Jurong Rock Caverns is the world's first undersea hydrocarbon storage cavern.
Located 130 metres below Jurong Island’s Banyan Basin, it provides safe and secure storage for liquid hydrocarbons such as crude oil, condensate, naphtha and gasoil. Locating the Jurong Rock Caverns just beneath Jurong Island has added more infrastructural support to the major chemical companies operating there such as Chevron Philips, ExxonMobil and Shell.
Phase 1 of the project freed up about 60 hectares of usable land above ground and created 1.47 million cubic metres of storage space, equivalent to 580 Olympic-sized pools. Completed in 2014, the cavern itself is up to 27 metres high – equivalent to a nine-storey building. 8 km of tunnels and five caverns housing a total of nine storage galleries were built using a technique that drilled and blasted sedimentary rocks and for greater stability, the inner walls were lined with rock bolts.
A planned Phase 2 of the project will double Jurong Rock Caverns’ storage capacity to a total of 2.8 million cubic metres.