ExxonMobil is building an additional base stock plant at its Singapore refinery. When operational in early 2015, ExxonMobil's increased base stock output here will cater to the growing Asia-Pacific demand.

"The expansion at our Singapore facility will help EM meet increasing demand for high-quality base stocks," said Ken Chandler, manager of Asia-Pacific base stock sales, adding that it "will help our customers capitalise on their new growth opportunities in the region".

Announcing the investment here yesterday, the company said the project will boost its output of Group II EHC base stocks - whose applications cover some 90 per cent of all lubricants, including automotive and industrial lubricants.

Currently, ExxonMobil produces 38,000 barrels per day (bpd) here of both Group I (which are the least refined) and Group II EHC base stocks, but the  company declined to specify how much additional Group II base oil production will result from the expansion. "But it will be a large-scale expansion,"

ExxonMobil's global planning manager for base stocks and specialties, X B Cox, said. The expansion follows ExxonMobil's February announcement of a similar Group II base oil expansion at its Baytown refinery in Texas. That refinery currently has an output of 9,800 bpd of Group I base oils and 11,700 bpd of Group II base oils. The company was silent on specific expansion numbers, other than to say that it will significantly increase its base stock output there by early 2015.

The expansions at Baytown and Singapore "demonstrate EM's commitment to the base stocks market and will enable us to significantly increase global supply of our high quality EHC base stocks", ExxonMobil's manager of global base stocks and specialties, George W Arndt Jr, said.

The expansion here marks yet another upgrade to the mega refinery-petrochemical base which the world's biggest oil company has built in Singapore with well over US$10 billion in investments so far. The oil giant is also in the midst of building a new US$500 million hydrotreater plant here to produce ultra-low sulphur diesel. It is expected to be commissioned by next year.

The projects follow the recent start-up of its second US$5-6 billion petrochemical cracker complex here, which when combined with its 605,000 bpd refinery makes the Singapore operations ExxonMobil's largest integrated complex in Asia.

The company's latest investments tie in with the Economic Development Board's push to get the refining sector here to upgrade their operations to stay globally competitive.

EDB's director of energy & chemicals, Eugene Leong, said the focus is to upgrade the sector's complexity, with this involving further downstream integration "not only with higher-value petrochemicals, but also lubricants and fuels upgrading". .