Pulau Busing is a restricted-access island and a hub for oil shipping located off the southwestern coast of Singapore. The island is occupied by Tankstore Ltd, a
petroleum storage company. Heavily industrialised, the island is home to oil and chemical storage facilities, at least one marine offshore terminal, and a
fuel oil
Fuel oil is any of various fractions obtained from the distillation of petroleum (crude oil). Such oils include distillates (the lighter fractions) and residues (the heavier fractions). Fuel oils include heavy fuel oil, marine fuel oil (MFO), bun ...
refinery.
Name
It appears as ''Po. Busing'' in Franklin &
Jackson's 1828 Plan of Singapore.
is simply Malay for "island". ''Busing'' comes perhaps from the Malay or ("a mound of sand or a dune") or from ("a turning point").
Description
It is north of
Pulau Hantu. It is west of
Pulau Bukom, which is a similarly reclaimed island used for oil storage.
Pulau Busing is next to the shipping channel and had a natural deep waterfront harbour of deeper than 16 metres.
There are 112 tanks (with a total capacity of 2 million cubic metres) on the island's tank farm (
oil terminal
An oil terminal (also called a tank farm, tankfarm, oil installation or oil depot) is an industrial facility for the storage of oil, petroleum and petrochemical
Petrochemicals (sometimes abbreviated as petchems) are the chemical products obt ...
).
The only access to the island (limited to authorized personnel) is by ferry that departs from the
Pasir Panjang ferry terminal.
[
]
History
Together with Jurong Island
Jurong Island is an island located to the southwest of the main island of Singapore. It was formed from the amalgamation of seven offshore islands, the islands of Pulau Ayer Chawan, Pulau Ayer Merbau, Pulau Merlimau, Pulau Pesek, Pulau Pesek ...
and neighouring offshore islands, the island is part of the integrated storage and trading hub that was developed by Jurong Town Corporation
JTC Corporation (JTC), formerly the Jurong Town Corporation, is a statutory board under the Ministry of Trade and Industry that champions sustainable industrial development. It master-plans clean, green and smart estates to create attractive de ...
, which leases it to Tankstore, an oil storage company.[
Before reclamation, Pulau Busing had a land area of 2.5 hectares. It has seen major land reclamation to its southern shores.
Up to the 1980s, it was still fringed by coral reefs on its northern and southern shores. Pulau Busing is an important feeding and roosting ground for migratory shore birds."Singapore Infopedia"]
On 20 March 2018, a petroleum tank on the island caught fire. It took 128 firefighters from the Singapore Civil Defence Force six hours to extinguish the fire.
References
Busing
Race-integration busing in the United States (also known simply as busing, Integrated busing or by its critics as forced busing) was the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools within or outside their local school districts in ...
Western Islands Planning Area
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