A world in a fuel crisis, a city that keeps humming
Since the US–Israel war with Iran began on 28 February 2026, tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been choked, Qatar's giant Ras Laffan gas complex has been knocked offline, and Houthi forces have attacked Saudi oil facilities and Red Sea shipping. The head of the International Energy Agency has called it the greatest energy security crisis the world has faced.
Singapore has felt it in the wallet, but not in the queue. Petrol is about 25% dearer than before the war, electricity tariffs jumped 17% in the third quarter, and inflation has climbed to a two-year high of 2.3%. Yet there has been no rationing, no dry petrol stations, and no four-day work weeks.
Elsewhere the picture is harsher. Sri Lanka brought back QR-code fuel quotas. The Philippines declared a national energy emergency. Indonesia capped fuel purchases at 50 litres a day. Europe's energy inflation reached 18.8% in September.
This post asks why. The short answer is that Singapore was not lucky. Over sixty years it deliberately built itself into one of the world's great oil and gas hubs, and in a crisis that hub works as a shock absorber. It also has a strong currency, deep fiscal reserves, and a policy of letting prices tell the truth while paying households directly.
As of 20 October, Brent crude is near US$110 a barrel, roughly 57% above its pre-war level of about US$70. It briefly touched US$116 in early March, fell to about US$72 in late June after a ceasefire, then climbed again as tanker attacks resumed in September and October.
Crude oil: no wells, but a seat at the world's oil table
Singapore produces no oil, yet its refineries can process about 1.1 million barrels of crude a day. They turn imported crude, roughly 840,000 barrels a day in 2024, into petrol, diesel, jet fuel and ship fuel. Most of that output is exported across Asia; only a fraction is burned at home.
The Gulf matters a great deal. In 2023 about 52% of Singapore's crude imports by value came from the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, with the United States the largest single supplier at 28%. In April the Coordinating Minister for National Security told Parliament that more than half of Singapore's crude comes from the Middle East.
The first weeks were genuinely difficult. In early March, with tankers stuck behind the strait, ExxonMobil cut crude runs at its Jurong Island refinery to about half of capacity, and Singapore Refining Company cut to about 60%. Several chemical plants on Jurong Island declared force majeure because their feedstock had stopped arriving.
Supply then recovered through two channels. Part of Gulf output never needed Hormuz: Saudi Arabia's East–West pipeline to the Red Sea and the UAE's pipeline to Fujairah bypass the strait, and the IEA estimates bypass exports reached 5.6 million barrels a day in September. And Singapore's refiners bought replacement cargoes from the Americas, Africa and elsewhere, at whatever the market charged.
The Houthi threat to Red Sea shipping is the weak spot in that bypass route, which is one reason Brent pushed back above US$105 in October.
Three companies run Singapore's refineries. ExxonMobil's Jurong Island complex, at 592,000 barrels a day, is the company's largest anywhere in the world. Singapore Refining Company is a Chevron–PetroChina joint venture. Shell's Pulau Bukom refinery was sold to Glencore and Indonesia's Chandra Asri in 2024 and now trades as Aster. Older articles quote 1.4 to 1.5 million barrels a day for Singapore; those figures predate Shell's capacity cuts at Bukom.
The deeper point is mutual dependence. Many countries that sell crude to Singapore also buy its refined fuels; Sri Lanka, for example, gets most of its fuel from India and Singapore. When several governments restricted fuel exports this year, Singapore did not, and the minister explained that this two-way trade is precisely what keeps crude flowing to Singapore in a crisis.
Storage: tanks on reclaimed land, caverns under the seabed
Jurong Island holds more than 90 million barrels of oil and fuel storage, equal to roughly three and a half months of Singapore's crude imports. Most of it, however, belongs to traders and refiners rather than the state.
The Jurong Rock Caverns are the most remarkable piece. Opened in 2014, they lie more than 130 metres beneath Jurong Island and hold about 9 million barrels of crude, naphtha and gas oil, freeing 60 hectares of scarce surface land. JTC now describes them as part of Singapore's strategy to maintain oil stockpiles.
A caution on the viral claim that Singapore holds "245 days of crude reserves". It is not an official figure. The Government deliberately does not publish the size of its fuel reserves, on the grounds that disclosure would reveal where Singapore's limits lie. What is public: the reserves exist, they combine natural gas and diesel, some are Government-owned and some are held by power companies, they had not been drawn on as of April, and the Government intends to enlarge them.
Commercial stocks do get drawn down in a crisis. Singapore's onshore fuel oil inventories fell from about 24 million barrels in March to about 20.5 million in May, and delivery lead times for ship fuel stretched to two or three weeks.
Roughly 43% of the gas arrives by undersea pipeline from Malaysia and Indonesia, untouched by events in the Gulf. The other 57% arrives by ship as liquefied natural gas (LNG). Australia supplies more than a third of that LNG, with further cargoes from the United States and Mozambique.
When Qatar's exports stopped, Singapore GasCo, a state buyer set up in 2025 to centralise gas purchases for power generation, bought replacement cargoes elsewhere. The LNG is received at the SLNG terminal on Jurong Island, which has four large storage tanks and a peak send-out of about 11 million tonnes a year. A second, floating terminal at Jurong Port is due before the end of the decade.
There is a second line of defence. Every power plant must be able to run on diesel as well as gas, generators must keep diesel reserves, and they must hold pre-arranged contracts for extra fuel that suppliers must deliver within a set number of days.
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