Singapore has no active oil wells of its own. Yet it refines around 1.5 million barrels of crude oil per day and is home to the world's largest marine bunkering port.
This position was built through six decades of industrial strategy. But in 2026, investigations revealed that part of the supply chain also involved Russian oil allegedly disguised through a small Indonesian island before reaching Singapore's refineries.
Built From Scratch in the 1960s
The story began in 1960, when Singapore had just gained self-government under British rule and its GDP per capita was only about US$428. Finance Minister Goh Keng Swee partnered with Japanese company Maruzen to build an oil refinery serving the Japanese market.
Royal Dutch Shell quickly followed, investing S$30 million to build its first refinery in just one year. The project triggered a wave of refinery construction throughout the 1960s. BP entered in 1962, Mobil in 1966, Shell opened a second refinery in 1967, and Esso followed in 1969.
By 1974, Singapore operated five refineries with a combined capacity of 1.2 million barrels per day. Petroleum products accounted for nearly 40% of the country's exports. The Viet Nam War further boosted the industry, as more than 20% of Singapore's oil exports supplied fuel for U.S. forces.
Seven Islands Became One Industrial Hub
Between 1995 and 2000, Singapore created Jurong Island by reclaiming land and merging seven small islands into a 2,790-hectare industrial cluster. The complex adopted a plug-and-play model. Petrochemical companies could immediately use shared pipelines, utilities, and other infrastructure instead of building their own facilities.
Between 1989 and 2001, Singapore also introduced tax incentives that attracted major oil traders such as Vitol and Trafigura to establish regional offices. The strategy proved highly successful.
In 2019, Singapore exported US$43 billion worth of refined petroleum, the highest value in Asia, surpassing China, India, and South Korea.
Despite this, Singapore has no domestic crude oil reserves. Every barrel is imported, refined, and largely re-exported to markets across the region.
Record Growth Amid the Energy Transition
Singapore's position as a global fuel hub continued to strengthen in 2025 and 2026. Its ports sold a record 56.77 million tonnes of marine bunker fuel in 2025, up 3.4% from the previous year.
Momentum carried into 2026. Bunker sales reached 5.23 million tonnes in January alone, a 16.5% increase from January 2025. The performance helped Singapore retain its title as the world's leading maritime hub for the 13th consecutive year, according to the ISCD Xinhua-Baltic Index.
The refinery landscape also changed. In November 2024, Glencore and Chandra Asri acquired Shell's refining assets on Bukom and Jurong Island.
They formed Aster Chemicals and Energy, which began full operations in early 2025 and now supplies about 20% of the refined products previously produced by Shell.
Meanwhile, ExxonMobil's Jurong Island refinery remains the company's largest worldwide, with a combined capacity of 592,000 barrels per day across two facilities.
The Loophole That Russian Oil Exploited
Behind these achievements, however, a 2026 Bloomberg investigation revealed another side of Singapore's fuel trade. It found that US$1.6 billion worth of Russian diesel and other refined fuels had passed through Karimun Island, Indonesia, located just 23 miles from Singapore.
Karimun is a free trade zone that largely operates outside Indonesia's customs oversight.
The scheme was simple but effective. More than 590,000 tonnes of Russian fuel oil, five times the previous year's volume, and 217,000 tonnes of Russian diesel, up from virtually zero, entered Karimun. There, the cargoes were blended with fuel from other countries and relabeled as Indonesian products.
Between October and April, more than 700,000 tonnes of these fuels—about 40% of Karimun's total fuel exports during the period—were shipped to terminals on Jurong Island, the gateway to Singapore's massive fuel hub serving the wider region.
Such concealment practices are not new in waters near Singapore. In June 2024, the tanker SCF Primorye, which had been under U.S.
Treasury sanctions since October 2023, transferred about 1 million barrels of Russian Urals crude to another vessel roughly 70 miles east of Singapore after switching off its automatic identification system (AIS).
Six decades after Singapore built its refining industry from scratch through long-term state planning, its strategic location along one of the world's busiest shipping routes is now being exploited for a far more opaque purpose.
