Minister Lim Hng Kiang's reply to Parliament Questions on the supply of natural gas from Indonesia

Question No. 550 in Notice paper No. 68 of 2008

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament
Er. Lee Bee Wah, Member for AngMo Kio GRC

Question
To ask the Minister for Trade and Industry (a) how dependent is Singapore on the supply of natural gas from Indonesia; and (b) what will be the impact on our economy if the supply is abruptly disrupted.

Answer
About 80% of Singapore’s electricity is generated by gas turbines fuelled by natural gas. The remainder is generated by steam plants using fuel oil, as well as from the burning of refuse in our waste incineration plants. Presently, 75% of our natural gas supply is piped from Indonesia while 25% is piped from Malaysia.

I like to assure the Member that we have the capacity to deal with any short-term disruption in the supply of natural gas. Our power generation companies are required to stockpile at least 90 days of fuel reserves. If our natural gas supply is disrupted, our gas turbines can continue to operate by switching to diesel. The generation companies can also burn fuel oil to generate electricity using their steam plants.

Over the medium to long term, our energy security will depend on our ability to diversify our energy sources. As a first step, we will import liquefied natural gas (LNG) to supplement our piped natural gas. We are building our first LNG terminal which is targeted to be operational in 2012, and we have appointed BG Asia Pacific as Singapore’s LNG aggregator to import LNG from various parts of the world. With the advancement of new technologies, we are also not writing off other energy options in order to further diversify our energy sources.