Transcript by Minister-in-charge of Energy and Science & Technology Dr Tan See Leng’s Doorstop at visit to SLNG

Since my last update, the situation has turned significantly more serious. In the last 48 hours or so, you would have read from various media reports, about the recent attack on the world's largest liquefaction facility over in Qatar, the Ras Laffan facility, in Qatar, as well as the Kharg Island facility on the Iran side. These have very serious implications for all of us. 

And even as we look at it, there doesn't seem to be any end to the hostilities, notwithstanding the fact that President Trump said it was going to be a short war. Even if the war stops tomorrow, the rebuilding of the Ras Laffan facility would take between three to five years. You can expect that that will cause a disruption for all of us. 

The Prime Minister has also shared last night in Tokyo that we need to be prepared, we need to really brace ourselves for very bumpy ride ahead. 

Notwithstanding the fact that we have stockpiles and we are stable for now, as the situation evolves, as supplies continue to get truncated, the first thing, of course, that you would expect to see would be that the electricity prices, the tariffs, will go up. 

There is a lot of downstream impact, because we are one of the largest refinery complexes in the world. Of course, on top of that, downstream products like fertilisers, even helium, would be affected. So you can imagine that this impact would really be amplified across various streams. Hence, we need to really brace ourselves for a bumpier ride ahead. 

We have just announced some measures at this year's Budget. Those should kick in quite shortly, and the government is ready. We will stand ready to implement and to come up with more measures should it prove to be necessary. 

At this point in time, we are monitoring the situation very closely, because we want to also make sure that we have dry powder for us to use when the situation gets worse. 

One of the things that perhaps our citizens, our residents living here and the businesses can do, would be to help us as we hunker down, for businesses to switch to more energy-efficient appliances, adopt energy conservation measures, notwithstanding the fact that I know we are getting warmer, but to turn up the temperatures in the AC a little bit more. At the same time, when you are not using it, switch off or switch to other alternatives. 

For those with the ability to adopt solar panels, please find the opportunity to do so and at the same time, if there are businesses who need to navigate our different sources of grants for energy efficiency, they should feel free to reach out to agencies within the MTI family as well. 

We do not know how long this is going to take. I think everybody knows that today, 95 per cent of our power generation comes from natural gas, which we import, all of it. While we have set up diversification supply chains from different countries, in addition to the Middle East, we have also established stockpiles. You can see the facility here itself. 

I think we have to acknowledge the fact that our country is very small. No matter how much stockpile we want to put in or we aspire to have, there is a constraint in terms of our own space. So I think we need to be realistic about it. 

But nevertheless, all of my colleagues, within the MTI family, within all of the different agencies, MSE, the home team, everyone. We have all come together to work closely. They have been working round the clock, making sure that supply chains remain intact. They have also engaged not just our upstream suppliers, but also downstream customers as well. So rest assured, we will pull through this difficult period together. We will maintain our reputation, our credibility as well as our resilience. 

Thank you.