as US$500 million over the next five years in a 230km pipeline that will allow trans-shipment of oil from tankers in the Andaman Sea to the Gulf of Thailand, cutting the journey from oil fields in the Middle East.

The investment will include oil tanks with capacity of about 10 million barrels, according to state-controlled PTT. The new refinery will be a joint investment by private companies, aided by the government, Mr Viset said.

The plant would also help increase fuel supplies in Thailand as a faster expansion in the domestic economy spurs consumption. The US$143-billion economy may expand 7 per cent this year, the fastest pace since 1995, according to government estimates.

'Most domestic refiners are running at full capacity and don't have enough supply for exports because of surging domestic demand,' Mr Viset said.

Thai Oil, the country's biggest oil refinery, and Bangchak Petroleum have boosted refining capacity.

Thai Oil plans to spend as much as US$50 million to increase its refining capacity by 50,000 barrels a day from 220,000 barrels. Bangchak in February increased its refining capacity by 24 per cent to 105,000 barrels a day. -- Bloomberg News

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

June 25th, 2004, 01:05 AM

JUNE 25, 2004
Thailand's oil plans: A lot more refining to do
By Andy Ho

GEOGRAPHICALLY located at the centre of the oil supply chain from the Middle East to Asia, Singapore is the world's third largest oil refining centre after Rotterdam and Houston. But Thailand now wants to challenge the Republic's preeminent position.

The Kingdom, which has seven refineries that together process 975,500 barrels per day (bpd), announced last week plans for its eighth and largest plant with a 300,000 bpd capacity. The reason: Singapore processes 1.3 million bpd.

The plan bodes ill for both countries but Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra obviously doesn't think so. Last August, he told an energy seminar in Bangkok how he would transform Thailand into Asia's premier oil refining, trading and distribution hub within five years. Dr Thaksin said: 'Singapore has a market of 1.2 million bpd, while we have a domestic market of 600,000 bpd. The question is how Thailand could equalise volumes by luring 300,000 bpd from Singapore.'

In three steps, it would seem.

GET THE TRADERS

FIRST, attract oil traders.

Last January, corporate taxes on all oil trading companies registered in Thailand were slashed from 30 per cent to 10 per cent. However, seven laws relating to oil trading transactions, imports and exports remain on the books, rendering the Thai regulatory environment uncompetitive against Singapore.

It is no simple matter removing these laws since they are protectionist measures meant to buffer PTT - formerly the Petroleum Authority of Thailand - the only active oil trader in the Kingdom. The state still owns 68 per cent of PTT which controls Thai Oil, the country's largest refiner. By contrast, Singapore's refiners are completely unprotected.

Last Monday, Thailand's Deputy Permanent Secretary at the Energy Ministry, Mr Pornchai Rujiprapa, admitted that 'Thailand has so far failed to attract overseas oil traders because of (excessive) regulations'.

Still, Thailand has created a customs-free area for the oil trade at a port and tank farm facility on two islands - Si Rach and Si Chang, respectively. Lying 12km from the shore in Chonburi province, south-east of Bangkok, the Si Rach port had remained unused after the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis - until now. To date, none of the Si Chang storage tanks are running at full capacity.

MAKE IT BIGGER

SECOND, boost refining capacity - thus last week's announcement of an eighth plant.

But given Asian refining's wafer-thin margins over the past five years, this is bad economics. True, up till the mid-1990s, Singapore's refining margins were among the world's highest, surpassing those in the United States Gulf Coast and north-western Europe. However, fortunes changed during the Asian crisis and US refineries have been consistently more profitable than Singapore's since 1997, while Europe's overtook the Republic's in 1999.

One reason is refining overcapacity to the tune of 1.2 million bpd in the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions combined. A wave of capacity expansions and new plants coincided with the 1997-1998 financial crisis, when consumption dropped sharply, sending industry profits into a tailspin.

Singapore's refining capacity is nearly double its rate of petroleum products consumption. Because new refineries have been built in its traditional Asian markets, export opportunities are now limited. The 540,000 bpd Reliance Petroleum refinery at Jamnagar has reduced India's demand for Singapore's motor fuels and lubricants since 2000. Malacca's 120,000 bpd PSR2 refinery has reduced Malaysia's demand for Singapore's specialty products.

Then there is Thailand's own excess capacity: Domestic demand for its own petroleum products is under 650,000 bpd. Last April, Indonesia resumed work on a 100,000 bpd refinery project in Tuban, East Java, that had been stalled by the 1997-1998 crisis.

Another reason refiners have been struggling is that Asian demand for refined oil products will not grow as dramatically as it did during the pre-crisis years. The region's economic growth is now more modest. Also, many nations are switching to natural gas for power generation and industrial use, cutting demand for fuel oil and diesel.

True, overall demand is rising once again and profits have surged in recent months. Many plants are working near capacity: Singapore's refiners, for example, are pumping at 85 per cent now, up from the 60-65 per cent utilisation rates in 2002. Forbes magazine reported last February that 'these are bright days for Asia's refining industry'.

Perhaps. After poor demand growth in 2001 and 2002, Asian oil demand did rise last year - but by only 664,000 bpd. That does not make 'a broad-based growth revival', opined Dr Fereidun Fesharaki, an energy analyst who spoke at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies' Energy Forum recently.

He expects demand this year to grow by only 550,000 bpd, and driven mainly by China. Even India's demand is slowing down because of high prices. Meanwhile, Japan's growth in oil demand is negative, because a rapidly ageing population uses less energy.

Finally, regional overcapacity can only worsen when Iran and Kuwait, which still import refined products from Asia now, see their own refineries come online. In the medium term, regional demand will grow by only 2 per cent, so refiners must look for markets further afield, particularly if China slows down.

PIPE IT OVER

THIRD, build the Kra pipeline.

Thailand made it clear last week that its eighth refinery will be co-located with a planned pipeline. In order to move 3 million bpd of crude from tankers on the Andaman Sea, across the Kra Peninsula, to tankers on the Gulf of Thailand, this pipeline is to be built along the 160m wide median of the four-lane Highway 44 that already links the two seas.

Slated to shorten the current tanker trip via the Straits of Malacca by 800km, decrease shipping time by a week, and cut US$2 (S$3.45) off the price of each barrel of crude, the proposed pipeline will also bypass Indonesia's turbulent Aceh region which has a long shore along the Straits. If Aceh's Islamic fundamentalists gain power, the Straits could become too risky.

For some time now, the pipeline has been a pipe dream championed mainly by Japan. The reason: Japan, which imports 99 per cent of its oil, sees the depots of 100 million barrels of oil to be built on both sides of the peninsula - together with the crude in the 230km pipeline - as an Asian strategic reserve buffer.

Still, it might be China's burgeoning thirst for oil that will see the pipeline built. Now the world's second largest consumer of fossil fuels after the US, China sees itself as vulnerable, especially since its hopes of piping in Russian and Central Asian oil and gas were scuttled recently. A Chinese firm, Sinopec, began talks with PTT last week about investing in the US$720 million project. A feasibility study will be completed by year's end.

JUST AS OPEN TO ATTACK

YET, if built, the pipeline may be no less vulnerable than tankers plying the Straits. Well known is the Muslim problem in southern Thailand, where terrorism has seen tourism drop in Yala and Narathiwat just north of the Kra Isthmus. Terrorists have targeted pipelines before in Baluchistan, Chechnya, Colombia, Algeria - and recently, in Iraq.

The 230km Kra pipeline could be difficult to patrol: A simple explosive device could puncture it and put it out of action for weeks. One consolation is that China has had many years' experience not just building pipelines in Sudan but also protecting them in a country beset by war. While Sudan's oil flow is still small, the pipeline from its south to Port Sudan on the Red Sea operates with minimal trouble.

But safety aside, Thailand doesn't have a harbour as good as Singapore's. The Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea are comparatively shallow seas, making it difficult for very large tankers to discharge their cargo. For reasons of economies of scale, Middle East crude is moved chiefly by very large tankers carrying two million barrels a voyage.

They are too large to enter even US ports, except Louisiana, which is why the US imports more South American crude - by smaller tankers - than Middle East oil. In the case of Kra, some or all of the cargo will have to be transferred to smaller vessels, either at sea or at an offshore port, before they are pumped into the pipeline.

But there is another complication: The sea in the Gulf of Thailand may be too rough for loading oil because its tides are complex. In some spots, there is only one high tide and one low tide a day; in others, there are two highs and lows each day; and in yet other places, it is one or the other on different days. Moreover, Gulf currents change direction with the monsoons. Dr Thaksin has his work cut out in more ways than one.

Meanwhile, though the overall outlook for Singapore refiners remains uncertain, they are the most versatile and technologically advanced in the Asia Pacific region, processing more than 40 different kinds of crude, from the Middle East's low sulphur to Malaysia's high sulphur.

The Republic will also continue to move on to higher value-added downstream products. The future of refining lies in integrating it tightly with petrochemical production, thus spinning off parallel projects.

To compete, Thailand will have to play not only catch-up, but also hardball.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SINGAPORE'S STRENGTHS

-Geographically located at the centre of the oil supply chain from the Middle East to Asia

-Great port facilities

-Refineries are region's most versatile and technologically advanced

-No protectionism

KRA PIPELINE PROBLEMS

-Vulnerable to Muslim extremism in southern Thailand

-Gulf of Thailand and Andaman Sea shallow, so crude must be transferred from very large tankers to smaller vessels before unloading

-Gulf of Thailand waters too rough and tide patterns too complex for oil loading

-Financial costs and environmental impact

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

RafflesCity

June 25th, 2004, 06:37 AM

SINGAPORE'S STRENGTHS

-Geographically located at the centre of the oil supply chain from the Middle East to Asia

-Great port facilities

-Refineries are region's most versatile and technologically advanced

-No protectionism

KRA PIPELINE PROBLEMS

-Vulnerable to Muslim extremism in southern Thailand

-Gulf of Thailand and Andaman Sea shallow, so crude must be transferred from very large tankers to smaller vessels before unloading

-Gulf of Thailand waters too rough and tide patterns too complex for oil loading

-Financial costs and environmental impact

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

Thanks for the article. It definitely is a good analysis. Seems they want to go out of their way to compete with us.

huaiwei

June 25th, 2004, 12:10 PM

I was actually wondering why oil ended up in this thread! :D

The recent brief news of the Thai initiatives did get me wondering, so this article is very timely indeed.

RafflesCity

June 26th, 2004, 07:36 AM

Well..oil is shipped here..kinda related? :cool:

Cliff

June 29th, 2004, 04:59 PM

Sorry, but as soon as my friend called me, Bishan relighted.:D
Here is a sample pic of AMK
http://picserver.org/view_image.php/60Z3B08Y0VJY

And an overall, most is already back on by then.
Top is before, bottom is after
http://picserver.org/view_image.php/J12Z7R20NZQ6
Scan through, there are about 9 buildings here that went black.

RafflesCity

June 29th, 2004, 05:02 PM

OMG! Bishan blacked out? :eek:

I was just there this afternoon :D

I guess it will be restored soon.

Cliff

June 29th, 2004, 05:07 PM

Yup, but its already relighted, at about 11.30pm, 5mins before the photos were taken.
And now, the whole of S'pore is bright again.:D

babystan03

June 29th, 2004, 05:37 PM

heirloom

June 29th, 2004, 05:53 PM

i am SO representative of singapore we're like twins. while singapore blacked out, i did too and i missed alias which i was waiting for for a whole week?!@£?!@£!?@£?@ *CRIES*

babystan03

June 29th, 2004, 05:56 PM

Blackout in my neighbourhood.....

Taken at 23:45:45
http://img73.photobucket.com/albums/v222/ylstan03/Housing/DSCN14941.jpg

Taken at 23.46:36
http://img73.photobucket.com/albums/v222/ylstan03/Housing/DSCN14951.jpg

heirloom

June 29th, 2004, 05:56 PM

Sudden blackout in many parts of S'pore, power restored in some areas

SINGAPORE -- Many parts of Singapore was hit by a blackout at around 10pm on Tuesday night.

Readers called up The Straits Times Interactive at 10.15pm to say that the power failure affected areas like Bishan, Serangoon, Joo Chiat, Bukit Batok, Jurong, Queenstown, Clementi, and even Holland Village.

But Toa Payoh, Pasir Ris and Woodlands were not affected by the power outage which lasted about 30 minutes.

Thirty minutes after the widespread blackout, lights were reported to have come back on in Changi, Serangoon North, Bishan, Clementi, Bukit Batok and Simei.

The power outage is believed to have been caused by a disruption in the supply of natural gas in Indonesia.

RafflesCity

June 29th, 2004, 06:00 PM

is there a nightmarket there? looks lively :D

babystan03

June 29th, 2004, 06:04 PM

^
My neighnourhood??? Haha....no....if there were one, the hawkers would be screaming......:D

RafflesCity

June 29th, 2004, 06:10 PM

seems like everyone is 'awake' with all the corridor lights on..

sg seems to have been having blackouts quite frequently this year -_-

babystan03

June 29th, 2004, 06:21 PM

^
I guess it's because we finally know light is so precious when everything turns dark suddenly........ :)

heirloom

June 29th, 2004, 06:50 PM

maybe the government is trying to boost child births :p

babystan03

June 30th, 2004, 04:22 AM

JUNE 30, 2004
Blackout hits many areas after gas supply failure
By Woon Wui Tek

FROM about 10pm last night, a quickly spreading blackout plunged many parts of Singapore into darkness.

Not just home lights, but street lamps and traffic signals winked out, causing traffic in Hougang and Sengkang to slow to a crawl as half-blinded motorists switched on their high beams.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/mnt/media/image/launched/2004-06-30/30prime.jpg
Darkness falls over Jurong East and even traffic slowed down, as street lamps and traffic lights also went out. -- WONG KWAI CHOW

Other anxious Singaporeans, thumbing their mobile phones as they wondered if there had been a terrorist-related disruption, only jammed the networks.

As it turned out, the blackout, the Energy Market Authority (EMA) said, was caused by a disruption of the supply of natural gas from neighbouring Indonesia.

It did not elaborate.

Restoration of power got under way almost at once, with generators switching to diesel: By 10.30pm, the darkness was beginning to be pushed back in places like Bishan.

Clementi and Sengkang went bright again at about 10.45pm and Eunos at around 11pm. By 12.15am, according to Singapore Power, power had been restored in all areas.

Though one taxi crashed in Queensway, police officers took to the streets to regulate traffic, while land lines in homes and train services were never affected.

Recalled Singapore MRT spokesman Chin Yen Yen: 'The first thing I did when my house in Bukit Batok had a blackout was look out to see if our trains were still running, and they were! We have back-up power for our trains.'

However, the Singapore Civil Defence Force responded to 20 calls of people trapped in lifts.

Some of those marooned in darkness at home, like Singapore Netball Association president Ivy Singh-Lim, 55, feared the worst.

She told The Straits Times from her Neo Tiew Road home: 'I tried calling the Neighbourhood Police Post on a 1800 number as well as 999, but all the lines were engaged.

'Actually, the police should have some kind of a backup to handle such emergencies.

'I can't believe this!'

So widespread was the blackout - it also hit Ang Mo Kio, Clementi, Woodlands, Toa Payoh, Serangoon and Ghim Moh, as well as the Holland Village and Mohamed Sultan Road leisure spots - that only a few areas, including Yishun and parts of the south, escaped.

Last night's was the third such significant incident this year, with the most recent one, lasting about 20 minutes, having been triggered on April 20, after the Nicoll Highway collapse. A week earlier, 80,000 households had to go without power for an hour.

In August 2002, a gas-supply disruption from Indonesia was also blamed for a 90-minute blackout after seven of Singapore's nine gas-fired generating plants shut down.

The Energy Market Authority may fine a company up to $1 million, or 10 per cent of its revenue, for negligence.

Its licence can even be revoked.

A cracking of the whip would suit the likes of an irate Madam Daisy Sum, who had to take a cold shower in candlelight in her Siglap home.

She said: 'Singapore is not a Third World country. We have every right to expect better.'

But others made the best of the blackout: Student Annabelle Danker, 22, and her friends at Holland Village lit up the night with sparklers and glow sticks.

'We can't go home anyway, so we might as well have some fun,' she said.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

heirloom

June 30th, 2004, 04:31 AM

lol sounds alot like perth this year

babystan03

June 30th, 2004, 04:32 AM

JUNE 30, 2004
While the lights were out...

AT HOME
Long wait in stalled lifts

WHEN the lights went out along Jurong West Street 54, residents of Block 661A checked to see if anyone was stuck in the lifts.

They found machine operator Sima Laymat, 52, in one.

For two hours, they crowded and waited helplessly, watching her through the transparent lift doors.

Her daughter, 19, a technician, was worried sick. 'My mother has a weak heart,' she said, 'I was scared for her.'

Madam Sima got out just past midnight when maintenance engineers got there.

Madam Joanne Liew, 29, seven months pregnant, was luckier. She was trapped in the lift for about an hour in a block in Jurong West.

'I knelt down inside the lift and prayed and prayed that the power would come back on. It is my first child and I was very worried that something bad might happen.'

The Singapore Civil Defence Force responded to more than 20 calls of people trapped in lifts, its spokesman said last night.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/mnt/media/image/launched/2004-06-30/h3a.jpg
A candlelight dinner for Chuan Park's Nehru Ganesh, 17. -- ONG CHIN KAI

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ON THE STREETS
No major accidents

TRAFFIC police were out in force to direct traffic at all major road junctions as streets and traffic junctions went pitch black.

'Officers at all divisions were sent on duty,' said a police spokesman last night.

However, the massive blackout that started around 10pm did not affect the MRT train service.

The police said there were no major accidents and part of the reason was the way some people helped each other. At Hougang, some men, without even halting to put on their shirts, rushed into the streets to direct traffic and shine torches for pedestrians.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/mnt/media/image/launched/2004-06-30/h3b.jpg
A public-spirited man directs traffic on Hougang Avenue 3. -- TAN SUAN ANN

However, a taxi in Queensway could not avoid a crash. Photographer Leong Siew Teng, 32, saw it trying to make a U-turn: 'There was a loud bang but it was so dark I couldn't see what it hit.'

In Geylang, Mr Jack Poh, 24, said traffic was orderly and added: 'Owners who had parked their cars by the road switched on the headlights to light the entire street.'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AT THE KOPITIAM
Porridge in the dark

WHEN the power didn't come back on after 40 minutes at the NYDC Cafe in Holland Village, restaurant supervisor Audrey Lim, 22, wondered if the ice cream would have to be junked.

She closed the cafe at 10.30pm, 1 1/2 hours earlier than usual.

At Wala Wala pub, there was no way to run checks on the credit cards since computers and cash registers were down. Staff had to fill out manual charge slips.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/mnt/media/image/launched/2004-06-30/h3c.jpg
Counting the takings in the dark in Upper Serangoon. -- HOW HWEE YOUNG

In Geylang, brothers Jack Poh, 24, and Jason Poh, 22, were supping on frogs' legs porridge when all went dark.

Said Jack: 'Everyone shouted 'Oi!' The stallholders started to light all these big red altar candles.

'My brother asked me, 'Do you think it might be a terrorist attack and we might be recalled to camp?' But we continued eating our porridge.'

The power came back on before midnight. Back at Holland Village, the ice cream was saved. Said Ms Lim: 'We only had to throw away a bit.'

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

heirloom

June 30th, 2004, 04:37 AM

omigod... mujst be a funny sight... shirtless men directing traffic?!@£!@! and trying to light up the street with torches !!!! damn why am i always not where all the fun stuff happens... i guess wouldn't midn too much cos tampines or at least where i stay wasn't affected...

babystan03

June 30th, 2004, 04:40 AM

JUNE 30, 2004
Brighten prospects for solar power

I WRITE in reference to the article, 'It's a slow dawn for green and clean solar power' (ST, June 26).

Singapore is blessed with an abundance of (some might even say too much) sunshine. It is a shame that this source of energy is not exploited to the fullest, especially since this is a country devoid of other sources of energy such as oil and hydro-electric or nuclear power.

The sunlight we get in Singapore can be harnessed not only for direct conversion to electricity (PV effect) but also for its heat energy.

I did an experiment recently. I filled a milk tin with water and left it in the sun for two hours.

When I opened it, I was surprised that the water was as hot as the water in a shower. I had not even painted the tin black to increase its heat absorption property. Such is the abundance of energy pouring down on Singapore.

No one disputes the fact that the energy currently produced from fossil fuels is cheaper. The lower cost leads us to do the minimum to promote solar energy usage.

However, the article reports that the 'International Energy Agency calculates that every doubling of the volume of solar PV has reduced costs by about 20 per cent'.

Supply and demand feed on each other. The lower the cost of supply, the higher will be the demand which, in turn, lowers the cost of supply as greater economies of scale kick in.

This is where the Government should step in. Indeed, the article mentions the same thing - that 'cost reduction of this scale would require a concerted effort by governments'.

If the Singapore Government had just considered the dollar and cents factor of water supply, the country's water reclamation efforts would have stagnated.

We should take the same approach with energy supply. With enough government support resulting in the widespread use of solar power in Singapore, coupled with research and development efforts, we can reduce our dependence on imported fossil fuels and make it an economically viable industry.

We have to move beyond the token solar-powered lamp-post. There is nothing to stop us from installing solar panels on the rooftops and covering the walls of every Housing Board block with heat-absorbing materials.

That alone will be enough to generate the demand and kick-start a solar energy industry in Singapore.

The technology for harnessing solar energy is not rocket science and has been around for decades. It is only cheap oil that has held us back from making a serious effort to turn solar energy into a viable alternative source of energy.

The most persuasive argument in favour of solar energy is that its use is inevitable. The amount of fossil fuels on this planet is finite. Once burnt, they are lost forever.

As the supply dwindles, cost will increase to the point where only the very rich can afford it. China's thirst for more oil will only accelerate the process and our industries will suffer.

Those which can do so will move to countries where nuclear energy or hydro-electricity is available.

Such a dire scenario may not come in our lifetime but come it will because using fossil fuel is like having a bank account where there are only withdrawals but no deposits.

It may take 20 to 30 years, perhaps longer, before we can reach a point where we can generate enough energy to be self-reliant but we should, at least, start now.

KENNETH MAK KENG KOK

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

heirloom

June 30th, 2004, 05:02 AM

isnt solar energy too land intensive to employ in singapore? maybe tidal power plants or nuclear power plants would be more effective. nuclear a bit scary though.... perhaps hydrogen fuel cells :D

babystan03

June 30th, 2004, 06:36 AM

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 30 June 2004 1108 hrs

Latest disruptions in gas supply related to Natuna fields source
By Debra Soon, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : The massive blackout on Tuesday night was related to disruptions in natural gas supply from Indonesia's Natuna Islands, said a spokesperson from the Energy Market Authority.

Singapore gets natural gas from three sources - the West Natuna fields in Indonesia, Malaysia and the latest supply is from Sumatra.

The Energy Market Authority spokesperson told Channel NewsAsia the problem in the latest blackout was related to supply from Natuna Islands.

SembCorp Gas has a 22-year contract to buy the gas and owns the 640km pipeline which started supplying gas in 2001.

The West Natuna supply accounts for more than half the electricity produced in Singapore.

Tuas Power, PowerSeraya and SembCorp Cogen use gas from this pipeline.

There have been several disruptions related to supply from West Natuna.

The first was in August 2002, when gas supply from Natuna was interrupted, causing a 90-minute power failure in Singapore.

In November last year, a leak in the same pipeline caused Indonesian gas supplies to Singapore power stations to be suspended for about a week, although they managed to continue to supply electricity by switching to diesel fuel. - CNA

Copyright © 2004 MCN International Pte Ltd

babystan03

June 30th, 2004, 06:38 AM

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 30 June 2004 0811 hrs

Boy shaken by 2-hour ordeal in stalled lift
By Julia Ng, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Tuesday night's massive blackout kept Civil Defence officers busy as they received over a hundred calls about the power failure.

About 20 of these were about residents trapped in lifts. No one was injured.

An 11-year-old boy who spent over 2 hours trapped in one recounted to Channel NewsAsia how he was shaken by the experience.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/imagegallery/store/phpLvSwXN.jpg
Wisman being consoled by his father

The incident happened in Serangoon Central, where power returned to the estate at around 12.05 am, some two hours after the blackout first started.

But for primary school pupil Wisman Siew, his ordeal was not over yet.

"Someone called the house phone and apparently it was some neighbours who said my brother was caught in the lift. My father and I ran down and he was screaming," said Karmen Siew, the boy's elder sister.

"At first he was breathing regularly but after a while he said he really couldn't breathe and he was pressing the bell. He kept hitting the alarm. I think he woke up a lot of people who came down to see what happened."

Civil Defence firemen arrived just minutes after the lights came back on, but without the key to the lift, they could not open the door.

A contractor for the town council later arrived with the key.

"We're very upset with the town council. If they want to install this kind of system they should have someone hold the key in emergencies like this so that we can open it," said Wisman's mother, Eileen.

"If they're worried a household may misuse the key, they could leave it with the SCDF and they can come and open the door."

Turning her attention to her son, she said: "I'm very glad he's a very brave boy, he behaved himself very well when we told him to be calm."

But the 11-year-old was obviously very shaken by the ordeal.

Speaking in between sobs, Wisman recalled: "I was on the way up and then suddenly the lights went off and the lift could not move any more. I rang the bell and then some people came and asked for my telephone number to call my parents."

Stanley Siew, his father, appreciated the help of his neighbours.

"These are all my helpful neighbours. They are heroes to me. Tonight they've been very helpful, supportive. I want to say thank you to all these neighbours who helped me through the ordeal."

As for Wisman, when asked if he would still take the lift, he nodded.

But for the town council contractor, he is off to another block, another stalled lift and another trapped resident - his seventh of the night. - CNA

Copyright © 2004 MCN International Pte Ltd

babystan03

June 30th, 2004, 06:42 AM

JUNE 30, 2004
Energy Market Authority probes blackout

SINGAPORE - The Energy Market Authority is investigating on Wednesday why vital gas supplies from neighbouring Indonesia were disrupted, triggering extensive power failures across Singapore on Tuesday night.

Thousands of homes were plunged into darkness as the current went dead at about 10pm, while traffic lights also failed.

Some of 'our power stations have generators running on natural gas, so when the natural gas supply was disrupted, the generators tripped out,' Energy Market Authority Deputy Chief Executive Yeo Yek Seng told NewsRadio 93.8.

Singapore imports substantial quantities of natural gas from Indonesia.

'The causes of this natural gas disruption will be investigated,' he added. -- AP

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

June 30th, 2004, 06:52 AM

isnt solar energy too land intensive to employ in singapore? maybe tidal power plants or nuclear power plants would be more effective. nuclear a bit scary though.... perhaps hydrogen fuel cells :D

Whatever it is, an alternative source would be good in situation like this.....:)

babystan03

June 30th, 2004, 06:54 AM

maybe the government is trying to boost child births :p

Yah not a bad way to boost population(but I doubt it's that conducive) and impose fine on the power suppliers......:D

huaiwei

June 30th, 2004, 07:03 AM

Wah....my area(Bedok) is also affected by the blackout(for 30 mins or so; from 2215-2245).....Heard that Hougang also affected..... :bash:

The only time it's been so dark for me is when I was in Tekong's forest camping.........
Erm...considering I didnt post yesterday, pretty obvious what happened to me er? :D

I think my area is the worse hit. We didnt get out lights back till after midnight, and I was pretty pissed off when my TV only came on after 1:30am, plus my internet connection resumed only about 15 mins later.

The photos will be coming up soon. :D

babystan03

June 30th, 2004, 06:19 PM

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 30 June 2004 2154 hrs

300,000 homes and businesses affected by Tuesday's blackout
By Hwee Goh and Julia Ng, Channel NewsAsia

About 300,000 homes and businesses in Singapore were plunged into darkness for up to two hours on Tuesday night.

The blackout - the third in three months - was traced back to a pipeline of natural gas from Indonesia's West Natuna sea.

The lights were back on by midnight but what happened and who's to blame?

The source of the massive blackout lies at the southern tip of Singapore on Jurong Island, where a 650 kilometre natural gas pipeline from Indonesia comes ashore.

A valve at the receiving station tripped and pressure in the pipes suddenly dropped.

Only one out of 6 gas turbines was able to switch to the backup source of fuel - diesel.

This severely affected power supply from Tuas, SembCorp and Seraya stations and this left large areas of Singapore in the dark.

But why did it take two hours to fully restore power?

Khoo Chin Hean, Chief Executive, Energy Market Authority, said: "Typically it will require about one to one and a half hours to restart a turbine, put all this together, what it means is when there is a failure, generating companies have to start and restart machines that takes time, two, as the machines come on lines the areas that are blacked out have to be slowly brought back to service."

Singapore switched to natural gas a few years ago because it's a cheaper fuel - which means electricity bills can be lower.

Two-thirds of the island's natural gas comes from Indonesia's West Natuna fields and the rest from Malaysia.

But after the blackout many Singaporeans are asking if the island is over-reliant on these foreign sources for its electricity needs.

Mr Khoo said: "Is this switch to gas correct? The economics backs it, companies are driven to be efficient, and if gas brings in higher efficiency to our system, that is the correct outcome, it brings in benefit to consumers all around. This failure we saw yesterday is not an indictment on gas. We have to look at what happened, whether how we can actually make our system more robust through the use of gas."

The island's power regulator is not likely to impose fines on any of the companies involved.

In fact the gas supplier is effectively out of its jurisdiction.

For now, the consortium responsible for bringing in the natural gas is investigating the cause of the fault at its receiving station.

The authorities say there were 4 similar incidents at the same station in 2002, one leading to a blackout in August that year.

The system has since been re-designed, and it is believed something else caused the trip this time.

In the long run, Singapore is also looking to import liquefied natural gas as another alternative. - CNA

Copyright © 2004 MCN International Pte Ltd

babystan03

July 1st, 2004, 03:29 AM

JULY 1, 2004
Power plants' backup system failed
Blackout came after valve on gas pipeline tripped, cutting supply to three power stations which could not react in time

WHEN 300,000 homes plunged into darkness on Tuesday night, it was the fifth time that the same thing had gone wrong with the gas supply from Indonesia to Singapore.

The first time, in August 2002, there was a blackout.

Three other times since then, Singaporeans were not aware of the glitch because the three power companies here managed to switch to backup diesel supplies successfully and electricity supply continued uninterrupted.

But contingency measures put in place to ensure the backup system worked, did not kick in on Tuesday.

Five of the six turbines that generate electricity failed, causing Singapore's biggest blackout in a long time.

Yesterday, the experts did not know what went wrong, and nobody was certain it might not happen again.

Mr Khoo Chin Hean, chief executive of the power industry regulator, the Energy Market Authority (EMA), said that an independent consultant will investigate and propose changes if necessary.

'We are, over the next few weeks, going to sit down with the companies to discuss what went wrong, and what other measures can be put in place to prevent similar failures in the future,' he said.

'You cannot eliminate failures but you can minimise them.'

Tuesday's blackout lasted up to two hours until midnight and hit Clementi, Choa Chu Kang, Crawford, Jalan Eunos, Aljunied, Buona Vista, Jurong, Bishan, Bukit Batok, Changi, Mandai, Marina Centre, Serangoon North, Telok Blangah and Hougang.

Civil Defence officers responded to 21 emergency calls about people stranded in lifts. In some places, they arrived to find that they could not open the lift doors until town council-appointed contractors arrived with the keys.

In four locations, the SCDF decided to force open the lift doors without the keys, because there were infants or ill people trapped inside.

Yesterday, the EMA held a press conference to explain the sequence of events that led to the big power failure.

Also present were representatives of American oil refiner ConocoPhillips which runs the Jurong Island plant receiving gas from Indonesia, and SembCorp Gas, which sells gas to the three power plants here.

This is what happened:

At 9.56pm, an emergency alarm triggered a valve to shut automatically at the 600-km West Naturna pipeline's receiving station on Jurong Island, halting supply to the three power plants.

Alarms went off at all three - SembCorp Cogen and PowerSeraya, about 3km from the landing station, and Tuas Power, 7km away.

What followed was a scramble at the plants, which had only minutes to switch their turbines to the backup diesel fuel.

This involved pumping diesel from stored tanks and preparing the gas turbines to handle the alternative fuel, a process that takes anything from 10 to 30 minutes.

If they took too long and the gas remaining in the pipeline ran out, the turbines would stop, the blackout would begin and it would then take an hour to 90 minutes to get them started up again.

The three companies have six turbines altogether. The players said yesterday that they ran out of time because there was only between two and 10 minutes of gas left in the pipeline after the valve shut down.

PowerSeraya managed to switch one turbine to diesel. SembCorp switched both its turbines, but both failed because of problems in the diesel distribution system.

Then time ran out. Five out of six turbines ground to a stop, cutting electricity to 300,000 households across a large part of Singapore.

Although the gas supply was fully restarted shortly after 10.30pm, most areas remained in darkness as the plants brought their turbines back to life.

All affected areas got back their power by midnight.

Industry sources said that in the three previous incidents, between August and December 2002, the pipeline valves that shut down were further away from Singapore.

That left enough gas in the pipeline to give the plants time to switch to diesel.

On Tuesday, the affected valve was so near the plants that there was too little gas to feed the plants during their switch-over efforts.

EMA expects to know why the valve tripped by tomorrow.

Mr Kevin Pewitt, ConocoPhillips' gas commercial manager, said: 'At the moment, we have narrowed it down to seven or eight likely reasons. We should know soon what the real problem was.'

The EMA can fine a power plant up to $1 million, or 10 per cent of its revenue, if there is negligence.

When asked if anyone will be penalised for the blackout, Mr Khoo said a decision will be made after investigations are completed.

But in a competitive market, he added, penalties slapped on suppliers might well end up being passed to consumers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How did power fail?

1.At 9.56pm, emergency alarm triggers a valve to shut at the West Naturna pipeline to Jurong Island, drying up gas supply to three power-generating plants.

2.All three plants - SembCorp Cogen, PowerSeraya and Tuas Power - scramble to switch from gas to back-up diesel, which can take 10 to 30 minutes. If they take too long, their six turbines will stop turning.

3.The companies say the gas left in the pipeline lasts only two to 10 minutes.

4.PowerSeraya switches one turbine to diesel. SembCorp gets both its turbines on diesel, but they then fail. Five out of six turbines at the three companies stop, cutting electricity to 300,000 homes.

5. Gas supply is re-started fully at 10.33pm. All households get back electricity by 11.58 pm.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 1st, 2004, 03:32 AM

JULY 1, 2004
Blackout blues for some businesses
Restaurants and clubs without backup supplies powerless to act as customers head for the door, but it was business as usual at top hotels

AFTER sushi chef Mervin Goh's three Japanese restaurants were plunged into darkness on Tuesday night, his refusal to invest in backup power supplies threatened to doom at least $50,000 worth of top grade fish.

During the more than two hours that the blackout lasted, the owner of the Akashi restaurants in town could only wait helplessly, knowing a total of 400kg of raw sashimi - including blocks of premium tuna belly, or toro - was slowly thawing.

When opening his outlets in 1994, 2000 and last year, recalled Mr Goh, 32, he didn't buy a backup power supply 'because it's too expensive. I didn't think that such a thing would happen here'.

In the end, the outage proved sufficiently brief: 'Another two more hours and I would have smelt trouble.'

As it was, his customers - dining by candlelight - bolted down their food and left.

Mr Goh was just one of many businessmen affected by a lack of backup power.

In the Bukit Timah area, the co-owner and chef of Italian eatery Cantina in Greenleaf Road said three tables seating 16 people cancelled their orders when the lights went out. That cost the restaurant more than $600 in revenue.

Still, Mr Valentino Valtulina was glad for one emergency mechanism in place: 'Luckily, we have a backup cash register to collect payment.'

The usual machine, which is powered by electricity, could not be opened.

By contrast, Mr Peter Wong - whose Towkay Wong's Group owns night spots in Mohamed Sultan Road and Central Mall - did have basic emergency spotlights on the walls of the two clubs which were affected.

But they only served to help customers shuffle their way out.

Mr Wong, 47, who said he lost more than 100 customers: 'It was the time of night that was crucial for business and we even had to close one outlet early.'

By then, shopping centres were mostly closed or closing.

Ironically, places like Parco Bugis Junction do have diesel-powered emergency generators to keep essential services like lifts, corridor lighting and fire protection systems going for up to six hours.

And at quality hotels like the Ritz-Carlton Millenia Singapore and The Royal Plaza on Scotts, generators ensure guests aren't even inconvenienced.

Said the Ritz-Carlton's director of public relations, Mr Anton Kilayko: 'We need to make sure guests continue to have access to amenities they expect from their stay here.'

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 1st, 2004, 03:49 AM

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 30 June 2004 2156 hrs

Too early to talk about penalties for blackout: Energy Market Authority
By Michael Lim, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : The Energy Market Authority says it is too early to talk about penalties for those responsible for Tuesday night's island-wide power blackout, because investigations into what actually happened are still being carried out.

But a quick check by Channel NewsAsia found that many companies were not affected.

In response to the blackout, Singapore's generation companies increased output from fuel oil plants, unaffected gas plants and four diesel plants that are not normally used.

Lights went out in many parts of Singapore at about 10pm Tuesday.

The blackout hit 300,000 homes and businesses for up to two hours.

"By and large they are residential areas. But in these areas there are some places like Ang Mo Kio, for example, there are factories there so they may be affected," said Khoo Chin Hean, chief executive of the Energy Market Authority.

The cause was traced to a gas pipe bringing in natural gas from Indonesia's West Natuna field.

When contacted by Channel NewsAsia, big companies like Seagate, Chartered Semiconductor and Agilent say their operations were not affected.

One company that was affected, 3M, says its operations were disrupted for about an hour.

So far, Power Seraya says it has not received any complaints from its users.

It is also not pinning the blame on anyone.

"Commercial contracts are such that it's not a perfect world. We have expectations that cars that we own and they might be brand new but they still fail and contractually it's quite difficult to determine what is clear and what is not. And that is an issue that we will be looking and we will pursue it if indeed the contracts allow us," said Neil McGregor, managing director of Power Seraya.

With the blackout relatively widespread, what about the penalties or compensation?

"It is still early for us to be talking about penalties. The incident occurred yesterday. We need to investigate, we need to understand what went wrong. And only after that we can then assess whether any of our requirements have been contravened," said Mr Khoo.

"Of course if there is contravention, then the issue of penalty becomes very big, but until then I think it's too early for me to say anything about that," he said.

The Authority has tended not to penalise companies in such situations, saying it would rather leave it to the contractual terms of the Gencos and their suppliers.

In fact, when it comes to the gas supplier, its hands are tied because it is out of its jurisdiction. - CNA

Copyright © 2004 MCN International Pte Ltd

babystan03

July 1st, 2004, 01:10 PM

JULY 2, 2004
Govt pledges to remove blackout blemish on S'pore
Assurance to industries, thorough review of power supply system, and plugging of regulatory loopholes are some measures

By Karamjit Kaur

TUESDAY'S blackout has damaged Singapore's international reputation, but the Government intends to set things right and do a thorough study to see how to make the power supply system more reliable.

'This is not at all good,' said Trade and Industry Minister George Yeo, when he gave an update on government moves following the power failure that hit a third of Singapore between 10pm and midnight.

'A two-hour cut-off can cause a lot of harm to industries for which electrical supply is critical,' he said.

Damage control has already kicked in, he told reporters at Nanyang Polytechnic yesterday, after an SAF Day ceremony.

He said he had told the Economic Development Board to 'quickly put out the explanations to our clients and make sure that they know we are investigating as quickly as we can and we will put right the problems'.

The Energy Market Authority (EMA) is also acting to plug a loophole in the regulatory framework that leaves it without the authority to penalise United States refiner ConocoPhillips should it be found responsible for any disruption to the gas supply.

ConocoPhillips receives the gas from Indonesia, and sells it to SembCorp Gas, to sell on to power plants.

This situation will change by the end of the year as regulatory controls are being put in place, EMA's spokesman told The Straits Times.

EMA regulates all other companies along the power chain, even SP Services which reads energy meters.

In the meantime, investigations continue into why a valve on the gas pipeline from West Natuna tripped, cutting the supply to three power stations - Tuas Power, PowerSeraya and SembCorp Cogen.

They failed when they could not switch to their backup diesel systems in time.

This is the fifth such incident in less than two years.

When the problem surfaced in August 2002, said Brigadier-General Yeo, the system was tested and re-tested until the authorities were satisfied that it was reliable.

Now it has recurred, 'we have got to put this right... and see how we can make the system more robust'.

The key is ensuring that in an emergency, the power-generating turbines can be switched to diesel before they shut down, as they take an hour to 90 minutes to restart.

Still, he said, no system in the world is fail-safe.

'If someone tells you it's fail-safe, be sceptical. But we must try our very best and learn from our mistakes.'

Part of the problem is that Singapore started using natural gas only in 1992 and the industry is not yet completely familiar with possible hiccups.

A solution to the problem is to build local supplies of compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas into the system, so there is always a reservoir to be tapped.

Plans are being studied and work on building the facilities needed will start as soon as possible, he said.

Today, 60 per cent of electricity here is generated by natural gas-powered plants, the rest by oil-powered plants.

Asked if the EMA would be pressured to speed up the probe, he said it was already working full-time to get to the bottom of the problem and cautioned that careful investigation was needed before fingers are pointed.

Asked if blackout-hit businesses would be compensated, he said it was too early to discuss such matters.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 1st, 2004, 01:12 PM

JULY 1, 2004
Gadget for continued power supply sells fast after blackout

TUESDAY'S blackout tripped off a surge of interest in devices that protect personal computers against damage from a power failure, retailers told The Straits Times.

The device, called Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and costs from S$75 onwards, helps to supply backup power when the main electrical supply is cut suddenly. Such devices also typically protect against power surges.

According to a major distributor of UPS here, Convergent Systems, 200 pieces of the basic model by American brand APC flew off the shelves on Wednesday, the day after the blackout that hit western parts of Singapore.

This is about six times the number of units usually sold, said Convergent.

Similar sales were seen following the last blackout in April.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 1st, 2004, 05:23 PM

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 01 July 2004 1020 hrs

Stalled HDB lifts due to malfunction of automatic rescue devices
By Derek Cher, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Tuesday night's blackout affected some 21 lifts of the total of 16,700 in Singapore's HDB estates.

And Civil Defence officers had to rescue 10 people trapped in 4 HDB lifts that lost power supply, although such incidents should not have happened in them.

A blackout may be a unique experience for some, but it can be a frightening one for others.

Some HDB residents taking the lifts at the time of the blackout were trapped for a few hours.

But that should not be the case, as all HDB lifts are fitted with an Automatic Rescue Device that will move the lift to the nearest landing if there is a power failure.

When the lift reaches the landing, its door will automatically open to release the passengers.

So what happened on Tuesday night?

Town Councils, responsible for the maintenance of the lifts, pointed to the malfunction of the rescue device as the main culprit.

That is despite the required monthly servicing of all HDB lifts, which includes testing this device.

Lights and fans were also shut down, leaving some trapped in complete darkness and limited ventilation.

Emergency batteries stored in the control room are meant to keep the lights and fans on for at least 4 hours, but they failed to work.

Still, the largest lift company in the market is satisfied with the failure rate during the blackout.

"The reliability of this device is very high and chances of failure are very small," said Phuah Cheng Kok, Executive Vice-President, Fujitec.

"Because it is an electro-mechanical device that's dependent on a battery, there is still a small chance that this device can fail because of age or equipment failure."

He added: "So looking at the number of calls that were received during the blackout, out of the whole of Singapore, therer were only 20 cases, which makes it one in every 1,000 chance of failure. So it's a very good statistic." - CNA

Copyright © 2004 MCN International Pte Ltd

huaiwei

July 1st, 2004, 05:41 PM

From this episode, its always the human stories which make it so memorable!!! ;)

babystan03

July 1st, 2004, 07:23 PM

The New Paper - 02 Jul 2004

Gas is best but...

TUESDAY'S TWO-HOUR BLACKOUT: Why depend on natural gas?

By Alvin Chiang

THE three biggest power companies here use natural gas to produce electricity.

Senoko Power became the first to do so, in 1992. And Tuas Power and PowerSeraya have also started to use gas.

Now, 60 per cent of our energy needs are met by gas, said Mr Khoo Chin Hean, chief executive of the Energy Market Authority, at a news conference yesterday. The remaining 40 per cent comes from burning oil.

Gas is more energy efficient than oil and cheaper than diesel. The energy efficiency of gas is 45 to 52 per cent. This means that about half of the gas is converted to electricity. With oil, only 35 to 40 per cent is converted to electricity, said Tuas Power.

Also, gas is cheaper than diesel by one-third to half. The prices of gas and oil are about the same, with gas being slightly more expensive at times.

The blackout on Tuesday night affected about 300,000 households, Mr Khoo said.

It happened because a valve tripped at a Jurong Island gas station operated by ConocoPhillips Indonesia.

ConocoPhillips operates the West Natuna gas pipeline which supplies two-thirds of Singapore's natural gas intake.

Mr Kevin Pewitt, commercial gas manager at ConocoPhillips, said the cause was being investigated. 'Our engineers have been on site since 11pm on Tuesday,' he said.

'We have narrowed it down to seven or eight possibilities and expect to find out why the valve tripped in the next two days.'

The valve acts as a safety mechanism and shuts off if any fault is detected, to prevent a dangerous situation, like a gas leak.

Once the valve tripped, gas could not reach the receiving station on Jurong Island, and alarms went off at the Tuas Power, PowerSeraya and Sembcorp Cogen power stations it feeds.

The power stations did not have enough time to switch to diesel as a backup fuel to power the gas turbines.

The blackout occurred when the gas turbines stopped working.

Mr Khoo said it takes up to 1 1/2 hours to restart a gas turbine.

Power was slowly restored to affected areas starting from around 10.25pm.

Full power was restored to all affected areas before midnight.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW GAS PRODUCES ELECTRICITY
1. Natural gas goes into a combustion chamber. High pressure and heat cause the gas to expand.

2. The heated gas passes through a gas turbine, making it turn.

3. The hot gas goes into a heat recovery steam generator, which has pipes filled with water. The water turns into steam when the hot gas passes through.

4. The steam produced is used to turn a steam turbine. Steam generates more energy than hot gas. After passing through the steam turbine, the steam is condensed, and the water is collected and sent to the generator to be used again.

5. A generator converts the kinetic (moving) energy from the rotating steam turbine into electrical energy.

Copyright © 2004 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 04:54 AM

JULY 2, 2004
Lift glitch may be due to use of force
Residents prising open the doors may have turned off automatic rescue device; faulty components could also be to blame

By Radha Basu

PANIC-STRICKEN residents stuck in lifts on Tuesday night may have deactivated the automatic rescue device when they tried to prise open the doors.

Alternatively, the components in the devices designed to take lifts to the nearest landing safely and open the doors in the event of a power breakdown could be faulty.

Mr Phuah Cheng Kok, vice-president, field operations, Fujitec Singapore, which is responsible for providing and maintaining about 60 per cent of the 16,700 lifts in HDB blocks, offered this explanation when asked why the devices did not work.

Fujitec and other lift contractors, such as Esmaco, Ryoden and Otis, are conducting detailed investigations with the HDB and town councils, to ascertain what happened in each case, said spokesman for the People's Action Party town councils, Mr Foo Say Chiang.

Thirty-seven people were stuck in 23 lifts, most of them in Jurong, Marine Parade and Aljunied housing estates, he said.

He said there are two emergency support units to monitor lift operations and assist in case of emergencies - one each for councils in eastern and western Singapore. The western unit in Chai Chee was hit by the blackout and had no backup power.

Ironically, the eastern unit in Bukit Merah, which had backup power, was not affected by the outage.

This may account for why the emergency rescuers had no idea that 11 people were trapped in at least three lifts in Jurong Town Council until after power was restored at about 11.30pm.

The computers in the monitoring unit went dead during the outage.

Even after the power came back on, the doors of one lift holding seven adults had jammed so badly it took rescuers another two hours to release them. They were freed at 1.30am on Wednesday.

Mr Ho Thian Poh, general manager of Jurong Town Council, said the three lifts were serviced in the past fortnight, and were found to have faulty components in the rescue devices. They were due for repair.

In most other cases, however, technicians and rescuers armed with lift keys got lifts stuck between floors to the nearest landing to be opened.

A few town councils, such as Holland-Bukit Panjang and Jurong, are considering handing spare sets of lift keys to the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) so its officers can react quickly in emergencies caused by widespread power failure.

SCDF staff were involved in rescuing 10 of the 37 people trapped in Tuesday's blackout. The SCDF is open to the idea of collaborating with town councils, said spokesman N. Subhas.

Some procedures may be worked out so SCDF staff can help lift rescue technicians, who may be stretched in emergencies such as Tuesday's blackout, he suggested.

Hit - with no backup

TWO emergency support units monitor lift operations in Singapore. The western unit in Chai Chee was hit by the blackout and had no backup power. The eastern unit in Bukit Merah was not hit.
This may be why rescuers did not know earlier about those trapped in lifts in Jurong Town Council.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 04:55 AM

JULY 2, 2004
Snapped up
Devices that provide backup power for PCs in demand after recent blackout

By Ho Ka Wei

TUESDAY'S blackout has led to a surge in demand for devices that protect PCs against damage from power failure, say retailers.

The uninterruptible power supply (UPS) device, which costs $75 or more, supplies backup power when the mains supply is suddenly cut. It also protects against power surges.

Convergent Systems, a major distributor of UPS devices here, said 200 units of a basic model of the American brand APC were sold on Wednesday, the day after the blackout that hit most parts of Singapore. This model costs about $90.

This was about six times more than the number sold on a normal day, Convergent spokesman Michael Tan said yesterday.

There was a similar spike in sales after the April blackout.

Shops in Funan Centre and other electronic malls stock other brands, including Singapore-made ones. Prices start at $75.

Hardware engineer Wee Hong Chee of Make Fine Computer in Funan Centre said that so far, he hasn't seen many computers affected by the last blackout. 'People who take precautions tend to be those who have been hit before,' he added.

Users can also consider using surge protectors ($20 and up), since a sudden rush of power can raze a system altogether, he said.

Recent demand for UPS devices may put more brands onto store shelves here.

A spokesman for United States technology firm Belkin told The Straits Times yesterday that it plans to launch its Home Series UPS battery backup in the Asia Pacific by next month. Prices start at $99.

Computers face several problems when power fails.

A sudden loss of power may corrupt its motherboard, or 'brains'. In a blackout, the UPS supplies five to 15 minutes of power to the computer, enough to save files and shut down the system safely.

The UPS, set up between the mains and the computer, also protects against power surges which may happen when the power comes back on.

In normal operation, power from the mains charges a battery inside the UPS, ready to kick in should the mains supply be cut off.

On the hardwarezone.com forum on Wednesday, several members were thankful their computers were protected.

DarthKool crowed: 'My UPS finally has use!'

Another suggested users stock up on other types of battery-operated devices. Devache posted: 'Next time need to get battery air-conditioner too... I was surfing but sweating like a pig!'

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 05:06 AM

JULY 2, 2004
Blackout exposes weakness in system

THE blackout on Tuesday night laid bare a weakness in the electricity supply system that has been insufficiently addressed despite previous occurrences.

The cause of the blackout, according to the Energy Market Authority as quoted in the report, 'Blackout hits many areas after gas supply failure' (ST, June 30), was a disruption of the supply of natural gas from Indonesia.

According to the report, in August 2002, a 90-minute blackout was also blamed on an Indonesian gas supply disruption after seven of Singapore's nine gas-fired generating plants shut down.

Why are the generating plants in Singapore so dependent on a fresh flow of natural gas from Indonesia?

Does this not mean that Indonesia is the source of Singapore's well-being and livelihood?

I am not convinced that Singapore can withstand sudden attacks by terrorists or even other nations which seek to threaten or undermine the country's sovereignty.

All that needs to be done, it seems, is to disrupt the flow of natural gas from Indonesia, and Singapore will immediately be plunged into darkness, with its roads becoming scenes of confusion, its people trapped in elevators and its homes and offices unable to function as usual.

In addition, if the natural gas flow from Indonesia is disrupted, would Singapore's armed forces be affected?

Is the operation of the country's military bases and sophisticated weapons ultimately dependent on these generating plants?

Can Singapore not have its own reservoirs of natural gas which it can use to operate its generators when needed?

This would make the country less vulnerable to leakages in the pipelines transporting gas from Indonesia to Singapore or acts of sabotage.

It is also not enough to apportion blame and impose fines on those companies responsible for the disruption of electricity supply.

The problem is one which the authorities will have to address in their strategic planning of Singapore's future and survival.

CHUA HWA KUAN

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 05:07 AM

JULY 2, 2004
Shining examples of helping others in the dark

I REFER to the report, 'While the lights were out...' (ST, June 30). The public spiritedness of the men in Hougang who rushed out to shine torches for pedestrians was heart-warming.

Yesterday, I was told a few similar stories about the blackout. One of them was about a kind soul at Block 541, Hougang Street 52 who put lit candles on every flight of stairs from the 12th floor down.

In the two hours of darkness, when the lifts were not working, the candles helped residents a great deal as they made their way home.

Elsewhere, a few neighbours were having a karaoke session when the blackout occurred. A friend called to say that she would be buying chwee kuay for them.

When she did not arrive after half an hour, one man went floor by floor to check that she had not been trapped in a lift.

What makes the story touching is he was elderly and the karaoke session was on the 12th floor.

None of us would relish walking up and down so many floors but this senior citizen did it anyway.

However, I wonder what role grassroots organisations such as residents' committees played during the blackout. Can they be trained to help residents in such emergencies?

DAVID CHEONG FOOK CHIONG

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 05:08 AM

JULY 2, 2004
Have backup for street, traffic lights

I REFER to the reports, 'Blackout hits many areas after gas supply failure' and 'While the lights were out...' (ST, June 30). It appears that street lamps and traffic lights in the affected areas went out, as they did during the blackout in April.

We are fortunate that no major accidents happened during the blackout, no doubt due to the prompt action of the police and passers-by as well as the extra care shown by motorists.

Still, if the blackout had happened earlier than it did, during the peak hours of traffic, or if it had lasted longer, we might not have been so lucky.

If the MRT system can have backup power generators to ensure smooth operation even during blackouts, could we not have such a backup for street lamps and traffic lights?

We may not need to restore power to all the lights, perhaps only every second or third lamp post and traffic lights at major junctions.

LIN ZIYUAN

Install emergency lights at staircases

THE blackout was a good experience for me as I have finally come to appreciate what I used to take for granted - power.

However, I wish to point out that there is a lack of emergency lighting for staircases in Housing Board blocks.

When the blackout occurred, all the HDB blocks affected were in total darkness.

This could lead to accidents, especially during emergencies. What would happen if the residents in the entire block had to evacuate? It would be dangerous to walk down the stairs without any lighting.

GERALD CHOO CHONG YU

Be more alert to possible threats

THE blackout is an episode from which many lessons can be learnt. These lessons do not apply to just the authorities involved but to every citizen as well.

When the blackout hit us, many people went through their usual blackout routine of finding candles, calling their friends and complaining to the civil defence. Sad to say, I was one of the many Singaporeans who did those things.

Looking out of my window that night, I saw children running around with sparklers and families strolling with their torches.

Had the blackout been part of a planned attack on Singapore, the consequences would have been horrific.

Even in this uncertain world, we are not sufficiently prepared for a crisis. It is high time that Singaporeans woke up and was aware of the potential threats.

In other words, find out what 'total defence' means - and clear out the bomb shelter in your flat for a real emergency.

CHRISTINA TAN GUEK KEE (MS)

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 05:16 AM

This story was printed from TODAYonline

Get off your butt – your nation needs you

Friday • July 2, 2004

mr brown
news@newstoday.com.sg

I would like to apologise for an earlier column in which I said people living in Bukit Panjang and the western parts of Singapore were living in ulu (backward) estates.

In Tuesday night's power failure, which affected 300,000 households for up to two hours (up from 80,000 for slightly over an hour in April), my Lorong Ah Soo estate was one of the last to have power restored, at slightly after midnight.

Don't like that, lah. Just because I said Bukit Panjang was ulu, this time when most of us got hit, you guys turned on the turbine for my estate last, right?

As usual, I was on the road this time, too. Blackouts like to happen when they know I am going to be driving. Just as rain likes to wait for me to wash my car before coming down in buckets.

My wife called to inform me of the power outage and, as the captain of our home's volunteer Civil Emergency Force (current membership is five: Papa, Mama, Faithie, Isaac and Auntie Cecilia), I instructed her to begin "Operation Look-for-a-Torch".

We knew the drill, having learned from the previous "Blackout of the Non-ulu West". My wife knew where to find most of the torches I kept in the house and also knew to activate my battery-operated fish pump.

Even the fish were trained to breathe less air during a power failure, and to turn off all electrical appliances in the tank.

Before I got home, I made a small detour to Mustafa, bless their open-all-night souls, to buy extra lamps and batteries. Together with half of Singapore, it seems.

And on the way up the stairs of Mount Lorong Ah Soo, the Teasing of the West began.

"Haha, Lorong Hsu so ulu one!" came an SMS from friend Chandra. It must have been dark, which explains the misspelling of the name of my estate.

I'd just like to add that Chandra has Bollywood-star good looks and lives in a very hip part of town — Bukit Batok (don't ask me where that is, I am not that hip).

In addition to all the SMSes flying around, people started phoning the police, jamming the lines.

What for? Did you get mugged? No. Did someone try to steal your big-screen TV? No.

Oh! You just wanted to tell the authorities! Why? Scared the police didn't know, ah?

Constable Tan: "Eh, Sgt Ahmad. Look outside, everything black-black one. And our police post also no power, leh. You think got island-wide blackout or not?"

Sergeant Ahmad: "No, lah, Constable Tan. Don't so fast jump to conclusion. Wait for the public to call first, then we will know if really got power failure."

Early radio reports stated that the cause of the power plant's failure was a disruption of the natural gas supply from Indonesia.

I know what a lot of you were thinking when you heard that.

"Wah, must be those Indonesians, lah. How come their gas so unreliable one? Next time we don't buy from them, then they know. Report them to Case or something."

It certainly sounded like the disruption was from the Indonesian end, based on the reports heard that night.

Now we are told that the Indonesian gas supply was disrupted because of the tripping of a valve on Jurong Island.

"Wayyyydaminute … Jurong Island … sounds familiar. And doesn't sound like one of the 17,000 islands that make up the Indonesian Archipelago, leh."

That's right, Sherlock, the disruption happened at OUR end, with OUR valve.

I reckon someone must be held accountable for this, a very senior valve at the very least. The valve that was supervising the tripped valve, maybe.

Of course, we know that the valve that tripped did so for safety reasons, and the main problem was that the backup systems at the three affected plants failed to switch over quickly enough to the backup diesel mode.

I say we cut the pay of these guilty power turbines for not switching over fast enough. Maybe also deduct some leave.

I was surprised to learn that we rely so heavily on natural gas, and overseas gas at that (foreign talent?) for our power needs.

In the light of this disaster, we should think seriously about creating our own natural gas supply instead of relying on the gas fields of others. And there is no better source of natural gas than our own people. We may have very few natural resources, but we do have our people.

That's right, gentle reader. It is time that we come together as a nation: Save gas, fart in a jar.

It's not that far-fetched, if you think about it. Look, we already drink Newater, which is recycled from waste water. So why not begin a programme to recycle our own gas?

We could use modern technology to convert the collective gas of a nation into usable energy. The first stage of filtration would probably involve removing the smell.

Still not convinced? Did you know that human fart contains methane? Yes, it is actually flammable.

Please do not attempt to prove this in the unscientific confines of your home. The waving of a naked flame in the region of one's butt to see if a fart will really ignite should only be done by trained scientists and qualified stunt-people.

I reckon if you could compress the collected flatulence, it would become liquid and thus storable in LPG tanks. Then the gas could be ignited to fire our power plants!

And we could call this new form of natural gas, Newgas! We could even make the Newgas factory a tourist attraction, to show the world that Singapore's success is fuelled by its people's organic resources.

Get your jars ready, citizen, your country needs you.

mr brown is the accidental author of a popular website that has been documenting the dysfunctional side of Singapore life since 1997. He is glad there wasn't a need to start force-feeding his kid the thawing breast milk in the fridge.

Copyright MediaCorp Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 08:10 AM

Business Times - 02 Jul 2004

S'porean secrets revealed - in a blackout
Take away one of their creature comforts and they will show their true colours

By JAIME EE

I'M no anthropologist, but if I ever wanted to do a study on the intricacies of human behaviour involving Singaporeans, the best conditions to do so would have to be in a blackout.

For example, I have discovered that most Singaporeans think alike. We are so similarly wired that the first word to erupt from our lips the moment the lights go out is: 'Oii!!!'

Mind you, this is no arbitrary response. Instead, it originates from a uniquely Singaporean trait which was not dreamed up by the tourism board. You see, most other cultures are likely to respond to the sudden lack of light in slightly less antagonistic ways, like 'Oh!', or 'Why is there no light?' or 'Honey, is that you or did a sexual deviant just brush up against me?' Singaporeans, on the other hand, go 'Oi!!!' because of a deeply ingrained instinct that when something goes wrong, it is somebody else's fault.

It subsequently follows that when there is nobody within one's physical proximity to take the blame for and/or fix the problem immediately, the Singaporean's mind moves into the next phase: complain to somebody. That is why most emergency hotlines are always engaged. Because statistically speaking, there are more people who want to complain than there are people who want to listen to them.

Because Singaporeans don't always succeed in complaining to the source, they will complain to other sources about the lack of complaining outlets. That is, they turn to the media. Unfortunately, the media also needs to get information from these same sources who, for reasons of their own, need to confirm that there is a blackout by means other than looking outside their window.

So, deprived of official confirmation and official people to complain to, Singaporeans move on to the next phase of cerebral activity: complaining to each other, and comparing their situation with each other to see who is worse off. This is a rather dangerous phase, because it invokes that other peculiar national trait: envy.

This is where people get jealous when they realise their friends and relatives in unaffected parts of Singapore are still able to watch TV. You get people in hawker centres, gloating over having their char kway teow delivered to their table just as the power goes off, leaving other less fortunate people to watch, albeit in darkness. And you get people who have yet to take a shower, sitting and stewing in their own juices, getting really annoyed that there are other cleaner people around.

Such envy also gives rise to conspiracy theories, like the one where ministers' homes are powered by a separate power line so they are never affected by blackouts. Indeed, one Singaporean whose TV went off just as he was enjoying watching new tennis babe Maria Sharapova at Wimbledon, was so upset that he drove around his neighbourhood and beyond, intent on proving this theory.

Perhaps yet another uniquely Singaporean behaviour should be added here - that is, even in times of crisis, Singaporeans will never give up their right to shop or eat. You can leave us in the dark, but do not try to take our food away, especially if it's already been paid for.

So, want to know how the Singaporean mind works? Forget about all the rules of Psychology 100. All you need to do is take away one of our creature comforts. Or tell you what, just set up a hotline.

Copyright © 2004 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

heirloom

July 2nd, 2004, 08:24 AM

ahhaha... the ministers should ensure uninterrupted power supply to keep their jobs..

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 08:24 AM

ahhaha... the ministers should ensure uninterrupted power supply to keep their jobs..

Thats why they so "angry" mah......:D

eyetoeye

July 2nd, 2004, 09:49 AM

huaiwei

July 2nd, 2004, 09:55 AM

Notice how everything in Singapore seems to happen in groups? First of all, there were two construction accidents, then, there were a couple of maritime collisions, and then there were several major blackouts. It's almost as if someone planned all of them.... :baaa:
Its a preemptive terrorism strike loh....expect the actual attack to involve the entire country in darkness, every construction site collapsing, and all the ships colliding in the harbour.

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 10:14 AM

^
Wah sound like movie...:eek:...but then we really have to keep our guards all the time..... :)

eyetoeye

July 2nd, 2004, 12:14 PM

Haha. If the terrorists were really smart, they'd attack our kopitiams instead.....

heirloom

July 2nd, 2004, 01:09 PM

hahaa so many kopitiams
if they really wanted to murder ppl... they should hold big big CHEAP internatioinal buffet at suntec city convention halls or expo or somethin.. advertise famous chefs...then kaboooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm i bbet i'll be in there

eyetoeye

July 2nd, 2004, 01:43 PM

You sadist.....

heirloom

July 2nd, 2004, 01:59 PM

i just have the potential to be a terrorist dont i
*watchyourback*

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 02:45 PM

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 02 July 2004 1959 hrs

Blackout to blame for discolouration of pictures on some TV sets
By Yvonne Cheong, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Since Tuesday's massive blackout, several companies selling televisions have been getting calls from irate customers unhappy that even after the lights came back on, the colour on their TV screens looked off.

If you were watching TV when the blackout hit you may be one of those experiencing this problem: your television screen looked discoloured when the power came back on.

"It's got nothing to do with the brand of the TV. The discolouration on the TV is due to the coil inside the TV becoming hot during a power surge. So immediately when the power turns on, this coil inside does not work. This coil acts as the decolouration of the picture tube to clear away the patches of colour," said Gan Eng Sin, service manager at Samsung Electronics.

So ironically, those homes which had their power supply restored the quickest were the more likely to face this problem, as the television coil would still be hot when the power came back on.

But the effect is not permanent.

All you need to do is switch off your TV and wait for five minutes to allow the coil to cool before switching it on again.

Switching off your TV using the remote control is not going to help the discolouration problem either; you need to do it manually switch it off and on using the power switch on your television set. - CNA

Copyright © 2004 MCN International Pte Ltd

huaiwei

July 2nd, 2004, 07:06 PM

Haha. If the terrorists were really smart, they'd attack our kopitiams instead.....
I think there are better targets then that! :D

Anyway, my TV didnt get discoloured...it just gets NO SIGNAL for over an hour!! :bash:

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 07:18 PM

^
Haha....still piss about the TV thing?? :)

Anyway, it seem like this blackout has stimulate the business of some like those selling UPS in Sim lim.......

huaiwei

July 2nd, 2004, 07:55 PM

^
Haha....still piss about the TV thing?? :)

Anyway, it seem like this blackout has stimulate the business of some like those selling UPS in Sim lim.......
Yeah...but I still wont buy those.

I think it is a good thing in general thou...makes so many ppl realise how badly prepared they are, and opens up a major security loophole.

babystan03

July 2nd, 2004, 07:58 PM

Yeah...but I still wont buy those.

I think it is a good thing in general thou...makes so many ppl realise how badly prepared they are, and opens up a major security loophole.

As well as the loophole in the electricity supply system....... :bash:

sOmeOne

July 3rd, 2004, 12:26 AM

LOL, 30 mins is not a blackout :D Right after the USSR collapsed we had serious power problems throughout Russia. The blackouts sometimes lasted up to 5 hours. In fact, they would announce a blackout schedule on TV :D Whole sleeping districts were cut off (not just 9 buildings, but more like 200 ;))

However, I'm glad that blackouts in Singapore are so rare that they make it to the news :)
One more reason to move :yes:

babystan03

July 3rd, 2004, 04:12 AM

JULY 3, 2004
It's a blackout! Now who're you going to call?
Readers suggest setting up a national crisis management hotline

By Radha Basu

HOUSEWIFE Cecilia Teo laughed off her youngest son's suggestion on Tuesday night when an almost islandwide blackout plunged her semi-detached home in Bukit Timah into darkness.

'Mum, do you think terrorists have attacked?' Leonard, seven, an avid viewer of TV action movies, had asked his 47-year-old mother.

But as unease continued to niggle at her, she toyed with calling 999 but thought that might be jammed and decided to call her neighbourhood police station instead.

'The lines were jammed. Worse, the next day, I hear the police want us not to call them. Luckily, my three sons were home. If not, I'd be worried sick and who can I turn to? If we can't call 999, give us another hotline.'

She is not alone in her plea, after the police urged people on Wednesday not to call 999 during blackouts unless the emergency required 'urgent police response'.

At least 10 people interviewed by The Straits Times echoed her call, with one suggesting a three-digit, easy-to-remember number.

Similarly, about two-thirds of 114 readers who took part yesterday in an online poll on The Straits Times website favoured the setting up of a national crisis management hotline. They want it manned by the police or the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF).

And it won't be difficult to do, they said, suggesting that technology can ease the work.

Said Mrs Teo: 'The police don't need to physically man the lines. They just have to find out what happened, record a message and activate it. So any caller will know what exactly happened.'

In a joint statement last night, the police and SCDF stressed the need to keep the 999 and 995 hotlines free for urgent help when life or property is at risk.

They asked people to call their Neighbourhood Police Centres for information and non-urgent help.

The power failure hit a third of Singapore between 10pm and midnight and is the third in three months, caused by a disruption of the supply of natural gas from Indonesia.

In the face of such an eventuality, most Singaporeans, especially families with young children and old folk, insisted on a national emergency hotline.

Said Dr P.N. Avadhani, 73: 'The police asked us to call the PowerGrid hotline, but the number is really long; and why bother them? They will be busy fixing the problem.'

A retired professor from the National University of Singapore, he suggested a three-digit number for all national emergencies. 'Posters at HDB lift landings can make the number familiar to people,' he added.

An automated message on a special hotline would be a win-win solution, said sales manager Steven Phua, 38.

'It would free up the police to concentrate on urgent matters, and leave those needing information satisfied as well.'

School principal Jenny Yeo, who's in her early 50s, suggested that the line be manned by volunteers.

However, a small group of Singaporeans, mostly single professionals, do not see the need for another hotline.

Said media executive Jason Lim, 25: 'During any crisis, the authorities will have enough on their plates, so why burden them with more?

'Besides, blackouts are rare. It may not make financial sense to maintain a round-the-clock hotline for something that may or may not happen.'

Police and SCDF say:

'THE police and SCDF hotlines, 999 and 995, are the established and familiar hotlines that the public refer to in emergencies and crises. These emergencies are critical situations where life or property is at risk and there is need for urgent assistance from the police or the SCDF. It is important, therefore, that we keep the two main emergency hotlines to the police and the SCDF free to service such urgent emergency calls.

The approach taken in the recent blackout was to work through the media to convey the relevant information to the public as quickly as possible. Indeed this role was effectively played by the media. Members of the public could also refer to the Singapore PowerGrid Electricity Service Centre hotline 1800-7786666 or 67786666 which is operational 24 hours.

In addition, for those who require information or attention and assistance of a non-urgent nature, another channel to reach the police is to call their Neighbourhood Police Centres (NPCs) which are located in close proximity to or within the housing estates of Singapore and operate 24 hours a day.

The telephone numbers of these NPCs are prominently displayed at the service counters of the NPCs and also on pamphlets that are frequently distributed to residents at police community events. They can also be found on the police website at www.spf.gov.sg and the telephone directory.'

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 3rd, 2004, 04:17 AM

JULY 3, 2004
Newater supply unaffected by blackout
Two plants were hit but PUB's backup generators kicked in within seconds of outage to maintain supply to all 9 clients

By Alexis Hooi

NEWATER, critical in keeping Singapore's semiconductor and wafer fab plants running round the clock, continued to flow without a pause even though the two plants providing it were hit, together with 300,000 households, by Tuesday's blackout.

None of the nine companies which receive Newater was affected, as the Public Utilities Board's emergency power generators kicked in seconds after the electricity breakdown.

Even as Singapore's reputation for efficiency took a beating from the outage, its blushes were spared at least in this area.

Mr Lee On Nam, vice-president of wafer fab manufacturer Systems on Silicon Manufacturing, which also did not experience any disruption to its supply of Newater, said: 'Without it, we'd have to shut down the plant, but we were totally unaffected by the blackout.'

Its plant in Pasir Ris, which provides 1,100 people with jobs and which like the others runs 24 hours, is totally reliant on the liquid.

Mr Lee was quick to add that while his company has its own emergency kit - diesel generators and a day's supply of Newater - it has never had to use it.

Panasonic Semiconductors director Chong Kum Wah said his factory at Ang Mo Kio did not notice any hiccups in its supply of Newater because of the blackout.

In any case, he added, the factory, which makes semiconductor chips, has its own generators, as well as reserve tanks of potable water and Newater that will see production through for four hours.

On Tuesday night, both the companies did not have to resort to their emergency plans because the PUB's diesel-powered emergency generators roared into action at the affected Seletar and Bedok plants when the power shut down. Within three minutes, water was being pumped from the reserve tank.

At the Bedok plant, the backup power produced went first into pumping Newater from a reserve tank, which holds enough water for more than 15 hours' supply to its customers. This 16,000 cu m would fill eight Olympic-sized pools.

Even as this ensured that the power trip remained unnoticeable, the backup power was progressively allocated to other production processes in the plant.

In about 15 minutes, the place was humming along normally, 30 minutes before electricity from the power grid was restored. The same happened at the Seletar plant, which has 9,000 cu m of Newater in reserve.

PUB's assistant director for water reclamation, Mr Tan Thai Pin, 46, said that the emergency power facilities are available at all the three Newater plants here, including the one at Kranji, which was not affected by the blackout.

'We've got to build up customers' confidence by ensuring there's never any interruption in their supply whatsoever,' he said.

The Kranji plant has an elevated reservoir, he added. And it will not need electricity to pump Newater from this; gravity will do the job.

The feature will be added to the other two plants. Bedok will get one by year-end and Seletar by the end of next year.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 3rd, 2004, 04:18 AM

JULY 3, 2004
Solar energy next for Singapore?
Shell contacted by govt officials on solar cells factory idea

By Christopher Tan

THE Government is warming up to solar energy.

On Thursday, both the Economic Development Board (EDB) and National Environment Agency (NEA) contacted oil giant Shell's regional solar business office here.

They wanted to 'to get updates on our projects here' and 'reopen the question of setting up a factory here to make solar cells and modules', Mr Christophe Inglin, managing director of Shell Solar, told The Straits Times.

He said his staff met Mr Zang Thio, EDB's senior officer for aviation and alternative energy, and Mr Andy Wong, NEA's engineer for resource conservation, two days after Singapore was hit by one of its worst power outages in a decade.

However, Mr Inglin said the timing was coincidental, and his company had been in regular contact with the authorities.

Currently, Singapore has an installed solar power capacity of only about 80kwp - where the kilowatt-peak is a measurement of how much electricity can be produced under defined conditions.

Japan, the leading user in the region, has an installed capacity of around 1GWp (gigawatt-peak).

On a per capita basis, that is 400 times that of Singapore's.

Mr Inglin said he told the government officials on Thursday that 'it does not make economic sense' for Shell Solar 'to manufacture in Singapore because of the very small local market'.

Adding that the company makes its products in Germany, Portugal and the United States, he said, however, that the Singapore Government could invest in the business so it can eventually be an exporter of products and know-how in the region.

Shell Solar is the fourth largest solar company in the world, but its presence in Singapore - with 17 staff - is the largest. Other major players with operations here include Kyocera Solar, Sharp and BP Solar.

Neither Mr Zang of the EDB nor Mr Wong of the NEA was reachable yesterday for comment.

However, Mr Inglin said the EDB has previously involved Shell Solar in discussions on how to make solar-powered electricity an economically viable energy solution for Singapore.

Solar could take off here, he felt, if the Government comes in with subsidies 'to kickstart the industry'.

He said: 'The community will bear the cost of this start-up, just as it would the building of roads, schools and other infrastructure.'

While the world solar market is worth only US$5 billion (S$8.6 billion) to US$6 billion a year, Mr Inglin said growth has accelerated of late - growing 40 per cent a year in the past two years, against 20 to 25 per cent growth in the past 10 years.

Singapore will wait for 'the cost of entry to go down further', he noted, or invest now and 'have the opportunity to become a regional leader one day'.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 3rd, 2004, 04:19 AM

JULY 3, 2004
Our Columnist
Don't take piped gas for granted
By Christopher Tan

THE Cantonese have a rather graphic saying about poor preparedness. Loosely translated, it refers to a person who begins to dig a latrine when he's bursting to go. The proverb comes to mind with recent events.

Five gas supply disruptions since 2002, two major power outages in the past six months, and the inadequacies of backup power supply shown up by Tuesday's two-hour blackout do raise some questions.

The main one: Is Singapore taking its fuel supply - piped natural gas from Indonesia and Malaysia - for granted?

As in the case of water, is the country too reliant on these two exclusive sources for gas? Should we look at self-reliance, at least partially?

The Republic is in a better position than many other countries to take advantage of existing and emerging technologies to hedge against hiccups in the conventional electricity grid.

If the policymakers say 'go', it won't be long before an Olivia Lum equivalent emerges with a power solution we can bank on. If there is one thing Singapore doesn't lack, it is brain power.

Just five years ago, desalination as an alternative water source was little more than a pipe dream. Now, it is a viable consideration. Why, the country is even squeezing water out of thin air.

The same applies to power. What has long been considered prohibitively costly must be looked at again. Changing technology and changing needs can alter perceptions of what is feasible and what is not.

According to energy giant Shell, the cost of solar power has fallen by 50 per cent in the past 10 years. In Japan, where this form of energy has penetrated more than 1 per cent of the power market, the cost to a household is only 20 per cent higher than electricity from the conventional grid.

This is because the solar panels are part of a residential development, and are thus financed over the tenure of a typical home loan.

This amortisation effect, if applied here, would have solar-generated electricity costing three times what comes out of the wall socket today.

Expensive? Yes, but like desalination, dare we dismiss it as an option? After all, the cost of the piped gas Singapore uses is deemed among the highest in the world.

For the end user, the solar option will surely make more sense when time-of-day electricity metering swings into play. This is a likely scenario when the market is fully deregulated.

Then, electricity tariffs during daytime - which is peak period - will be higher than evening charges. A solar alternative will be handy then.

Solar is not the only way. What about generating power from the three million tonnes of garbage Singapore residents throw out each year? The refuse now goes to landfills and incinerators, and neither option is cheap.

The number crunchers may rubbish the idea right now, but given we are seriously considering building a multi-billion-dollar liquefied natural gas terminal as an added insurance against 'disruptions' to piped supplies, the maths may not be too crazy.

As good as such a terminal sounds - it allows us to buy gas from Russia to Iran to Qatar - it is a hefty one-piece investment that can still put the country in a hostage position, not unlike the long dependence on oil.

The rationale is if the suppliers know you have spent that money on a terminal, you have to use it.

Of course, one way around this is to have the gas companies co-own the installation.

As a backup though, end users may want to consider investing in their own power packs, such as gas-fed generators and fuel cell generators. Both are clean, quiet, green and readily available.

According to the Energy Market Authority, it is perfectly legal to be independent of the power grid.

If you do, who knows, yours may be the only household that's lit the next time Singapore plunges into darkness and the authorities scramble for the proverbial latrine.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 3rd, 2004, 04:35 AM

This story was printed from TODAYonline

S'pore Power to replace cables

Weekend • July 3, 2004

Even as some Pasir Ris residents were hit by a half-hour blackout on Friday, Singapore Power says it is replacing the ageing cables on its network.

This is to ensure the reliability of the country's electricity supply.

Checks are underway at the Choa Chu Kang substation which was the cause of a power outage in April.

Cables will also be replaced at two other older substations. The work is expected to be completed by October.

SP PowerGrid has also engaged an independent consultant to assess its network performance and practices.

Singapore Power said this was to ensure that the country's network was managed in line with the world's best practices.

On Friday, residents of about 11 blocks in Pasir Ris Street 52 were hit by a blackout. This was caused by a trip in a transformer at the local substation.

Singapore Power said electricity was restored 36 minutes later. — NewsRadio 93.8

Copyright MediaCorp Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

heirloom

July 3rd, 2004, 06:01 AM

it would be nice if whole buildings were coated in nice silvery solar panels... at least i imagine it to be so.. solar panels.. do they come in other colours? black?

@someone
what are sleeping districts?

babystan03

July 3rd, 2004, 08:10 AM

Business Times - 03 Jul 2004

Blackouts: govt moves to penalise those responsible
Energy authority to review regulations in bid to improve stability and security of S'pore's power supply

By TANG WENG FAI

(SINGAPORE) The government will review regulations with a view to allowing the watchdog Energy Market Authority (EMA) to penalise those responsible for gas-supply disruption and consequent electricity blackouts.

Tuesday's blackout, which was caused by a valve failure at a gas receiving station operated by US refiner ConocoPhillips, has raised questions about the stability and security of the power supply and has prompted calls for a review of the regulatory framework.

Speaking at a ceremony to launch the Malay Language Month yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: 'It should not be that you just have one thing go wrong and the whole system can fail.'

Under the current regulatory framework, when a party that causes a gas supply disruption is not a licensee of EMA, the authority doesn't have the power to penalise that party.

Mr Lee made clear the government is concerned about the impact of such a blackout on Singapore's reputation as well as its economy.

'EMA is studying the problem . . . what happened in this instance, and more broadly, what we can do to make the whole system more robust . . . (to) make sure the companies involved, the different entities involved have every incentive to make the system work properly and responsibly . . . and pin the responsibility where it is,' he said.

Tuas Power chief executive Lim Kong Puay told BT: 'Tuas Power strongly supports any changes to the regulatory framework that the EMA may implement by the year's end that would put right any loopholes and tighten controls relating to the security of gas supply.'

Mr Lim also said: 'ConocoPhillips must do its utmost to ensure incidents such as this do not re-occur.'

Meanwhile, another power generation company (genco), PowerSeraya, is reviewing its legal options for recourse. 'PowerSeraya will be carrying out an independent technical and legal review of the factors associated with the failure of the upstream gas and evaluate our legal remedies under the contract,' said its managing director, Neil McGregor.

Pending the results of the legal review, which is expected to take several weeks, Seraya will make a decision on 'seeking any legal redress with any parties'.

ConocoPhillips is the operator of the West Natuna gas pipeline on behalf of the Indonesian government agency BPMIGAS, responsible for upstream oil and gas supply business.

A key problem for gencos such as Seraya and Tuas Power is that their gas supply contract is with SembCorp Gas, not the upstream party ConocoPhillips, whose valve failure led to Tuesday's blackout.

SembCorp Utilities spokesman Goh Wan Cheng did not directly address BT queries on whether SembCorp has any legal recourse against ConocoPhillips.

Ms Goh told BT: 'The terms of the bilateral agreements we have with our customers and gas supplier will prevail. We are, however, unable to discuss these terms.'

ConocoPhillips' Indonesia-based spokesman Santi Manuhutu said: 'Terms and conditions of the commercial agreements with SembGas are strictly confidential.'

The gas supply is part of a 22-year agreement for 325 million standard cubic feet per day, signed on Jan 15, 1999, by SembCorp Gas and Indonesia's state-owned oil-and-gas company Pertamina.

Copyright © 2004 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

redstone

July 3rd, 2004, 09:28 AM

The blackout only lasted a mere 10 mins or so for me.

eyetoeye

July 3rd, 2004, 10:30 AM

I actually had quite a bit of fun walking around in the dark, and it sort of gave me an excuse to pass up my homework a little late the next day. :lol:

babystan03

July 3rd, 2004, 05:33 PM

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 03 July 2004 2256 hrs

Jammed phones lines delayed lift rescues during Tuesday's blackout
By Johnson Choo, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Many flat dwellers were trapped in lifts during the Tuesday night blackout, some for up to three hours.

A company responsible for the maintenance of HDB lifts says jammed phone lines made it harder for rescue staff to respond.

On the night of the massive power failure, a group of seven, including a couple and their two young children, a relative from China and two friends, were trapped in a Jurong East HDB flat lift for nearly three hours.

Town Councils are generally supposed to rescue anyone who is trapped within 25 minutes.

But of the 15 cases reported in the eastern part of the island, only one rescue was done within this time frame.

"We faced a lot of problems because of the communication breakdown. We were unable to pass the call to the rescue operators. So there were a lot of delays due to this," said Philip Goh, senior engineer at EM Services.

On that Tuesday night, the company received more than 8,000 calls, but only around 80 were requests to release trapped passengers.

Faulty backup systems in a few of the affected lifts also delayed their rescue efforts.

Town Councils say the affected lifts have to be mechanically positioned properly before the lift doors can be opened.

This is why the keys are kept by the property management companies. - CNA

Copyright © 2004 MCN International Pte Ltd

sOmeOne

July 4th, 2004, 03:52 AM

@someone
what are sleeping districts?
This is the "Marinsky Park" sleeping district:
http://www.dsk1.ru/images/gallery/newbuild1.jpg

You can imagine how much money the government saved by switching entire districts off for a few years during the crisis :)

babystan03

July 4th, 2004, 03:57 AM

JULY 4, 2004
Our Columnist
Where were you during the Big Blackout?
When an emergency like a huge blackout strikes, it's the small things that suddenly matter

By Sumiko Tan

THE dogs started barking when the lights went out.

And when they came back on 1 hour and 45 minutes later, the neighbourhood dogs were at it again.

I don't know about you, but The Big Tuesday Blackout was the most exciting thing to have happened in my life for a long time.

Okay, perhaps that's not the politically correct thing to say (though it does say a lot about my life.)

There's no question that the blackout was a terrible thing and it shouldn't have happened.

Three hundred thousand households were affected. Thirty-seven people were trapped in lifts.

Thousands were on the road and a motorcylist and his pillion rider were hit by a car.

Imagine the terror of driving in pitch darkness flanked by the heavy shadows of silent buildings.

A colleague found his car suddenly swimming in a sea of ink on the PIE towards Bukit Batok.

It was surreal, he said, as though he had entered the apocalyptic movie Escape From New York.

Policemen worked frantically to direct traffic. Engineers raced to restore power supply. Businesses were hit.

Singapore's reputation was hurt as wire agencies rushed out sneering copy about how 'tiny Singapore', 'which prides itself on its first-class infrastructure', had suffered an extensive power failure causing 'some alarm and widespread irritation'.

But if you, like me, were safely ensconced at home, the blackout was - how shall I put it without getting flak? - an interesting experience.

The day after The Big Blackout, everyone in the office was comparing war stories.

Where were you when it happened? What time did it strike? What did you do? What time did the lights come back on?

Excited, almost exhilarated, by the experience, we were bonded by a sort ofbrotherhood of the blackout.

Pity those who lived through June 29 in total light yet oblivion.

IN MY part of the woods, the outage happened at 10.15pm.

I was at the computer when, without warning but with an almost audible sigh, the world went dead.

The lights died. The murmur of the TV and the drone of the air-con were no more.

Shoot, I thought, yet another power trip. I live in a 30-year-old house, so power outages are not unexpected.

Then it occurred to me that this was different.

For one thing, the purr of the generator in the nursing home behind my house was gone.

I looked out the window. The neighbourhood was cloaked in the blanket of night. Not a light twinkled.

Then the dogs started barking.

AS IN the other 299,999 households, the blackout resulted in a desperate search for light at my home.

Using my mobile phone as a mini beacon, I fumbled for torchlights and tealights.

The phone networks were down, but SMSes worked. Thousands of messages flew across the island as people checked if friends were hit too.

As the house got increasingly stuffy, we opened the windows and balcony doors.

Actually, it was a beautiful night. The moon was nearly full and a slight breeze blew.

I could see neighbours drifting out of their homes to share the experience and to find out more.

For half an hour, I had no clue. Then I remembered: We had a transistor radio somewhere.

I found it and learnt that the supply of gas from Indonesia had been disrupted, causing a blackout that stretched from Clementi to Sengkang.

If there are lessons to be learnt from The Big Tuesday Blackout, these are what I took with me:

Simple things still matter

Whoever deemed transistor radios irrelevant in this age of iPods and whatnot should think again. If not for the dusty contraption I found, I would have remained in the dark about what was happening until the power came back on.

Silence can be beautiful

How peaceful it was just looking out of the window on a quiet, dark night free of distractions like the TV. Perhaps I should do this more often.

The importance of neighbours

A colleague found himself without a torchlight, but a kind neighbour gave him a big, fat candle. Be nice to your neighbours. You never know when you need their help.

Family bonding

A friend of a friend said his father walked into his bedroom during the blackout and, for the first time in years, they actually had a chat.

At my place, my mother, a visiting aunt and I sat, Survivor tribal council-style, around a row of tea-lights.

I listened as they reminisced about the war and those faraway days when my aunt had to study under candlelight because the family could not afford electricity.

Vulnerability is not a bad thing

In those first few scary minutes of the blackout, did not the crazy thought occur to you that there had been a terrorist attack?

And when power was still not restored after half an hour, then an hour, then an hour and a half, did you not rue how easy it is to take things like electricity for granted?

The blackout was a reminder that Singapore is vulnerable and fallible, which is not a totally bad thing for the nation's soul.

Be Zen; have a sense of humour

Was there really a need to get upset and point fingers at the police, the power authorities or the telephone operator who did not pick up your call because hundreds of others were also calling him?

What good would that have done for your health, or the situation?

Sometimes, it makes better sense to be Zen about things, that is, be relaxed and detached, to ride out an inconvenience.

IN MY case, power was restored at the stroke of midnight.

I was dozing off already, radio by my side.

Just as suddenly as the lights went out, they snapped back on again, as did the air-con and other appliances.

The blackout was over. Life was back to normal.

Outside, under the full moon, no doubt spooked by the hum of power surging back through the cables, the dogs were barking again.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

heirloom

July 4th, 2004, 07:39 AM

switch off entire districts? i hiope that doesnt sound as scary as it does...

i thought the govt should profit from selling electricity... not lose money..

eyetoeye

July 4th, 2004, 08:03 AM

Maybe the sytem is so in-efficient that they can't help but lose money. Russia is a really huge country after all.

sOmeOne

July 5th, 2004, 12:25 AM

Well, they sold electricity abroad while the Russian citizens were having blackouts at home. We still paid for electricity like if we were getting it 24/7 though >( But yes, entire districts were switched every day for several hours. It wasn't scary, but sure wasn't very nice. But I can't remember any blackouts now for about 6 years straight. You know, it was actually kinda fun when I was a kid :D

eyetoeye

July 5th, 2004, 03:21 AM

Yeah. I remember the excited feeling i felt on Tuesday night when the whole island(exaggeration. excuse me) went black. Makes me feel kind'a deprived now....

babystan03

July 5th, 2004, 04:09 AM

JULY 5, 2004
The Big Blackout
No backup for traffic lights
How about alternative power supply for traffic lights? Too complex and likely unnecessary, says Transport Minister

SINGAPORE is not likely to have a backup system for its traffic lights to keep them functioning even in a major blackout like the power failure that took place last Tuesday.

After all, noted Transport Minister Yeo Cheow Tong, such blackouts do not happen often and such a backup system would be too complex.

Asked by reporters if an alternative power supply will be put in place for traffic lights across the island, Mr Yeo said: 'I don't think so. It's something the Land Transport Authority is looking into, but I don't think so.'

Having a backup system, he noted, 'will be very, very complicated'. Such a blackout does not happen very often, he said, adding: 'I hope it doesn't.

'And I'm sure it won't happen once the Ministry of Trade and Industry looks into it and makes sure there isn't another blackout,' he told reporters on the sidelines of the Southwest district's celebration of the 50th anniversary of the People's Action Party.

During last Tuesday's blackout, about 60 per cent of Singapore's 1,800 traffic light were out of action and one traffic accident was recorded in the Bukit Batok area.

The power failure, caused by a trip in a valve on the gas pipeline, hit areas including Aljunied, Bishan, Bukit Batok, Buona Vista, Changi, Choa Chu Kang, Clementi, Crawford, Hougang, Jalan Eunos, Jurong, Mandai, Marina Centre, Serangoon North and Telok Blangah.

All the traffic lights in these areas went dead because there was no alternative power supply.

However, MRT trains continued to function normally.

Mr Yeo said yesterday this was 'no surprise' as the MRT has a backup power supply. 'It's very important because we can't afford to have our trains stranded in a tunnel,' he said.

On the other hand, traffic lights do malfunction from time to time at individual junctions and Singaporeans have been able to cope with no major problems, he added.

Hong Kah GRC MP Amy Khor, who was at yesterday's event at Bukit Gombak stadium, supported the call from some Singaporeans to have a dedicated emergency crisis hotline.

Recounting her own experience in the two blackouts in recent months, she said: 'While the radio is a good source of information, people want assurance from someone it is not a terrorist problem.'

As for preparations for the inquiry into the Nicoll Highway collapse, Mr Yeo said these are under way. Repair works are also on track for the highway to be re-opened by the end of this year.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 5th, 2004, 04:14 AM

^
I think finding the root of the problem(finding the problem with the supply) is more important than doing this......it's like 脚痛医脚,手痛医手(jiao3 tong4 yi1 jiao3, shou3 tong4 yi1 shou3: roughly means solving the surface of the problem and not the root.).....

heirloom

July 5th, 2004, 06:30 AM

why you all can type chinese and i can'tt

babystan03

July 5th, 2004, 06:36 AM

^
Use Windows XP loh.......:)

heirloom

July 5th, 2004, 07:14 AM

BAH! never!

redstone

July 5th, 2004, 10:01 AM

Aiyah, buy HansWare, lor!

huaiwei

July 5th, 2004, 10:08 AM

BAH! never!
Typical non-windows whine. And they keep saying they swear by a product which dosent completely serve their needs. ;)

Anyway, its quite funny seeing how all those candles and touchlights start appearing in my home, and my mum was already fretting about "rationing" the candles in case the blackout lasts for days...hahaha!

eyetoeye

July 5th, 2004, 12:25 PM

We were caught completely off-guard actually... had no torches for myself as my father needed the only one we had. In the end, i had to use a lightstick to bathe. Even that was given to my sister and i was left completely in the dark. Luckily, my darling Elaine's backlight was extremely good. Thank goodness for my poochie-poo, i was able to navigate around the house quite easily.

babystan03

July 5th, 2004, 12:30 PM

Caught off guard too.....I use my mobile phone for illumination haha......:D Think I should stock up some candle too....... ;)

huaiwei

July 5th, 2004, 12:39 PM

Just get toachlight lah. :D What is really cute is we not only have big fat candles, but we also placed them in bowls which makes it much easier to carry them around with no danger of falling candles and wax.

eyetoeye

July 5th, 2004, 12:43 PM

Can use altar candles too... but my household doesn't have them since we're all christians....

redstone

July 5th, 2004, 05:44 PM

Hmm, I have Buddhist prayer lamps at my house and they were the only source of light until I found my handphone (equiped with a torch), and subsequently my latern-torchlight.:D

sOmeOne

July 5th, 2004, 08:56 PM

Geez people, you sound inexperienced :D :D :D

heirloom

July 5th, 2004, 09:10 PM

babystan03

July 9th, 2004, 11:10 AM

JULY 9, 2004
Measures to be put in place to prevent blackouts
MEASURES are being considered to beef up the system so that a blackout like that of June 29's will not happen again.

The Energy Market Authority (EMA), in a briefing led by Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister of State for National Development and Trade & Industry, explained to reporters on Friday how the blackout happened and listed some moves being considered to prevent a recurrence.

'This is a situation which we are not happy with, but it is a situation we will fix,' said he said.

What happened

The blackout happened as a result of a sudden and acute failure of the gas supply, coupled with the failure of the power stations to respond to that fast enough.

The power failure hit at about 10:10pm. Electricity came back on progressively 16 minutes later and was fully restored by midnight.

Ang Mo Kio, Clementi, Woodlands, Toa Payoh, Serangoon and Ghim Moh, as well as the Holland Village and Mohamed Sultan Road belts were affected. Lights and appliances in homes, street lights and traffic lights went out. Some people were trapped in lifts.

Failure of pressure regulating valve

The blackout happened because emergency valves kicked in to cut off the gas supply when a pressure regulating valve failed.

Gas from Indonesia's Natuna field, to be used to generate electricity, is piped into a receiving station on Jurong Island at high pressure.

Two pairs of pressure regulating valves - with one functioning as a backup for the other in case things go wrong - are supposed to step down the pressure when the gas enters Singapore's domestic gas network.

On Tuesday, both sets of valves failed, so the emergency valves shut off the gas supply - as they should for safety reasons - so as to prevent the downstream gas pressure from going up too high.

What's being done

So far, investigations have not helped to explain why the valves failed. Until then, the valves will be monitored and switched to manual mode if necessary.

EMA has asked ConocoPhilips to look into why the valve failed and to improve the design of the pressure-regulating system.

A review of the system from the gasfields to the gas receiving station will also be carried out.

Failure of the power generators

It was further explained that, with the valve failure, the blackout still wouldn't have happened if the power generators had coped with the cut in gas supply.

This is because all the gas turbines at the three power stations - Seraya, Tuas and SembCogen - are designed to be able to work on gas or diesel. If the gas supply fails, the turbines should switch to diesel, which is stockpiled at the stations.

This process of switching over to diesel, called hotswitching, can be done if the turbines move over to use diesel while still running on whatever gas is left in the system. It usually takes between eight and 12 minutes for a hotswitch to complete, during which there is no disruption to power supply.

Hotswitching has been done many times before without blackouts. On Tuesday night, however, it didn't go smoothly.

Seraya hotswitched one of their two gas turbines; the gas ran out before the second turbine could be switched.

SembCogen managed to hotswitch both turbines, but both tripped out five minutes later, and Tuas was in the middle of hotswitching when the gas ran out.

What's being done

The power stations have run tests since the power came back on and confirmed that the hotswitching equipment is working properly.

EMA is looking into why the turbines tripped and reviewing the standard operating procedure on hotswitching. It will also look into the feasibility of providing gas backup during times of gas disruption, including making use of alternative gas sources to tide the turbines over the interval to hotswitch successfully.

Making the power supply more fail safe

Reporters were also briefed on Friday on measures being considered to beef up the strength of the generation system in the short to medium term.

One measure involves setting up two gas pipelines for each of the three major power stations, so one can go into operation when the other fails.

The second measure is to allow the Natuna and Sumatra pipelines to be linked so that a prolonged shutdown in one can to some extent be made up for by drawing on gas from the other.

But this might take some time to take effect because both pipelines now run on different gas pressures and are under different commercial contractual frameworks. Technical, regulatory and commercial issues also have to be sorted out first.

EMA is also looking into the viability of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 10th, 2004, 11:31 AM

JULY 10, 2004
Green and purple images on TV: Just switch set off and cool down

AFTER last week's blackout, some TV sets here were suddenly able to produce only greenish or purplish images.

That left many people seeing red: Over 15 readers wrote in to say the power failure had caused their electrical appliances - mostly TV sets of various brands - to malfunction.

When TV images took on a 'purple and green hue', the parents of product manager Henry Tay even accused him of meddling with the TV set. 'They asked me to get a new set! I asked them to hang on till I found a solution,' said Mr Tay, 37.

Fortunately, the solution is simple.

Switch off the TV set completely. You may need to leave it unused for between 10 minutes and a few hours before the image returns to normal. Another precaution in a blackout: Switch off or disconnect electrical gadgets until after power is restored.

The problem probably arose because the surge that came with the resumption of power overheated the degausser, or demagnetising, coil found in all conventional TV sets.

Though magnetic fields are frequently generated within a TV set, which has many metal parts, a degausser coil keeps such fields from deflecting the red, blue and green beams that form TV images.

But a protective mechanism deactivates the coil once it overheats, explains technical support engineer Win Aung of Samsung. The picture tube would then be affected by any stray magnetic fields - leading to discoloured images, until the coil cools enough and the degausser works again.

While many TV service lines were flooded with inquiries about such problems, it's not known how many paid to have the problem fixed. A house call by a TV technician costs upwards of $60.

Yesterday, Energy Market Authority chief executive Khoo Chin Hean advised the public to check their contracts with their power supplier, to see if they could claim compensation.

A Singapore Power spokesman said electrical appliances were designed to withstand power surges caused by 'normal switching operations or power failures'. She added: 'The power supply interruption last Tuesday was caused by a disruption of natural gas from West Natuna, which is not under our purview.'

Said Consumers Association of Singapore deputy chairman (legal) Thevanathan Pillay: 'If there is compensation payable whenever there is a blackout, no enterprise will be involved in the power supply business.' -- Ho Ka Wei

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

sOmeOne

July 11th, 2004, 05:09 AM

yeah... jealous?

the last time i experienced a blackout .... 2000 was it? i dont remmeber but i was rudely awokened by the sharp increase in temperature as the air conditioner stopped working. i was so annoyed and i mumbled, 'oh god it's so hot i'll just go down and turn on the fan.' then my parents smirked in amusement and informed me that fans are powered by electricity too. which annoyed me to no end. :bash:

btw the word s n i g g e r should not be banned just because it's got n i g g e r in it. it's so irritating when it becomes S******. i changed it to smirk.

:laugh:

I know the feeling!
I remember during our blackouts in the evening I would "swtich on" the lights in the bathroom when I went there automatically. That sucked. It sucks to pee in the dark :D
Yeah, I would be pissed too if I had to rely on A/C to keep myself alive :D

eyetoeye

July 11th, 2004, 05:54 AM

It sucks to pee in the dark :D

It sucks even more when the blackout occurs halfway through the peeing... no?

redstone

July 11th, 2004, 02:51 PM

Halfway through bathing?That's what happened to be.And I came out early.

huaiwei

July 11th, 2004, 03:00 PM

It sucks even more when the blackout occurs halfway through the peeing... no?
Cant be a major problem...just dont move and there should be no spillage...:D

babystan03

July 11th, 2004, 03:03 PM

Cant be a major problem...just dont move and there should be no spillage...:D

But it's difficult not to move when you're shocked!!!!!!:eek: :D

huaiwei

July 12th, 2004, 06:16 PM

Finally...some exclusive photos!! :D

Here, I am going to post two photos for each set. The first one shows it as how it really looks like (with the exposure at its max on my camera). The second one is tweaked on my pc to reveal wat is hidden in the darkness.

Enjoy! :cheers:

The view from the front of my house at the opposite block:

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05884a.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05884b.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05885a.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05885b.jpg

huaiwei

July 12th, 2004, 06:17 PM

But it's difficult not to move when you're shocked!!!!!!:eek: :D
Aiyoh...must learn to keep calm! It can save a life! :D

babystan03

July 12th, 2004, 06:29 PM

Aiyoh...must learn to keep calm! It can save a life! :D

Wah you can stay calm in this ah??? :bow: :bow: :applause: :applause:
http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05885a.jpg

I can hardly see my hands in this darkness........

huaiwei

July 12th, 2004, 06:30 PM

Why not? Its so surreal isnt it? :D

babystan03

July 12th, 2004, 06:32 PM

Why not? Its so surreal isnt it? :D

Perhaps that's why you are the men in blue...... :righton: :righton::D

huaiwei

July 12th, 2004, 06:38 PM

Perhaps that's why you are the men in blue...... :righton: :righton::D
Crazy....I was sort of looking around wondering if anyone is out patrolling least something crazy happens. I didnt see a single one of them, not even a patrol car.

babystan03

July 12th, 2004, 06:41 PM

Crazy....I was sort of looking around wondering if anyone is out patrolling least something crazy happens. I didnt see a single one of them, not even a patrol car.

I managed to see a patrol car for my place.....but after they left for five mins....the place light up.......:D

Can see rays of candle in your first picture.......haha.....:D

huaiwei

July 12th, 2004, 06:57 PM

I managed to see a patrol car for my place.....but after they left for five mins....the place light up.......:D

Can see rays of candle in your first picture.......haha.....:D
What are they doing? I wonder if there is anything they really need to do....and anyway, its not like u can see them either in their dark uniforms. :D

babystan03

July 12th, 2004, 06:58 PM

What are they doing? I wonder if there is anything they really need to do....and anyway, its not like u can see them either in their dark uniforms. :D

I can't see them but I can see their patrol cars......haha....:D

huaiwei

July 12th, 2004, 06:59 PM

More photos...

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05886a.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05886b.jpg

This one is viewing towards the west to where Serangoon and Bishan are:

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05890a.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05890b.jpg

huaiwei

July 12th, 2004, 07:43 PM

View to the south from my balcony....its all blackness until the east coast.

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05873a.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05873b.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05874a.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05874b.jpg

babystan03

July 12th, 2004, 07:47 PM

^
What time did you take these photos??

huaiwei

July 12th, 2004, 07:50 PM

Those facing the south at about 10:15-10:30. Face north and west one is close to 11pm.

eyetoeye

July 13th, 2004, 01:00 PM

I was absolutely thrilled during the blackout, k? It was so much fun! I felt so adventerous! Kind'a sad when it was over. That's sort'a selfish, though.

redstone

July 13th, 2004, 01:03 PM

That was the first time I used my handphone's flashlight for a real purpose.:D

eyetoeye

July 13th, 2004, 04:21 PM

That was the first time I used my handphone's flashlight for a real purpose.:D

Really? My brother is always using his to bully my sister by shining it at her eyes while she's asleep....

btw, HW, the night-vision effect is cool....

redstone

July 14th, 2004, 11:11 AM

My hp's camera is super-lousy, or else I'll take shots at night during the blackout.

huaiwei

July 15th, 2004, 09:02 PM

More photos. :D

The remains of my corridor:

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05889a.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05889b.jpg

eyetoeye

July 16th, 2004, 11:49 AM

More photos. :D

The remains of my corridor:

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05889a.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05889b.jpg

You know, this is - like - so very clear......

Haha. I know i know.... i get the point. It's so dark. Can't imagine what it must be like to be in a shopping mall in the area affected, actually. All the screaming and stuff.

redstone

July 16th, 2004, 11:59 AM

My block's staircase lights are working then.

babystan03

July 20th, 2004, 03:59 PM

Business Times - 20 Jul 2004

S'pore's power systems under review

SINGAPORE - The Government has pledged to improve the reliability of its power supplies after receiving a barrage of complaints from international investors following a rare islandwide blackout last month.

A high-level committee including foreign experts will be set up to examine the country's energy delivery system in an attempt to prevent a recurrence.

The power failure on June 29 knocked out 30 per cent of the country's generating capacity for about 90 minutes, plunging thousands of homes into darkness.

Most businesses were not severely disrupted, however, since the blackout occurred late in the evening.

The Minister Of State for Trade and Industry Vivian Balakrishnan told Parliamentthe government received serious negative comment from existing and potential investors.

He added that the power failure ' harmed our international reputation' and that if the faults were not ironed out 'we will really reap a bitter harvest from this'.

Dr Balakrishnan said fines on private companies found responsible for power outages would be raised to 2 million Singapore dollars.

Copyright © 2004 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

babystan03

July 22nd, 2004, 10:37 AM

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 21 July 2004 1956 hrs

Singapore's energy security won't be compromised: George Yeo
By Chan Hwa Loon, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Trade and Industry Minister George Yeo says Singapore's energy security will not be compromised, even in the event of a prolonged disruption in gas supply.

In a written reply to Member of Parliament Dr Ong Seh Hong, Brigadier-General Yeo says power stations here are required to stockpile at least 90 days worth of fuel reserves in the event of supply disruption.

Also, Singapore's electricity market has excess capacity and its power plants use a good mix of fuel types.

But General Yeo says that if Singapore has to switch to oil-fired steam plants, or run the gas plants on diesel, electricity prices could go up 10 to 20 percent.

Separately, Minister of State for Trade and Industry Dr Vivian Balakrishnan says solar energy is about 2.5 times higher than the current electricity tariff.

And cost aside, he says solar energy may still not be suitable for wide-scale implementation in Singapore.

That is because even if the useable areas of all Housing Board blocks are installed with solar panels, the total amount of electricity that can be generated from solar energy is only about three percent of Singapore's needs. - CNA

Copyright © 2004 MCN International Pte Ltd

huaiwei

July 22nd, 2004, 01:46 PM

More exclusive photos...this time INSIDE my home! :D

This was taken a few moments after the blackout:

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05878a.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05878b.jpg

babystan03

July 22nd, 2004, 01:54 PM

^
Woah......how exclusive.......:eek: The only thing i saw is the attar......is there a candle there??

huaiwei

July 22nd, 2004, 02:01 PM

Haha yeah. My dad lit it for some light.

Later, we hung a small flood light thou:

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05882a.jpg

babystan03

July 22nd, 2004, 02:05 PM

^
was there a lot of chairs?? ....haha.....:)

huaiwei

July 22nd, 2004, 02:14 PM

Thats my living room lah.....quite messy. :D And notes on the wall? Which wall?

babystan03

July 22nd, 2004, 02:17 PM

Thats my living room lah.....quite messy. :D And notes on the wall? Which wall?

The one under the stairs, right where the spot light is shining on?? or did i see wrongly??

huaiwei

July 22nd, 2004, 02:21 PM

The one under the stairs, right where the spot light is shining on?? or did i see wrongly??
No lah....I think i over compressed the picture, so it got pixelated. :D

huaiwei

July 22nd, 2004, 05:41 PM

Another view into my living room...

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05880a.jpg

http://img31.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05880b.jpg

huaiwei

July 23rd, 2004, 08:16 PM

We shd seriously consider alternate energy :D

Wind power: It's no hot air

HOW does a windmill help in grinding grain and pumping water?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Look there, friend Sancho Panza, where 30 or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortune...'Look, your worship,' said Sancho, 'what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes that turned by the wind make the millstone go.'

THIS excerpt from Don Quixote indicates that Sancho's friend had some serious issues, but more to the point, that very large, 'monstrous' windmills, built in close proximity to one another, were a common sight in Spain when Miguel de Cervantes wrote this story more than 400 years ago.

No one knows the exact origin of this ingenious method of harnessing the power of the wind.

Many credit the Middle East with the beginning of windmills, while others suggest earlier use in China more than 2,000 years ago.

Whatever their origins, by the end of the 19th century there were more than 30,000 windmills in Europe, used primarily for grain milling and water pumping.

There are two basic classes of windmill design: horizontal axis and vertical axis.

Conventional windmills spin on a horizontal axis. Early windmills had sails that revolved on a vertical axis much like how helicopter blades rotate. They were used chiefly to grind grain.

Later adaptations found that more energy could be extracted from the wind if the sails or blades turned a horizontal shaft. The horizontal shaft is connected to a vertical shaft through a series of gears.

Gears are wheels with teeth in them. A toothed wheel or gear turning clockwise meshes with a second gear, causing it to turn counter-clockwise.

How can a turning vertical shaft be used to do such apparently widely different things as grinding grain, pumping water and, more recently, producing electrical energy?

It all depends on the mechanical set-up inside the windmill.

The grinding of grain required two large flat stone wheels, set one on top of the other. The bottom grindstone was fixed in place and the top one was moveable.

The vertical shaft of the windmill was connected to and turned the upper grindstone. Grain went into a hole in the centre of this top wheel. Levers would then adjust the pressure between the two grinding stones. If the wind became too strong, the lever could act as a brake.

Windmill safety precautions were needed because the power in the wind is proportional to the cube of the wind speed.

This means that if the wind speed doubles, then the power in the wind increases by a factor of eight.

Windmills were later designed to automatically turn away from the wind if wind speed became dangerously high.

The earliest water pumps made use of the Archimedean screw.

Imagine a large screw in a closed cylinder. The lower blade is placed in the water and the upper end is turned by a crank that turns the cylinder. The threads of the screw turn and slowly raise the water until it flows out from the upper end.

The Dutch connected the crank through gears to the turning axle driven by the windmill. They also used windmills to turn wheels with scoops on them.

These scoop mills could lift water up about 1.5m.

By using a series of these windmills called a molengang or a gang of windmills, they were able to lift water from one pool to another, sometimes up to 6m.

With improvements in pump technology, windmills made use of shafts and gears to mechanically change the rotating motion of a horizontal shaft into an up-and-down motion required to run lift pumps.

To get the required pumping motion, a shaft is attached off-centre near the outer edge of a wheel so the shaft lifts and falls as the wheel spins.

Imagine a clock with a thin piece of paper attached to the tip of the second hand. As the second hand sweeps in a circle from the 12 o'clock position to the 6 o'clock position, the piece of paper (shaft) moves down. As the hand sweeps back up to the 12 o'clock position, it carries the paper up with it.

The use of the off-centre shaft converted the circular motion of the windmill's horizontal axis into the up-and-down motion required to work the lift pump. These wind-pumps were very popular in the American West in the 1800s.

Although no longer used to mill grain or pump water, windmills are becoming increasingly important as an alternative source of electrical energy. Electrical-energy-producing windmills are called wind turbines.

Great examples of horizontal and vertical windmills as well as wind turbines were displayed right here in Singapore, at the 'World of Windmills' festival recently.

With that many windmills in one place, you might have caught a glimpse of Don Quixote and Sancho!

Dr Joseph P. Riley
Science and Technology Education Academic Group
National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University

huaiwei

July 27th, 2004, 12:51 PM

A final picture:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v94/huaiwei/Blackout/DSC05883a.jpg

My living room in darkened chaos! :D

huaiwei

July 27th, 2004, 09:42 PM

Blackouts: Panel to ensure power systems are robust

Fielding MPs' questions on recent spate of power failures, Minister Vivian Balakrishnan outlines action being taken

By Goh Chin Lian

FROM Aug 1, the operator of Singapore's electricity network, which was responsible for two power failures in April and earlier this month, will face a higher fine of up to $2 million if it causes another major blackout.

A new high-level committee will also be set up to examine the electricity and gas systems here and ensure they are 'sufficiently robust against accident or disaster', Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister of State for Trade and Industry, told Parliament yesterday.

Senior officials of multinational corporations as well as energy experts will be invited to join the committee, a spokesman for the Trade and Industry Ministry told The Straits Times.

Eight MPs plied Dr Balakrishnan with questions about the spate of power failures - including the June 29 blackout that hit 300,000 homes for almost two hours.

He said the industry regulator, the Energy Market Authority (EMA), will impose higher standards on SP PowerGrid, the sole operator of the electricity network. If things go wrong, it will face fines of up to $2 million - four times the present maximum.

An EMA spokesman said that no decision has been made on whether PowerGrid will be penalised for the hour-long blackout on April 13 which hit 80,000 homes, or the 30-minute disruption on July 2 which affected 28 blocks in Pasir Ris.

The stiffer new penalty will not apply to power stations, which face a fine of up to $500,000 for major power failures.

Dr Balakrishnan described what happened on June 29, after the gas supply to the Jurong Island receiving station run by American oil refiner ConocoPhillips was disrupted.

The gas supply from there to power stations at SembCorp Cogen, PowerSeraya and Tuas Power was cut off, and they failed to switch to their back-up diesel supply.

Dr Balakrishnan said the power companies will change their operating procedures to ensure, among other things, that they can switch from gas to diesel more speedily.

ConocoPhillips will relook its operations too, as its valve system has failed five times since August 2002 for different reasons. It will submit a report to EMA within three months.

It will also come under the EMA's licensing control by the end of the year, which means it can also be penalised for not meeting standards.

To MPs who questioned the power stations' back-up diesel plan, Dr Balakrishnan said that it had worked on previous occasions. But, having failed on June 29, it now needed to be relooked.

'When something really does go wrong, it's often a series of small problems which added up and ended in a catastrophic situation, like what we experienced on June 29.'

He was confident that if the same sequence of events were replayed today, there would not be a blackout.

MP R. Ravindran (Marine Parade GRC) asked if anyone in the ministry or EMA might have been at fault.

Dr Balakrishnan said the Government would act if the EMA and the new committee made any such discoveries.

Mr Tan Soo Khoon (East Coast GRC) related how an angry constituent paid $200 to repair a television set damaged in the June 29 blackout, and asked who was liable to pay for such damage.

Dr Balakrishnan said people could consider taking legal action, but he was 'very reluctant' to have a body to award damages.

He said he would rather focus on making sure the power system was robust.

He told the House that the Economic Development Board had received 'serious negative comments from existing and potential investors' after the June 29 blackout.

'If we don't show our resolve, we would reap a bitter harvest,' he said.

huaiwei

July 27th, 2004, 09:43 PM

No need for blackout hotline

THERE is no need for a hotline dedicated to blackouts - even if it is a recorded message - as it would be jammed up anyway and create more anxiety.

People should instead tune in to battery-operated or car radios for public announcements in an emergency, Senior Minister of State (Home Affairs) Ho Peng Kee said yesterday.

MP Irene Ng (Tampines GRC) had asked him to consider setting up a hotline, given the public confusion over not being able to get through to the 999 and 995 hotlines during a major blackout three weeks ago.

Associate Professor Ho noted that police and Singapore Civil Defence Force hotlines are not public information hotlines. They are meant for the public to call when they face life-threatening situations or need an ambulance in an emergency.

He also did not agree with Miss Ng's suggestion that Singaporeans be taught how to rescue people trapped in lifts during blackouts, as they could hurt themselves or others.

They should instead call the emergency maintenance teams engaged by the town council or management corporation, he said.

He also assured the House that the police had plans in place to ensure public safety and manage traffic during a blackout.

On their part, households should stock up on battery-operated radios, torchlights, candles, matches and first-aid kits, he said. And no, the Government will not issue them to all homes, he said, rejecting a suggestion from MP Ong Seh Hong (Aljunied GRC). The items can be 'easily bought in neighbourhood shops'.

huaiwei

July 27th, 2004, 09:45 PM

Shedding light on the blackout

For 40 minutes during question time yesterday, the spotlight was on the June 29 blackout, as eight MPs sought assurances from Minister of State (National Development) Vivian Balakrishnan that the Government is doing enough to ensure there is no repeat of the massive power failure

MR LEONG Horn Kee (Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC): Should the Government not consider imposing higher penalties than $2 million, to serve as a deterrent; and also, higher penalties for repeat offenders?

Is it true that the Government has no power to control commercial arrangements between, say, ConocoPhillips and Sembawang Gas? If so, will the law be amended to allow the Government more powers to monitor and to control the market and the causes for the blackout?

Does the Government have a central body or authority with expert knowledge to constantly review various alternative sources for gas, for oil and even for other forms of energy like solar or even tidal energy so we can have more sources of supply?

During a blackout, the 999 and 995 emergency phone lines are jammed. Should the Government not consider setting up another line, for example, 911, for the public to call during such emergencies?

Minister of State (Trade and Industry, National Development) Vivian Balakrishnan: There is an escalating scale of penalties, and if a company repeatedly fails to achieve the required standards, the cumulative penalties can exceed $2 million. There are also market mechanisms which will punish companies that do not fulfil their contractual requirements. These companies may also be subject to legal action by other parties to whom they are contracted to supply power.

On jurisdiction over commercial operators: That is partly the reason we have decided to bring the ConocoPhillips facility under our licensing requirements, to give us more regulatory teeth to ensure that all players in the energy system perform their roles according to specifications.

We have the Energy Market Authority (EMA) which has the experts who keep an eye on the entire energy system, including alternative sources of supply, new technology changes. In turn, the EMA is supervised by the Trade and Industry Ministry.

I do not believe having another line will solve it because that other line will also become clogged with everyone calling it. The most practical means of information flow during such emergencies will be to use battery-operated radios, which will work in almost all circumstances...

Mr Tan Soo Khoon (East CoastGRC): Are we not making ourselves vulnerable by just depending on one sole supply of gas? Do we have a backup plan for alternative supply of gas? Why haven't we thought of such a backup plan long ago?

A very angry constituent of mine told me during the recent power failure, his TV set was badly damaged and he had to pay $200 to get it repaired. If this keeps happening, he wants to know who's going to be responsible.

It's all very well to increase penalties imposed on the power supply companies, but this money goes to the Government. Couldn't somebody, whether the power companies or the EMA, be made responsible for the damage that is being caused to equipment which is owned by Singaporeans?

Dr Balakrishnan: We do not have only a single supplier of gas. There are three pipelines bringing natural gas to Singapore. One from Natunas, another from Asamera, and the third one that comes from peninsular Malaysia and lands at Senoko.

The backup is for gas plants to switch to diesel, of which there are more than adequate reserve stocks and can be replenished from multiple sources.

The problem on that particular day was the hot-switch process failed in five out of six gas plants. In December 2002, despite a disruption of gas supply, the gas plants made a successful transition to the backup fuel, and practically all Singaporeans were not even aware there was a problem.

But we are working to harden the system, and that's why we are encouraging the generation companies who, in fact, on their own initiative have now gone on to have dual pipelines.

We are also exploring whether to have onsite or even offsite storage of compressed natural gas as another backup plan. And the ultimate will be to consider liquefied natural gas (LNG), which immediately increases potential suppliers of gas.

Several people noticed some discolouration on their TV screens after power was restored. I've been informed that this is due to problems with the degausser within the TV set coming back on when it is still warm. The solution is to switch off your TV set and disconnect it and let it cool down for an hour or two.

As far as consequential damage to equipment is concerned, this becomes a legal issue which people can pursue on their own. But the Government and EMA cannot warrant that all equipment will never be damaged by any incidents or accidents or problems like this.

Mr Low Thia Khiang (Hougang):How seriously has Singapore's international reputation been affected by this power failure, and does it affect foreign direct investment in Singapore and what is the Government's plan to mitigate the situation?

What is the basis for the Government to give a contract to ConocoPhillips to control the supply of gas to Singapore? Why didn't the Government consider it necessary to bring the company under the licensing requirement, and what is the company's relationship with our GLCs? Is it a GLC by itself? Had the backup plan been tested before? If so, why did it fail this time?

Dr Balakrishnan: Damage to reputation is difficult to quantify in exact terms, so I can't give you a dollar amount. Will this affect investor confidence in us or our attractiveness as a destination?

If we do not show resolve, or show we've got a clear and proper plan to fix the problems, then we will really reap the bitter harvest of this. So our approach has been to identify what's wrong, to take all immediate steps to fix operational problems on the ground... and build backup to back up plans if need be. We must restore confidence in the system as well as on the part of locals and investors who depend on a stable and reliable electricity supply.

ConocoPhillips is a commercial company. It has commercial arrangements with the gas suppliers and with the generators that take gas from it. The Government is not involved in it.

The backup plan has been tried before... It failed this time and clearly what our take-home point now is that we need to harden the backup plan further. The power companies' mandatory practice or drill was once every three months. But if we actually look at the records, they were actually doing it much more often than that.

I have personally gone down to a power station and seen with my own eyes the people there are well trained. They know what to do but... when something really does go wrong, it's often a series of small problems which add up and end in a catastrophic situation, like what we experienced on June 29.

Will it happen again? I can tell you categorically if the same sequence of events on June 29 occurred today, it would not lead to a blackout. But that is with the advantage of hindsight. Our target ultimately must be one in which the possibility of failure is infinitely small. It can never be zero. And even if it fails, the impact will be minimised.

Dr Warren Lee (SembawangGRC): I wonder if the Government or EMA has any plans to ensure that problems of switching to another part of the system, or isolating the system... from isolated incidents of power failure are either in place or will be made possible in the near future?

Dr Balakrishnan: Yes, there is a complex control system that continuously, in real time, balances supply versus demand. If one part of the network goes down, as long as there are alternative channels, it will route electrical supply through these alternative channels so there's no disruption. But again, I don't want to pretend this is a simple system that will work totally according to plan all the time. Do we have a state-of-the-art system? Yes. Do we still want to make sure we try to improve it further? Yes.

Mr R. Ravindran (Marine Par-ade GRC): When there was a major blackout in the United States, a question was raised in this House as to whether we could have such a blackout and I remember the answer that it should not happen in Singapore.

Will the ministry be looking within the ministry and the regulators of the industry to see whether there were some incompetent decisions made and whether there was complacency among some of these key scenario planners or regulators?

When a major blackout happened in Malaysia, they're able to tap into our grid and take electricity supply immediately. When we had a blackout, why were we not able to tap into the neighbouring countries' electricity grid?

Could we have a body which will look at the claims of people who were affected by such blackouts and try to see whether they can be given compensation for various loss or damages suffered?

Dr Balakrishnan: During the ongoing investigation by the EMA and subsequently by the Energy System Review Committee, if we discover any incompetence, negligence or, as you have alluded, complacency, the Government will take action.

There is an interconnection between the Singapore and Malaysia electricity systems, but this pipeline is basically meant to assist in load balancing for small degrees of fluctuation.

On a night when you lose 30 per cent of the capacity, this interconnect must shut down. If not, you will get a sequential collapse of whole regions and possibly even extending across countries.

So Malaysia does not want to have a blackout because we have a problem, nor do we want to have a blackout in Singapore because of a sudden catastrophic failure in Malaysia. Although there is an interconnect, it is not designed to respond to losses of 30 per cent as we experienced on June 29.

I'm very reluctant to go down that route of having a body to award damages. I would rather focus on making sure our system is robust, and that any failures or impact of such failures are minimised. If companies wish to pursue their legal options or exercise their contractual rights, I think they're free to do so and go down the legal route.

Dr Lily Neo (Jalan Besar GRC):What happened to the announced plan in 1999 of building LNG at Tuas Field? Have there been feasibility studies done? Will the Government now seriously consider building LNG terminal and storage plants to ensure the uninterrupted supply of natural gas in Singapore?

Dr Balakrishnan: The feasibility study will commence later this year. I don't want to make any conclusions on what that study will show, but I want to add that we didn't make that decision to embark on the feasibility study because of this blackout. There were other strategic and commercial reasons to consider this and we will await the results of the feasibility study before the Government makes a considered decision.

Mr Steve Chia (Non-Constituency MP): Why weren't these additional backup plans, like the dual pipeline, considered after the 2002 blackout?

Why did the EMA actually wait until after this recent blackout to consider further additional blackout plans?

Dr Balakrishnan: The generation company at Senoko already has dual pipelines. The PowerSeraya and Tuas General companies already had plans in place to install dual pipelines, even before this blackout. So it is not for lack of consideration or forethought.

Mr Arthur Fong (West Coast GRC): When was the last check done before this recent major blackout? And if the audit of the system did reveal any weaknesses, could it have prevented this last blackout?

Dr Balakrishnan: I can't give you a detailed answer as to exactly when the last system-wide test was performed. But last night, I was going through the records of the hot-switching drills the companies have gone through and within the month of June itself, there was at least one company which had done it twice.

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Minister of State (National Development) Vivian Balakrishnan gave assurances to eight MPs during question time yesterday that the Government is doing enough to ensure there is no repeat of the massive power failure. -- WANG HUI FEN

huaiwei

July 30th, 2004, 12:16 AM

Lift safety measures were put in place during June 29 blackout

WE REFER to the letter, 'When the lights go out, look before you step into a lift' (ST, July 6), by Ms Cai Xue-En. Ms Cai subsequently called our town council to inform us that she lives in Bukit Batok West Avenue 7.

We traced the lift records on the day of the blackout, June 29, and found that there was a record of two passengers trapped in Lift B of Block 411, Bukit Batok West Avenue 7.

Upon being alerted to the case, our lift rescue officers (LROs) were despatched to the scene immediately. At the site, our LROs discovered that the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) had already arrived and that the lift landing doors on the ground and sixth floors had been prised open. Two passengers were rescued on the sixth floor. We are grateful to the SCDF for assisting in the rescue operation.

Under normal operating procedures, the LROs will close the lift landing door and turn off the main power switch. In this particular case, the landing door on the sixth floor could not be closed as the mechanical locking device and self-closing operation had been damaged when the door was prised open. There was no imminent danger to residents as the lift cage was parked there.

On the ground floor, the door access was also exposed. SCDF had stationed two officers to warn the public. Our LROs immediately put up a barricade and signboard in front of the lift door and also informed the lift company to attend to the problem immediately.

The safety of our residents is of utmost importance to our town council. In this particular case, safety measures were put in place immediately. We will review the measures to see how they could be improved further.

We thank Ms Cai for her feedback and would appreciate it if she could call us on 6569-0388 for future feedback.

CHRISTINA GOH (MS)
General Manager
Hong Kah Town Council

huaiwei

July 30th, 2004, 12:17 AM

About those blackouts

SINGAPORE can be no exception to the rule that if something can go wrong, it probably will. What went wrong on June 29, when a blackout shut down 300,000 homes for almost two hours, was described in detail by Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister of State for Trade and Industry, in Parliament on Tuesday. One key issue is that the disruption in gas supply from the Natuna gas pipeline, which led to the sudden loss of about 30 per cent of online generation capacity, was traced to a defective pressure regulating valve in the onshore gas receiving facility operated by American oil refiner ConocoPhillips. Worryingly, it was the fifth occasion that the valve system at ConocoPhillips had failed since August 2002. The company has been told to submit a report within three months. It could be asked whether this is not too generous a period of time for it to evaluate its systems operations, given that the problem with the valve system appears to be recurrent. What is at stake is no less than Singapore's reputation for systems excellence. This has been harmed, to say nothing of the inconvenience a great many Singaporeans had to endure.

The key question now is: Can something go wrong again, and if so, will it? The Government is confident that the likelihood of a repeat failure is remote. The minister said categorically that if the same sequence of events on June 29 occurred now, it would not lead to a blackout. He was also realistic. The target must be one in which the possibility of failure is infinitely small. 'It can never be zero,' he said candidly. But the point of learning from what went wrong is to minimise the consequences of failure. That determination came through clearly in Parliament. The steps taken to deal with the blackout problem fall into several categories. One has to do with operating procedures. The power companies will change their procedures to ensure that they can switch from gas to diesel more speedily. On June 29, the generation companies were alerted to the fact that the gas pressure at the onshore gas receiving facility was dropping. In such an eventuality, the gas plants are supposed to 'hotswitch' to their backup fuel, which is diesel, without affecting continuous electricity supply. What happened was that only one of the six gas plants 'hotswitched' successfully. The Energy Market Authority (EMA) is exploring with generation companies ways to secure back-up gas from dual sources. This move will give power stations more time to 'hotswitch'.

The second mechanism is regulatory. ConocoPhillips will come under the EMA's licensing control by the end of the year, which means that it can suffer penalties for not meeting requisite standards. At a broader level, a high-level committee will be set up to check the electricity and gas systems for robustness. The inclusion of foreign experts on the panel is worthwhile because it signals to investors and others just how seriously the Government treats power cuts. The third step is financial. Referring to the power failure on April 13, caused by a cable fault, and on July 2, resulting from a tripping of substation equipment, the minister announced a stiffening of penalties for power failure owing to the grid infrastructure. Diversification is yet another strategy. A feasibility study will be carried out on Singapore having a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility. Although the LNG facility should be operational only after 2010, in case the study's findings are positive, these measures, taken together, are a veritable arsenal of defence against power cuts. Singapore's reputation demands that they succeed.

huaiwei

July 30th, 2004, 12:18 AM

Hydrogen economy - so near and yet so far

By Michael Richardson

WHEN some of the world's leading oil companies and car makers take a bet on a new type of fuel, something promising is happening on the global energy front.

This week, BP opened a hydrogen refuelling station in Singapore. The facility at Upper East Coast Road is the first in the world to be located in an existing petrol station. BP plans to set up a second station here by early next year to sell the pollution-free fuel.

Meanwhile, auto giant DaimlerChrysler is loaning five Mercedes-Benz A-class 'F-cell' cars to companies and the Singapore Government's National Environment Agency for two years of road testing. The aim is to see how the vehicles perform in a tropical environment.

BP has nine other experimental hydrogen refuelling stations in the United States, Europe and Australia. It plans to open more elsewhere, including China. The Bush administration is holding out the prospect of a future hydrogen-powered economy, one that would end US dependence on imported oil, gas and other fossil fuels while cutting air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed by many scientists for warming the earth's atmosphere and creating potentially catastrophic climate change.

Last year, President George W. Bush launched a US$1.2 billion (S$2 billion) energy security initiative to develop hydrogen-powered fuel cells to run cars and trucks as well as homes and businesses. Such vehicles would be designed to emit water as their only by-product. Major car makers and oil companies are involved in the research.

China, too, has put hydrogen into its energy development strategy in the hope of cutting pollution and reducing dependence on imported oil. Its Ministry of Science and Technology has committed nearly US$50 million over five years for research on hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Shanghai has been told to develop cars using the fuel while Beijing has been assigned to do the same with buses. The Chinese government says that vehicles running on hydrogen will be in service during the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Scientists say that the gas is a more efficient type of fuel than conventional sources. For example, the amount of energy produced by hydrogen per unit weight of fuel is about three times the amount of energy contained in an equal weight of petrol, and almost seven times that of coal. Its combustion produces no carbon dioxide or sulphur emissions.

However, hydrogen is rarely found in its pure form because it readily combines with other elements. Extracting it is expensive and uses fossil fuels. The most common way of making industrial hydrogen today is by separating it from natural gas through a process that requires very high temperatures, large furnaces and a lot of energy.

Before hydrogen can become an affordable and readily available power source, cheaper ways of producing it will have to be found.

NOT FOR 25 YEARS?

HYDROGEN fuel from the Upper East Coast Road station, for example, costs more than four times the most expensive grade of petrol. New and probably lighter vehicles using hydrogen fuel cells that act like a battery to generate power will have to be developed, along with hydrogen distribution and dispensing networks.

In April, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger set a 2010 deadline for completion of up to 200 hydrogen refuelling stations - enough to put one within easy reach of every motorist in the state. He added that he also expected to see 500,000 fuel-cell vehicles on the road within six years. There are currently about 100,000 conventional petrol stations in California and 28 million registered vehicles.

Existing experimental fuel-cell cars have a range of only around 190km. And car makers have cautioned that the industry is still years away from developing the smaller, cheaper, more efficient and longer-lasting fuel cells that are needed before consumers will buy many hydrogen-run vehicles.

Indeed, a report released in February by the US National Academy of Sciences said that Americans should not expect a new generation of snazzy hydrogen cars to arrive in showrooms any time soon.

'In the best-case scenario, the transition of a hydrogen economy would take many decades, and any reductions in oil imports and carbon dioxide emissions are likely to be minor during the next 25 years,' said the academy, an independent group that makes scientific recommendations to the US Congress.

The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies in Singapore and a member of its energy unit. This is a personal comment.

babystan03

July 30th, 2004, 02:36 PM

Business Times - 30 Jul 2004

Energy authority to consider LNG terminal feasibility
It also unveils tougher grid penalties; new fines

By TANG WENG FAI

(SINGAPORE) In the wake of this month's major blackout, the Energy Market Authority (EMA) said yesterday it will call a tender for a study on the feasibility of building a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal here costing up to $1 billion.

Tender documents will be available on EMA's web site today. The tender closes on Aug 27 and the study is expected to start by year-end.

The terminal, which EMA earlier said could cost up to $1 billion, will off-load LNG from tankers for use as alternative fuel for power generation plants. If approved, the terminal could take up to seven years to be built.

Eswaran Ramasamy, editorial manager for oil market analyst Platts in Asia, said the eventual cost of the terminal could well be above $1 billion. In a report on the energy sector here, Platts noted that 'LNG is quite a bit more expensive than pipeline gas'.

Singapore buys 350 million cubic feet of pipeline gas per day from south Sumatra, 325 million cu ft per day from West Natunas and 150 million cu ft per day from Malaysia.

Trade in LNG has been increasing at the rate of 6.5 per cent globally. According to the US-based Energy Information Administration, 113 million tonnes were shipped in 2002 and this will rise to 197 million tonnes by 2007.

Mr Ramasamy said Malaysian state oil company Petronas operates one of the region's largest LNG terminals. According to British Petroleum's Statistical Review of World Energy, published in June, Malaysia exported 23.39 billion cubic metres of LNG last year.

Oil-and-gas construction majors such as Brown & Root, Bechtel, Halliburton and Chiyoda Corp are likely to be contenders for the consulting involved in Singapore's LNG feasibility, given their track records. Japanese construction giant Chiyoda has previously done work for Petrochemical Singapore (PCS) and Shell in Singapore. It is now involved in extension works for Teijin Polycarbonate based here.

Separately, EMA announced new regulatory controls yesterday on power grid operator SP PowerAssets, in an effort to improve reliability by imposing tougher penalties for poor performance.

SP PowerAssets is the monopoly operator of the island-wide network that distributes electricity to homes and businesses.

The penalties, which come into effect on Aug 1, are described by EMA as an 'outcome-based' approach to regulation. Previously, there was no penalty if an outage occurred and the grid operator showed it had stuck to its maintenance plans.

EMA's new regulatory regime includes fines of up to $1 million in the event of power failure caused by damage or failure of power cables. If a second or third incident occurs within a year, the fine escalates to $1.5 and $2 million respectively.

New measures also apply to the restoration of power following a failure. If the grid operator fails to restore supply within three hours of a failure, it faces a fine of up to $50,000.

Spokesmen for PowerGrid did not comment yesterday on EMA's moves.

Copyright © 2004 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

huaiwei

August 4th, 2004, 10:28 PM

Tougher targets set for efficient use of fossil fuels

While S'pore has not acceded to Kyoto Protocol, it has successfully reduced its growth rate of carbon emissions, says Environment Minister

By Radha Basu

ENVIRONMENT Minister Lim Swee Say yesterday announced tougher targets for the efficient use of fossil fuels, while explaining why Singapore cannot be bound by a global pact to reduce greenhouse gases.

The new targets will be met mainly by the switchover of power stations here from oil to cleaner fuels like natural gas.

Other strategies will include extending an energy-labelling scheme - now covering only refrigerators and airconditioners - to other household appliances like washing machines.

The scheme, administered by the Singapore Environment Council, uses labels with ticks to tell customers how energy-efficient a product is.

The Government will also help industry and large energy users conduct energy audits and implement energy conservation measures, while further promoting fuel-efficient, environmentally-friendly cars.

The minister was speaking at the official handover of a Senoko Power plant that uses natural gas to generate electricity. Old oil-fired boilers have been replaced with a new gas turbine.

Senoko chairman John Lim said the switch, together with more efficient electricity generation processes, would cut carbon dioxide emission by 800,000 tonnes a year - roughly the emission of all private cars here over the same period.

The plant is the second of three energy-saving units to be completed. Collectively, the trio will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2.5 million tonnes a year.

The burning of fossil fuels like oil releases large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, causing global warming.

Singapore, the minister said, has successfully reduced its growth rate of carbon emissions, improving carbon efficiency by 15 per cent since 1990.

Carbon efficiency, a term used by the energy industry, measures how much carbon a country emits for each dollar of gross domestic product - a measure of economic output - earned.

Singapore's scorecard is better than that of developed nations like Canada and Australia, but it will now aim for another 10 per cent improvement over eight years. Carbon efficiency in 2012 will thus be at least 25 per cent better than what it was in 1990.

Yesterday, the minister went into detail over why Singapore has chosen not to accede to the Kyoto Protocol, which commits 39 industrialised nations to reducing levels of greenhouse gas emission.

He explained that a small city state simply did not have the natural resources to tap on alternatives such as hydropower or geothermal energy.

Even solar and wind energy provide few opportunities because of cloudy skies and slow wind speeds.

Still, while reiterating that Singapore 'will not be able to cap, much less reduce, carbon dioxide emissions', the minister said it would continue to 'enhance carbon efficiency'.

Over the last couple of years, he told The Straits Times, Singapore has been often asked at international forums why it was hesitating to accede to the Kyoto Protocol, though it was pro-environment and a leader in environmental sustainability.

He noted that in Europe, some countries were able to increase emissions through offsetting them against larger reductions by other nations.

Singapore, as a sovereign state, could not practise such 'burden sharing'.

huaiwei

August 4th, 2004, 10:33 PM

Renewable energy sources could lighten 'peak hours' load

EVEN if every Housing Board block rooftop here were covered with solar panels, the power generated from the sun could see to only 3 per cent of total electricity demand. The clean energy would also cost 2 1/2 times more than what comes out of the wall socket today, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan had said in a written response to a question in Parliament last week.

Still, the Minister of State (National Development) did not rule out a role for solar or other renewable energy sources. Industry players told The Straits Times the sun could lighten the 'peak hours' load of traditional power plants.

'The electricity market is open to new technologies and the use of different fuel types,' Dr Balakrishnan had said.

'Investors who are able to be commercially competitive using solar energy are welcome to enter the electricity market to be a power producer.'

He also noted that greater efficiency or 'volatility of oil prices' might make solar energy more attractive in the future. The Government is 'closely monitoring developments in this area'.

Solar panels integrated into buildings as roofs or facades could contribute to energy conservation, he said. A building in the new Biopolis, to be completed this year, will use solar panels by Sharp.

Solar companies, meanwhile, believe the sun can be a supplementary power source during the peak hours of 10am to 4pm.

A spokesman for Shell Solar, a major player here, said: 'In Singapore's energy scenario... it's more meaningful to look at solar's potential contribution to peak demand.

'The peak load determines the minimum capacity of power plants, but during off-peak hours, this capacity is not used and is therefore standing idle.

'Peak capacity is expensive, therefore solar can help reduce investment in peak capacity.'

Energy giant Shell - of which Shell Solar is a subsidiary - also invokes the bigger picture, saying global reliance on fossil fuels has begun to wane.

By 2050, a spokesman said, renewable alternatives like solar, hydrogen, wind and water will make up at least 30 per cent of the world's energy pool - from a mere 1 per cent today.

This long-term equation could not be ignored, though 'hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) will continue to have a key role to play in the short to medium term.' -- Christopher Tan

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Power that is generated from solar panels is costly, but the Government remains open to such options.

huaiwei

August 5th, 2004, 04:18 PM

Stiffer fines to prevent blackouts

Other penalties depend on scale and frequency of failures and time taken to fix them

By Theresa Tan

BIGGER fines of up to $2 million for major blackouts and a new category of fines for small-scale blackouts will be imposed under new rules released by the Government yesterday.

Fines can also be imposed for blackouts even when the sole provider of electricity transmission and distribution services, SP PowerAssets, has done the necessary maintenance, unlike in the past.

Electricity supply regulator Energy Market Authority (EMA), which announced the changes yesterday, said: 'The revised framework sets more stringent performance standards and imposes higher financial penalties for non-compliance.

'The penalties escalate with repeated failures.'

The new rules will take effect on Sunday. They come a month after the June 29 blackout that left 300,000 homes in the dark and which, the Government said, sullied Singapore's international reputation.

Under the current regulations, SP PowerAssets, a subsidiary of Singapore Power, will not be penalised if it has adhered to maintenance plans.

The EMA said in the brief statement: 'The new framework is outcome-based. The transmission licensee will have to do what is necessary to achieve the performance standards.'

Also, under present rules, the only penalty is a $500,000 fine for 'a major power failure' caused by failure of equipment or cables in the power stations or the transmission system.

However, the new rules will have fines for five categories of shortcomings covering the scale and frequency of power outages and the time it takes to restore electricity supply.

The penalties include:

- A $1 million fine for blackouts affecting areas, for example, the size of a Housing Board estate. The penalty rises to $2 million for the third and subsequent occurrences within a year of the first incidence.

- A $50,000 fine for blackouts affecting areas, for example, as small as a few blocks of flats. This rises to $100,000 for the third and subsequent incident occurring in a month.

- A fine of up to $50,000 if power is not restored within three hours of a blackout that affects, for example, a hotel or commercial building.

Asked about the new rules, an SP PowerAssets spokesman told The Straits Times that the company remained 'fully committed to providing reliable and efficient electricity transmission and distribution services'.

Last month's blackout was the fifth in less than two years and came after the April 13 outage, which left 80,000 homes without power. On July 2, another failure affected 28 blocks in Pasir Ris.

Last night, an EMA spokesman said SP PowerAssets had not been fined for these blackouts.

Meanwhile, the EMA will be conducting a feasibility study on importing liquefied natural gas (LNG).

This is to increase the generation of electricity from gas-fired combined cycle power plants, as these are more efficient than oil-fired steam plants.

Today, about 60 per cent of Singapore's electricity demand is supplied by natural gas.

The study will look at, among other things, both the economic and technical aspects of importing LNG.

The study is expected to be completed within 12 months.

huaiwei

August 10th, 2004, 09:20 PM

Power up with the human body

Singapore scientists are looking at how the body can generate electricity to run mobile devices

By Ho Ka Wei

OUT go the batteries and in comes a pair of walking shoes that can power up your MP3 player, mobile phone or digital camera as you go window-shopping in Orchard Road.

This is the dream of National University of Singapore (NUS) and Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) scientists, who are studying how the body can be used to generate electricity.

One way is to fix some piezo-electric material, in this case ceramic, on the soles of a pair of shoes, said the team's leader, NUS Assistant Professor Adrian Cheok, at a conference on mobile technology yesterday. When the wearer of the shoes walks, the soles press down on the material to produce electricity, he explained.

Enough current can be produced to run portable gadgets such as radio players and watches.

The research has been going on for two years and is nearly complete. Making commercial products out of their work is the likely next step.

The DSTA-funded project will find use in military applications first.

DSTA project manager Choo Hui Wei told The Straits Times yesterday: 'This project was an exploratory research study which aimed to look into the feasibility of tapping the human body as a conducting medium for transmitting data.

'The results from the research have shown potential and we're currently assessing how we can adapt the technology and apply it in the military environment.'

Electricity produced in this manner can even be used for transferring data from one person to another via the skin, said Prof Cheok.

For instance, a handshake can mean an automatic exchange of business cards electronically between the handheld computers of both persons.

The human body thus becomes another device, together with mobile phones and digital entertainment gadgets like MP3 players, in what is called a personal area network (PAN).

The team at NUS works from a laboratory called Mixed Reality. More information about the lab can be found at mixedreality.nus.edu.sg

Since 1996, researchers at IBM, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States and other places have been been working on the technology.

The interest now is in harnessing human power to drive the PAN devices.

Yesterday's Mobility Conference, held at the Orchard Hotel, was the first organised by Computer Human Interaction, the Singapore Chapter of the Association of Computer Machinery Special Interest Group.

Other speakers at the three-day conference, which ends tomorrow, shared their research on mobile devices and networks.

Today, Professor Luca Chittaro from the University of Udine in Italy will present a paper on how to make information on mobile devices easier to view.

This is a challenge because while mobile devices like phones and personal digital assistants are getting smaller, a greater volume of information is available on them for viewing, he told The Straits Times.

Another researcher, Professor Zary Segall from the University of Maryland in the US, spoke yesterday about building devices that learn how to work better with humans, to make computing simple.

He said: 'We're trying to see how to make computers more human-literate, rather than making humans computer-literate.'

huaiwei

August 24th, 2004, 08:44 PM

NUS team may have key to drive hydrogen economy

It is working on storing hydrogen in a solid medium - lithium nitride; the method is safer and more cost-effective than others

By Christopher Tan

IN A makeshift laboratory in the National University of Singapore (NUS), a team led by a young researcher is working on what could well become the Microsoft of the so-called hydrogen economy.

Dr Chen Ping, a 36-year-old chemist from China's Shandong province, is spearheading research into storing hydrogen in a solid medium, lithium nitride, and releasing it on demand - like electricity from a battery.

The conventional ways of keeping the gas, seen as the answer to the world's need for a fuel that will not pollute, are to either compress it or turn it into a liquid by freezing it.

The new method, if perfected, will address the cost and safety issues associated with the other two.

'Compressing hydrogen uses up a lot of energy,' Dr Chen said. 'And for a hydrogen car to cover 480km, which is the United States Department of Energy's benchmark, you need a tank that can take 700 times the atmospheric pressure.'

The high cost aside, she reckons the public may not readily accept being in a vehicle with a tank holding hydrogen at over 4,500kg per square inch, even if such a tank is proven to be safe.

Her group, whose main laboratory is undergoing renovation, is working towards a solution for cars, and is in the process of tying up a research alliance with General Motors, the world's largest carmaker.

Working with lithium nitride, Dr Chen's team - funded by the Government's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) - has been able to surpass the US Department of Energy's 2005 target of 0.45kg of gas stored in a 10kg medium.

'Ours is so far the highest, at 1.14kg,' she claimed.

Her team is now working on lowering the temperature and pressure at which the gas can be released, as well as increasing the number of times the medium can be refuelled before it has to be replaced.

The tests hinge on the discovery of new synthesised materials which hydrogen can bond with.

'Two years ago, our working temperature was 250 deg C. Today, it's below 200 deg C. We need to get it to below 100 deg C,' she said.

The research team has filed six patents for its relatively new technology, and its work has been featured in leading science journals like Nature and Technology Research News.

Dr Chen literally stumbled upon how hydrogen can be bonded to solids six years ago, soon after joining NUS after graduating from Xiamen University with a doctorate.

She was working on nano materials when she found that lithium reacted with hydrogen at high temperatures.

In 2001, that accidental discovery was repeated and verified.

'We achieved a storage capacity almost twice that of the best existing solid-state hydrogen storage material,' she recounted with excitement. 'We submitted the results to Nature. To our delight, they published it in their November 2002 issue.'

Her pioneering work soon won her global recognition, and she has been invited to address the major carmakers as well as government agencies and universities in Japan.

She was also invited to visit California-based Sandia National Laboratories - a leading state defence technology provider - and worked there as a guest consultant in May and June this year.

Now the US Department of Energy wants her to join its Annual Review Meeting of Hydrogen Project.

Her team is currently the leader in this field of research, but soaring oil prices and a foreseeable energy crunch have prompted researchers elsewhere to join the race.

The American government, for instance, is spending US$1.7 billion (S$2.9 billion) over five years on research into hydrogen-based fuel cells.

'It's very competitive. We feel quite a lot of pressure,' Dr Chen confessed, even as she said she is almost sure her team can come up with a solution ready for real-life tests before her latest A*Star sponsorship period runs out in late 2006.

She believes that once hydrogen can be stored in a solid medium, interest in cars that run on the gas will increase, and reckons it will be only a matter of time before hydrogen replaces fossil fuels as the world's primary energy source.

'My hometown is where the Shenli Petroleum Administration is. It controls China's second largest oilfield. With each passing year, it gets harder and harder for them to get oil out from the ground,' she added.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SURPRISE

DR CHEN Ping, 36, literally stumbled upon how hydrogen can be bonded to solids six years ago, soon after joining NUS after graduating from Xiamen University with a doctorate.

She was working on nano materials when she found that lithium reacted with hydrogen at high temperatures.

In 2001, that accidental discovery was repeated and verified. 'We achieved a storage capacity almost twice that of the best existing solid-state hydrogen storage material,' she said.

babystan03

September 2nd, 2004, 09:23 AM

SEPT 2, 2004
Pay-as-you-use power meters for poor by next May
They can avoid power supply cuts and running up arrears with new CashCard-operated meters to be fixed in homes where supply was cut before

By Goh Chin Lian

THOSE struggling to pay their electricity bills will not have the lights go out on them with a new CashCard-operated metering system that will be ready by next May.

The pay-as-you-use meters will be installed in households whose power supply got cut because they couldn't pay up, Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang said yesterday.

With such a pre-paid meter, these families will pay for what they use and avoid running up more arrears, rather than have their supply cut off periodically.

SP Services, the Singapore Power subsidiary that handles billing and payment collection, will announce more details of the scheme later.

The idea of pre-paid utilities to help the poor was broached by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his National Day Rally speech.

Yesterday, Mr Lim told Parliament that as of June, 9,781 household accounts, or 0.93 per cent, were behind in water and electricity bills.

They included 4.77 per cent of Housing Board one-roomers, 6.38 per cent of two-roomers and 0.71 per cent of other types of households.

On average, they owed 1.53 months' bill in payments.

SP Services sends them three reminders within eight weeks after they fail to pay up, the last reminder serving as the final notice before electricity is cut. It also arranges instalment payments. If they fail to pay the first time, a second payment plan will be arranged.

If they still fail to pay, power supply is cut and a thimble installed in the household's water pipe to limit water flow.

Power supply is restored if the household reduces the arrears by 40 per cent, Mr Lim said.

He agreed with Madam Halimah Yacob (Jurong GRC) that 40 per cent could be too much for some families, which was why the pre-paid card would be better.

But it cannot be implemented sooner, as Madam Halimah had requested, because SP Services has to try out the system first to make sure it works well.

What if families could not afford the CashCard, she asked.

He replied that they could seek help from Community Development Councils, Citizens' Consultative Committees and MPs.

Mr Chiam See Tong (Potong Pasir) suggested delaying disconnecting the supplies during the school examination period.

Mr Lim said that families would have enough time to manage their budget after reminders and the chance to pay by instalments.

Mr Lim also noted that as of last month, 11,240 out of 16,800 vouchers introduced in July last year - to help the needy pay for utilities - were still available.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Behind in payments

As of June, 9,781 household accounts were behind in their water and electricity bills. They included:

-4.77 per cent of one-room flats

-6.38 per cent of two-room flats

-0.71 per cent of others household types On average, they owed 1.53 months' bill in payments.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

September 7th, 2004, 06:26 AM

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 06 September 2004 2234 hrs

Power failure affects 6 blocks of flats in Bukit Batok
By Janice Ng/Yvonne Cheong, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Six blocks of HDB flats in Bukit Batok East Avenue 4 were in darkness on Monday, following a power failure.

The incident happened at about 7:50pm.

Police received calls that street and traffic lights in the area had also gone out.

No accidents were reported, and power was full restored to the precinct after about one and half hours.

SP Power Grid said the blackout was caused by a fault in an underground cable. - CNA

Copyright © 2004 MCN International Pte Ltd

eyetoeye

September 7th, 2004, 06:30 AM

Eh... What happened here? Tsk tsk tsk.... Maybe it's just increase publicity, but such incidents seem to be becoming more and more frequent....

babystan03

September 10th, 2004, 07:03 AM

Eh... What happened here? Tsk tsk tsk.... Maybe it's just increase publicity, but such incidents seem to be becoming more and more frequent....

The authorities really need to buck up......:yes:

babystan03

September 13th, 2004, 04:08 PM

This story was printed from TODAYonline

Free and easy overnight utilities service

Monday • September 13, 2004

IT no longer takes three working days to get your electricity and water supply, nor do you need to queue up at SP Services' Somerset office or fill out forms.

More than 10,000 households open utilities accounts with SP Services each month.

With the enhanced services, Mr Johnny Low had a service technician coming to his home a day after he called SP Services.

Mr Low said: "I needed light and water for the renovation work. I checked the Internet and gave SP Services a call. The next day, the man came. Within minutes, I got light and water in my new house."

In less than an hour, everything — including the paperwork — was done.

Previously, customers had to pay if they needed things done in less than three days. Said Ms Shirley Tan, manager, SP Services: "With this one business day (service), if the customer calls us before 3pm, he doesn't need to pay any express charges."

Those who want their supply switched on the same day will need to pay $50.

If the apartment you bought already has a utilities account, you need only contact the service provider to let it know that you will be taking over the account. There will be no interruption to your supply of water and electricity. — Channel NewsAsia

Copyright MediaCorp Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

babystan03

September 22nd, 2004, 12:05 PM

SEPT 22, 2004
Govt panel set up to review electricity network

THE Government on Wednesday set up a high-level Energy System Review Committee (ESRC) to take a fresh look at Singapore's electricity and gas systems and to make recommendations for improvements.

The committee aims to ensure that the systems are resilient against accident or disaster, in order to prevent a repeat of the near island-wide blackout on June 29.

The move was previously announced in Parliament by Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Dr Vivian Balakrishnan following the blackout.

The ESRC plans to meet regularly over the next few months to review the energy system and is expected to complete its review and submit its report to the Government in 2005.

The ESRC will be chaired by ChevronTexaco's former president for Asia, Middle East and Africa, Mr Jock McKenzie. He has broad experience in the energy sector and will provide a balanced perspective to the study, taking into account the nation's need for energy reliability and security as well as the need to maintain competitive electricity pricing.

The other eight members of the ESRC are experienced individuals in the energy sector from local and foreign companies and academia.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

huaiwei

September 28th, 2004, 08:14 PM

Someone's picture of the blackout:

6/29 Blackout: Ang Mo Kio Ave 3

http://www.pbase.com/image/30756082.jpg

Darken Ang Mo Kio Ave 3 during the blackout of 6/29. According to Channel News Asia: Thousands of homes and businesses around Singapore were plunged into darkness after a widespread blackout on Tuesday night. The 2-hour blackout hit many areas in the central, north-east and western parts of the island. Singapore's Energy Market Authority said power was cut off after a disruption in the supply of natural gas from Indonesia.

Source: http://www.pbase.com/image/30756082

babystan03

October 14th, 2004, 09:22 AM

OCT 14, 2004
More blackouts but S'pore is still better than other cities

POWER disruption rates here look set to rise, even without including the massive blackout on June 29 that left 300,000 homes in the dark.

Despite this, Singapore has one of the lowest power-grid interruption rates in the world, Singapore Power said yesterday.

Each consumer in Singapore experiences an average of about two minutes of interruption per year because of failures in the power grid, which helps transmit and distribute electricity to homes, offices and factories, SP PowerGrid managing director Sim Kwong Mian told reporters.

The company, a subsidiary of Singapore Power, is responsible for maintaining the power grid.

Consumers in London face about 43 minutes of power grid failure per year, while those in New York have to live with 23 minutes, said Mr Sim, quoting figures collated from company annual reports of power providers and regulatory documents.

Mr Sim said the average power grid outage rates here will rise to about 3.6 minutes this year because of a major outage in Choa Chu Kang in April. It was caused by a fault in cabling equipment and affected 80,000 homes.

The June 29 outage - one of the biggest in recent years - was caused by a disruption in gas supply from Indonesia and had nothing to do with the power grid.

The Energy Markets Authority, the power supply regulator, stiffened penalty procedures after the June outage.

However, SP PowerGrid told The Straits Times that it has not been fined for any incident this year.

Copyright @ 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

babystan03

October 25th, 2004, 05:06 PM

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 25 October 2004 2246 hrs

Singaporeans cut energy consumption to cope with rising oil prices
By Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : Oil prices have been surging, and Singaporeans are bracing for a knock-on effect on utility prices.

Some households have already been making adjustments to reduce their overall electricity consumption and keep their utility bills under control.

The utility bill for a 7,000 square foot bungalow could easily be as high as $2,200 each month.

But John Kirkham only pays $1,200.

This is because the chairman of an energy consulting firm has built in several cost saving features.

Among them are double insulated windows and a double layer of bricks to keep the heat out and the cool air-conditioning in.

Air-conditioning typically accounts for more than half of all utility bills, while water heaters make up another 30 percent.

So Mr Kirkham uses radiator heat from his air-conditioning to warm water.

Another cost saving idea is personal water tanks.

Mr Kirkham said: "This house has a 800 gallon water tank and that does about 90 percent of the water needs of this house. This comes from the roof, from the rainwater. But also we take all the condensate that comes out from the fan cooler and put it into this tank."

But many Singaporeans say their electricity bills are relatively small change compared to filling up their petrol tanks.

"More on petrol because that's direct impact on us, whereas electricity that's minimum."

"It really affects me, because I'm in the real estate line so I travel quite a bit...so in fact now I'm using a lower petrol grade instead of a higher petrol grade, just to try to save some costs."

"We go for the ones with more discounts, for example, if can take MRT or take bus we would to reduce expenses."

Although the Government says the impact of runaway oil prices on the Singapore economy will only be felt later next year, some are keeping an eye on the situation.

"I think this one we'll be concerned because this affects our income and children's education fees and all that. But I think the Government won't let this go out of control."

Oil prices have scaled a new high, to beyond US$55 a barrel on Monday, and analyst says it could even hit US$60 a barrel going by the recent trend.

But there are also many possible scenarios which could put the brakes on escalating oil prices.

Song Seng Wun, Economist at GK Goh, said: "If you want to take the trend for the last couple of months or so, it certainly looks like it is heading that way. But it is very difficult to tell we could just have Mr Bush coming out and say we are going to release some oil reserve if he fancies his re-election chances fading somewhat.

"So I think this consideration where there are so many external factors which continue to drive prices even possibly either way."

In fact, out of the $10 million Singapore homes spent on energy bills last year, more than half went towards air-conditioning.

A check on statistics showed that household consumption of energy has doubled in the past 10 years. This is a higher rate of increase than those reported in the manufacturing and commercial sectors. - CNA

Copyright © 2004 MCN International Pte Ltd

babystan03

November 2nd, 2004, 01:30 PM

Business Times - 02 Nov 2004

Consultants shortlisted for S'pore LNG study

Final appointment could be made next month

By RONNIE LIM

(SINGAPORE) The Energy Market Authority (EMA) has shortlisted 'a handful' of consultants from the 26 groups vying to carry out a feasibility study on the use of liquefied natural gas (LNG) for power needs.

Details of those who made the first cut are expected in a couple of days, with appointment of the consultant likely next month if EMA keeps to its earlier timetable.

Industry sources say the next step is likely to be an in-depth review of the shortlisted tenders by the authority, including further clarification of documents.

An EMA spokesman confirmed yesterday that a shortlist had been drawn up and said more details would be released later this week.

Response to the tender - which was called in July and closed on Aug 27 - was overwhelming. A shortlist had been expected last month, but whittling the bidders down took longer than expected because there were so many of them. An international field included interests from Japan, the United States, Europe and Singapore, from a range of industry segments such as oil and gas companies, and construction to LNG users and consultants.

They included top names like Shell, Osaka Gas, Tokyo Electric, Foster Wheeler, Conoco and Kellogg Brown & Root - to name just a few.

The appointed consultant will study all aspects of the LNG issue - from sourcing to commercial and technical viability.

'It includes where to buy the LNG, when to buy, should it be on a spot or term basis, where to locate an LNG terminal, environmental factors and others,' Facts Inc senior consultant Hassan Vahidy earlier told BT. Such a wide-ranging study would take about a year to complete, he said.

Singapore is eyeing LNG to help diversify its energy sources. LNG can be shipped in from any location worldwide, supplementing natural gas currently piped to power stations here from Malaysia and Indonesia.

But decisions will have to be made soon, as it takes 6-7 years to get an LNG project going.

Copyright © 2004 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

babystan03

February 2nd, 2005, 02:52 PM

Feb 2, 2005
Sunny S'pore 'ripe for solar power'

By Christopher Tan
SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

ALL it takes is a few solar panels erected on the roof and sides of a Housing Board block to take care of up to 30 per cent of the building's daytime energy needs, according to a university professor.

The puzzling thing is that Singapore, which is more suited to tapping solar power than most countries that already use the technology extensively, is not already doing so, said Professor Stephen Wittkopf of the National University of Singapore's School of Design and Environment.

'I'm German and I grew up with this type of technology around me. Singapore has 50 per cent more sunshine than Germany, so I don't understand why it's not making use of it here,' he told a solar energy seminar at the Institute of South-east Asian Studiest on Monday.

The conditions here are ideal for power generation using photovoltaic panels, which convert light into electricity, Prof Wittkopf noted.

Sunshine is constant and there are many high-rise buildings. As their solid facades face east and west, they are able to capture strong sunlight.

Photovoltaic panels can be flexible, lightweight and easy to install, as well as suitable for hot and humid conditions, he added.

Prof Wittkopf also produced several designs showing HDB blocks clad in these panels, with the most efficient model - a slab block with the panels lining a roof erected above the water tanks - catering to 56 per cent of the building's daytime energy needs.

The downside is cost, Prof Wittkopf said. To generate one watt of power, the solar-panel cost is US$8 (S$13), which means that the block would need about $1.43 million worth of panels. And that does not include the cost of mounting them.

But such a project should not be judged on just monetary terms, he argued.

The 'environmental benefit is hard to quantify' and with government support, the project would be more viable.

Singapore should not hesitate to try out solar energy as a supplementary power source, Prof Wittkopf said, adding that less than 1 per cent of the country's energy is from renewable sources such as sun, wind and water, compared with 10 per cent in Germany.

Noting that half the solar panels here are for 'test-bedding', he said: 'What is there to test-bed? This is already a proven technology.'

Copyright © 2004 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.

Pengui

February 2nd, 2005, 05:21 PM

Feb 2, 2005
Sunny S'pore 'ripe for solar power'
The downside is cost, Prof Wittkopf said. To generate one watt of power, the solar-panel cost is US$8 (S$13), which means that the block would need about $1.43 million worth of panels. And that does not include the cost of mounting them.

This is certainly a problem with solar energy. And I also think it would not be very wise for Singapore to invest in this kind of energy, because as for now it's very inefficient (I think the effective convertion rate is less than 5%, ie energy output by quantity of energy received), and as a side effect, it also produces a lot of heat. So it is not so "green" after all. In Germany, you wouldn't care about the extra-heat, but in Singapore I believe it can be a sensible problem ;-) Also, manufacturing of photovoltaic cells involves the use of some polluting products.
A better strategy might be to invest in photovoltaic cells R&D. It is true that this R&D sector has not been massively funded worldwide, because of numerous factors, the most important probably being the petroleum industry lobbies ^^

On another side, I have to agree that Singapore's energy producing strategy is not very good. Oil and gas powerplants are expensive to operate and will become more and more, they are polluting and can be dangerous. The only thing is that they are very efficient with modern technology ^^

But I don't really see a better strategy for Singapore, actually :-/ Wind powerplants are useless, ugly and unefficient, and no serious hydro plant can be built here. Actually, the only energy source that is cheap, safe, efficient and non-polluting is nuclear energy (a lot of people would kill me for saying that, I know ^^ ), but I also don't think it can be built in Singapore as it needs a fresh water source to be cooled down, and I don't think there is any sufficient one here.

babystan03

February 2nd, 2005, 11:43 PM

This is certainly a problem with solar energy. And I also think it would not be very wise for Singapore to invest in this kind of energy, because as for now it's very inefficient (I think the effective convertion rate is less than 5%, ie energy output by quantity of energy received), and as a side effect, it also produces a lot of heat. So it is not so "green" after all. In Germany, you wouldn't care about the extra-heat, but in Singapore I believe it can be a sensible problem ;-) Also, manufacturing of photovoltaic cells involves the use of some polluting products.
A better strategy might be to invest in photovoltaic cells R&D. It is true that this R&D sector has not been massively funded worldwide, because of numerous factors, the most important probably being the petroleum industry lobbies ^^

Can the heat produced be "diverted" somewhere?? Like heating some water?? :?

Pengui

February 3rd, 2005, 03:03 AM

I doubt so. The heat is the consequence of what is not absorbed by the cells, so it would go upward. If you put something there, then you will block the light from reaching the cells I imagine ;-)
But there is certainly way to improve the conversion rate, which would at the same time reduce the heat dissipation and improve the output. Only problem is that it needs some big $$$ investments in R&D, and maybe a few tenths of years ? ^^

babystan03

March 17th, 2005, 02:53 PM

17 March 2005

Review committee blames ConocoPhillips for 2004 blackout
By Dominique Loh, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : In its final report, the Energy System Review Committee has singled out ConocoPhillips for causing the massive blackout last June.

It also wants the regulators to take tough action against operators that fail to meet standards.

A prolonged blackout like the one last June could be crippling to Singapore's economy.

The power failure plunged many parts of Singapore in darkness.

The Energy System Review Committee wants the Singapore Government and its regulators, like the Energy Market Authority, to toughen measures to avoid another similar incident.

The committee pointed the finger squarely at ConocoPhillips' Onshore Receiving Facility for causing the blackout.

Equipment failure, inadequate staff training and maintenance were some of the contributing factors.

The committee is strongly urging the EMA to ensure problems at ConocoPhillips' facility are fixed in a timely fashion and monitored.

It also wants the regulators to penalise operators severely should their reliability problems put Singapore's economy at risk.

But in the long term, it wants open access in Singapore's gas supply and distribution system.

That means any user can tap from any of the suppliers.

Said Geoff Swier, a member of the committee, "Open access gas systems have been implemented in most developed countries. It provides the basis for competition and that's good for consumers in terms of price. There is greater reliability through more diverse sources of gas into the system."

If all of the committee's recommendations are adopted, will it mean the end of blackouts?

In the committee's opinion, a world-class power system should not have more than one system failure in 10 years.

Committee member Peter De Wit said, "If there are more gas supply sources and the lessons learned on hotswitching are fully taken on board, even with one failure by one Onshore Receiving Facility, it could be manageable. No one can guarantee with conviction as to this would not happen again, (but) the chances will be reduced."

Jock McKenzie, chairman of the committee, said, "In any complicated system such as the gas and electrical system in Singapore, which are unique in its inter-connectivity on a global basis, there would be some risk. So I don't think we as ESRC claim that with the full implementation of all our recommendations there would never be a future failure. But with a combination of recommendations we are making, the probability of failure would be far lower."

In response to the committee's report, the Trade and Industry Ministry says it will continue to liberalise the gas market for open access and competition.

And it hopes to achieve this by the end of this year.

It says by June this year, three of the major power stations will be supported by two sources of gas. - CNA

Copyright © 2005 MCN International Pte Ltd

babystan03

April 3rd, 2005, 01:10 PM

Business Times - 02 Apr 2005

LNG cheaper than piped gas: experts' report

Calls for a fuel mix policy to increase competition and improve supply security

By RONNIE LIM

IMPORTING natural gas in liquefied form, or LNG, is as much as 30 per cent cheaper than piping the gas in from Indonesia or Malaysia, based on today's prices, according to a high-level experts' report to the government.

But the Energy System Review Committee (ESRC) recommended that Singapore - in its study on LNG use - needs to make a longer-term assessment based on expected future LNG and fuel oil prices, as the latter affects Singapore's piped gas prices.

The ESRC finding - detailed in an annex to its 90-page report - confirms what several analysts and industry officials had told BT earlier: that the cost of Singapore's piped gas, which is linked to now-costlier high sulphur fuel oil (HSFO), is more expensive than importing LNG.

A spokesman for Tokyo Gas Engineering, the consultant now conducting Singapore's LNG study, told BT yesterday that it has noted the ESRC's findings and recommendation, and will be working along these lines in its economic case studies. 'We'll be looking at price trends in the next few years for LNG and fuel oil,' TGE spokesman Rajeev Kannan said.

A team led by TGE embarked on the LNG study commissioned by the Energy Market Authority (EMA) in February and expects to complete this within 12 months.

Singapore buys piped gas from Malaysia based on 107 per cent of the HSFO price, while Indonesian gas sourced from West Natuna and Sumatra is even more expensive at 115 per cent of the HSFO price.

'Adding the cost of the Singapore pipeline transport shows - at today's high HSFO prices - the average pipeline gas price to Singapore consumers is about US$6 per Mmbtu (million metric British Thermal Units),' the ESRC report said.

'This is a significant economic burden on Singapore leading to higher electricity costs, since fuel oil costs can be as much as 89 per cent of total operating expenses for gas-fired stations,' it added.

By comparison, based on recent reported LNG supply deals in 2004, plus the cost of re-gasification and pipeline transport, the landed cost of LNG for the end-user ranges between US$4.15 and US$4.90 per Mmbtu (if the LNG costs US$25 a barrel), or between US$4.70 and US$5.55 per Mmbtu (if the LNG costs US$35 a barrel).

'Assuming the recently reported LNG prices above, and that Singapore is able to negotiate a long-term LNG supply contract at applicable 2004 prices, LNG end-user prices are shown to be lower than pipeline gas import prices,' the ESRC concluded.

It therefore recommended that the feasibility study on LNG imports 'should continue to be aggressively pursued'. It said the LNG study has 'the greatest potential to effectively increase gas supply competition, supply diversity and improve security of supply'.

With perhaps industry feedback in mind - that Singapore may be overdependent on just piped gas supplies - the ESRC said the LNG study 'should also include a study on the need for a fuel mix policy for Singapore, particularly in the context of 'making space' for future LNG plants'.

Industry officials earlier said it would take 6-7 years to get an LNG project going, from study stage to LNG contract negotiations and building of a receiving terminal here.

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