A Singapore senior official on Tuesday suggested some initiatives - growing refinery capacity, entrenching biofuels and advancing technologies - to position the country competitively in the global oil industry.

Speaking at the 23rd Asia-Pacific Petroleum Conferences, Singapore's Minister of State for Trade and Industry S. Iswaran said, "Regional competition is intense and unrelenting. The local oil industry has to find new opportunities to widen its lead and flourish, taking the industry and the Singapore-based players within it to the next level."

The first initiative he suggested is to raise Singapore's refining capacity from the current 1.3 million barrels per day.

He noted that the value of refining goes beyond the capital-intensive assets. Refining investments are also knowledge and technology intensive, and create many good jobs for chemical, process, electrical and environment engineers.

"Growing our refining capacity will also put Singapore in good stead to enhance the growth of oil trading activities," he added.

Second, he said that Singapore will endeavor to integrate biofuels into its oil industry.

In the last three years, Singapore has made considerable headway in the biofuels sector by jump-starting biodiesel manufacturing on Jurong Island. With these efforts, Singapore's biodiesel production output is expected to exceed one million tons per annum by 2010, and reach three million tons per annum by 2015.

The minister also stressed the importance of research and development (R&D), saying that Singapore will do more R&D in areas such as lubricants, process optimization and catalyst development, as well as development of next generation biofuels.