Malacca alternative

A crude pipeline that avoids the bottleneck of the Malacca Straits has plenty of appeal for Mideast Gulf producers shipping oil to east Asia. But any such project faces significant hurdles, writes Martin Clark

A NEW pipeline across Malaysia that would provide oil shippers with an alternative to sailing through the Malacca Straits, around Singapore, could be on stream as early as 2011, claims its developer. Trans-Peninsula Petroleum (Transpen) says the Trans Malaysian Pipeline (TMP) will save time and money, and ease congestion in the busy Straits. This "parking lot" of tankers, as one Singapore resident describes it, could do with unblocking – ships carrying more than 10m barrels of oil pass through each day. The project could cut shipping times from Saudi Arabia to China by three days, claims Transpen, which holds an exclusive contract for the pipeline's construction. It could also mitigate the t