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Singapore International 1Sep 05 Rising fuel costs and the impact on Singaporean motorists A possible shortage in the United States’ oil output has sent fuel prices up yet again, and Singaporeans are already feeling the pinch. Stay tuned to Connections to find out how Singaporeans are dealing with this. I’m Yvonne Gomez. Hurricane Katrina is likely to reduce crude oil production in the United States, because major oil refineries and tanker terminals have been adversely affected by the storm. With the possibility of a global fuel shortage due to a drop in US oil output, petrol prices have started to climb again. How have Singaporeans who drive been affected by this? I spoke to Kelly Liew to find out if she’s started using her car less often. KL: I haven’t really stopped driving so much because of increased petrol prices, because of the daily necessity of using the car for work. In fact, my family has two cars and we still use them as much as we need to for work daily. On the weekends, of course we try to only use one car, but I don’t see that we can really avoid it by taking the train or other forms of public transport, because we have children. It’ll just cause a little bit more of a burden to the normal prices we have to pay for petrol every month. You’ve mentioned that the car is necessary, for example, to at least commute from home to work, and other events involving your children. But because these are things you can’t avoid, have you actually then tried to stop yourself from using the car for unnecessary trips, or at least put in effort to plan your routes in order to save petrol for trips that are necessary? KL: I have to say that I’ve actually not done anything like that. The only thing that I’ve actually done is that, because our cars are relatively new, we usually go for the higher grade of petrol, the more costly one like the “98”, but with prices being more expensive, we don’t have as much choice of which grade we want to use. I now look at the cost per litre unit and try to buy a mid-range petrol grade. I won’t pump the most expensive fuel now. Therefore, if I say I want to spend only $300 on fuel, I will try to stick to this budget based on current prices for the different grades of petrol. That was Kelly Liew, whose family owns two cars in Singapore. Leonard Ong drives a 1.6 litre Toyota Corolla and travels a fair distance from home to work every day. I asked him if he’s likely to switch to public transportation if fuel prices continue to rise. LO: For me, usage of my car is still going to be inelastic. I’m going to use it regardless of whether oil prices go up, and anyway, if you look at an increase of 10 cents per litre and if a car of 1.6 litres runs on 40 litres of gas per full tank, that’ll be about a $4 increase per full tank (which lasts me a week). So the actual impact is not very significant for me. Even if it’s not significant, will you find yourself restricting yourself in the use of your car for unnecessary trips, or would you put in more effort to plan your trips so that you can save some measure of petrol? LO: Absolutely. I think planning would definitely be on top of the list for me, because that tends to be my weakness. I’ll just drive “round and round” until I get to my destination, since Singapore is so small anyway. A street directory would help in terms of planning my trips to make sure if I drive for business purposes, it’ll be in the most efficient manner. Do you drive up to JB (Johor Bahru) a lot? LO: Occasionally. Is this likely to stop you from going up to Johor Bahru, for instance, or other road trips further into Malaysia? LO: Actually no, because going to JB would mean that I could pump a full tank of gas on the way back for half the cost! That was Leonard Ong, owner of a 1.6 litre Toyota Corolla in Singapore. Hasnah Mohammad Hashim drives from Singapore to Malaysia every fortnight, with her mother and two young children, to visit her father, who works in the capital, Kuala Lumpur. I asked her if her family was likely to reduce their number of trips if petrol prices continue to rise. HMH: It shouldn’t change, because the reason we’re going up is not to take advantage of oil prices or anything like that. It’s because my kids like to spend time with my father. We alternate the trips, so that one weekend, he’ll drive down to Singapore and the following week, we’ll drive up to Malaysia. And because these trips see to be unavoidable, are you trying to save petrol in any other way, while you’re in Singapore? HMH: Actually we don’t really consume much petrol in general. Every morning, my mum sends the kids to school and me to work. She works quite near our home so she’ll park her car at her office, and then it’s not used again until the evening. So our usage is quite minimal in that sense. We don’t really go out after work, so there are no unnecessary trips. Hasnah Mohammad Hashim, who drives from Singapore to Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur every other week with her family, to visit her father who works there. Balakrishnan Thangavelu runs many errands daily, for his immediate and extended family. I asked him how increased petrol prices will affect him and if he’s likely to think about the best routes to take from now on. BT: Yeah, I would. I would plan my trips from now, especially for errands. I mean, if I can do them all at one time, I’ll do it. I think that’ll save me a lot on petrol costs. Of course, unnecessary trips should be avoided with the sky-high petrol prices. That was Balakrishnan Thangavelu in Singapore. If fuel prices continue to rise to a point where it becomes prohibitively expensive, what are our alternatives? The possibility of an oil crisis in the future has spearheaded research into the viability of bio-fuels to replace or at least, augment, oil. But we can’t simply start pumping bio-fuels into our cars and other machinery just yet, as Dr Wayne Forday from the School of Life Sciences and Chemical Technology at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore, explains. WF: Normally cars need to be modified to use bio-fuels. For example, if I’m using ethanol - when ethanol combusts, it produces water, and if your engine’s not designed properly, the water can corrode your engine. For gases, they combust in a different way to gasoline, so again, you have to modify your motors to adapt to that. The problem with power plants is that you do need to produce a lot of bio-fuels to feed into those power plants. So whether you can supply sufficient bio-fuels is another point. But eventually, petroleum will run out and there will be no choice. Dr Rahman Talukder is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences, which is involved in national research and development in Singapore. His current work involves investigating how bio-diesel can replace fossil fuel. As a clean fuel, Dr Rahman says bio-diesel is environmentally-friendly, has low emission of aromatic compounds and sulphur dioxide, and zero carbon dioxide emission. But again, he explains why we can’t start using bio-fuels overnight. RT: If you want to use 100% bio-diesel, a little modification of the diesel engine may be necessary. At present, bio-diesel is used as a 20% additive, and 80% is existing petro-diesel. Is bio-diesel likely to be more expensive or even cheaper than normal, petro-diesel? RT:At present, bio-diesel is almost double the price of petro-diesel, but if you think in terms of environmental then it is no more expensive. And is there long-term sustainability for bio-diesel? RT: Yes, it’s a renewable fuel source. If you can cultivate more vegetable oil, you can derive bio-diesel from that, or any type of fat. That was Dr Rahman Talukder, Research Fellow at the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences in Singapore. So what is the possibility that the world will eventually switch from oil to bio-fuels? Dr Wayne Forday the Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore tells us some of the advantages of bio-fuel over oil. WF: I do know that many countries do use bio-fuels, but these are at subsidized rates. Remember, one of the advantages of bio-fuels derived from plant sources, in effect, have zero greenhouse potential, because any carbon dioxide you produce during the burning of the bio-fuels, is ultimately reused by the plants. The same goes for ethanol. The problem with petroleum and petroleum-based fuels, that carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere. It’s not recovered. With petroleum-based fuels, we often don’t include the cost of pollution into the combustion of those fuels. links Related articles on Singapore: green energy renewable energy, energy saving: issues, efforts, discussions Global issues: global warming |
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