SINGAPORE: Singapore oil company Hin Leong Group, a trading powerhouse in the Asian oil products market primarily in distillates and fuel oil, has been on the expansion trail in the past five years, building Asia's largest commercial oil terminal and spending $2 billion to $3 billion to renew its fleet of tankers.
Now it is seeking to build a state-of-the art integrated petroleum complex, that includes an up to 5000,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) refinery and a petrochemical plant, which will be Singapore's fourth.
Universal Terminal
Asia's largest commercial oil storage facility, with capacity of 2.3 million cubic metres, was commissioned in end-2007 at a cost of $455 million in partnership with PetroChina, which holds a 35-percent stake while Hin Leong is the majority owner with 65 percent.
The terminal is occupied by some of the fuel oil industry's biggest players, such as oil majors BP and Shell, PetroChina, Russia's Gunvor, ambitious newcomer Brightoil and Hin Leong itself.
It currently conducts loading and discharge operations for 400 tankers per month in the fourth quarter, up from 220 when it first started about three years ago.
An 80,000-tonne aframax takes 24 hours while a 270,000-tonne Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) needs about 40 hours.
* Ocean Tankers
Ocean Tankers has a fleet of 85 vessels, including six VLCCs, and will take delivery of another three to four supertankers this year, as part of its ongoing a $2-$3 billion new-building programme that started in 2002.
The programme, which also saw the company picking up two in 2010, will complete next year.
Hin Leong Trading
The company made its name in the competitive Asia fuel oil and distillates market over 20 years ago, under the leadership of founder Lim Oon Kuin, or O K Lim as he is more popularly known.
The firm is arguably the largest independent distillates trader in Asia, regularly mounting successful trading plays in the Singapore market.
It also has a substantial presence in Asia's fuel oil market, the world's largest, integrating its shipping and storage infrastructure successfully with its trading business.
The Singapore refining and petrochemical scene
There are four oil refineries in the city-state -- ExxonMobil has two plants with a combined capacity of about 600,000 bpd, Shell has a 500,000-bpd facility and there is the 295,000-bpd Singapore Refining Co. (SRC), which is jointly owned by PetroChina and Chevron Corp.
Oil major Shell commissioned an 800,000-tpy petrochemical complex last year, while rival ExxonMobil is expected to launch its 1-million tpy plant by 2012, taking its total capacity to 1.9 million tpy in Singapore.
The Petrochemical Corporation of Singapore (PCS) operates two plants with a total capacity of 1.09 million tonnes per year (tpy), importing about 145,000 tonnes of naphtha as feedstock per month.
The city-state's production capacity of ethylene is expected to rise to 3.79 million tpy by the time the ExxonMobil complex is completed.
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