Part 2: Some Major Developments

1. International Business Park

One major development in the west is the thirty-seven hectare International Business Park at Jurong East, which includes a ten-storey building with a rentable space of thirty-thousand square metres.

Already around 240 companies have created twenty thousand jobs there. The park is for companies at all stages of operations in software development, research and ancillary activities.

Among these is the German Centre for Industry and Trade, which is one of two incubator centres at the park. The centre opened in 1995 to nurture small German firms for take-off in the region.

2. Tuas Techpark

The twenty-hectare Tuas Techpark is now able to take full advantage of the 1.9 kilometre-long, six-lane-wide, second Singapore-Malaysia link at Tuas, which is open to traffic in early 1998. It is much easier for vehicles to join Malaysia's North-South Highway from Tuas, via Gelang Patah, than from Woodlands.

In order to cater to the projected capacity of 200000 vehicles daily, Jalan Buroh, Jalan Boon Lay and Tuas Road will be upgraded to semi-expressways, and Jalan Ahmad Ibrahim will be upgraded to an expressway.

As a result, traffic congestion at Woodlands is expected to be eased by 14300 vehicles daily (about a third).

3. Shell  Oil Refinery at Pulau Bukom

The Shell oil refinery at Pulau Bukom handles 440000 barrels per day (a barrel is equivalent to 159 litres; it is so called because oil was originally stored in wooden fishing barrels), out of Singapore's total of 1.15 billion barrels per day (the world consumes about sixty million barrels per day). Only ten percent of Bukom's output is for the local market.

In fact, the installation at Bukom is the third largest oil refinery in the world, and is Shell's largest. Shell itself is Singapore's largest foreign investor, having invested about $4 billion into petroleum manufacturing and $2.6 billion into petrochemicals.

The Bukom facility is 6.5 kilometres away from the mainland, and actually comprises three islands - Pulau Bukom Besar is 155 hectares in size, Pulau Bukom Kecil is 55 hectares, and Pulau Ular ('Snake Island') is 35 hectares. The latter two islands began operations in the seventies.

Presently there are eleven wharves in the complex. Up to three thousand people work in Bukom. It is very much self-sufficient, having its own fire station, tailor, barber, laundry and clinic.

Part 1: Some Statistics
Part 3: Jurong Island

Reproduced with permission from the site formerly known as 'No Place Like Home', © Kenneth Y T Lim 1995-9