Tank Storage Asia 2010

This year’s Tank Storage Asia expo & conference has moved from the traditional storage hub of Singapore to the up and coming region of Malaysia.

Singapore may be one of the largest oil refining and trading hubs in the world, with total storage capacity standing at close to 10 million m³ and annual oil trade registering around $300 billions worth, but it has no natural resources and is rapidly running out of space.

Ever increasing land prices are causing companies to look to Malaysia as a supplementary storage centre, and significant new terminal storage capacity is expected to come on line in the next few years, in particular along the Johor coast near Singapore.

The estimated storage capacity by 2020 in Malaysia is expected to be around 25 million m³, primarily in that region.

The first phase of European trader Trafigura’s 400,000m³ Tanjung Langsat oil storage terminal in Johor has just been completed, global oil trader Vitol is planning its own terminal at Tanjung Bin and Vopak is conducting a feasibility study to develop a storage facility in Pengerang.

Other plans for the region include Malaysia's privately held Merapoh Resources, which has signed a MoU for a proposed $10 billion (€6.7 billion) refinery in Yan, Kedah, northern Malaysia; Malaysia's Pristine Oil, which is building tanks to hold up to 1.5 million barrels of oil and Malaysia's Trans-Peninsula Petroleum, which is working on a $7 billion oil pipeline across the northern part of Peninsula Malaysia.