1940, Thursday 05 December;
The oil tanker, British Governor eased into the Johore Straits, the boon gates opened, welcoming her arrival, with 10,000 tons of Bunker Fuel Oil for the Royal Navy’s oil storage farm at the Senoko Fuel Depot, within the Naval Base perimeter. The tanker was one of nearly 150 owned or managed by the British Tanker Company, whose entire fleet had been chartered by the British Government to transport fuel for its armed forces, including bunker fuel to all their strategic ports around the world. These ships were slow, 10kts a typical speed, and had no fleet refuelling facilities, that was the domain of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships, and they plied a continuous path of oil refinery to storage tanks and back, carrying either crude or refined oils as required.
Singapore was having her strategic fuel storage increased, the tanker British Resolution having visited a few days ago, while both British Justice and British Grenadier were due in the next few weeks. The Naval Fuel Dumps at Normanton, just west of the British Alexandria Military Hospital, at Kranji, southwest of the Causeway, and Senoko, within the Naval Base, could hold over 800,000 tons of bunkerage fuel oil between them, enough to service the Fleet, if it ever came, indeed it was planned to have storage for 1,250,000 tons of oil but these plans weren’t expected to be completed until 1943. The oil farms were all interconnected by underground pipes and pumps, as well as several refuelling jetties, allowing the quick and efficient transfer of oil around the island.
Near Woodlands, was a jetty, connected to the underground oil pipe network, with the big old RFA tanker Ruthenia, no longer capable of any sea voyage, at its life’s end, to be used as a pumping station for refuelling Royal Navy ships, although increasingly they were refuelled by the port tanker, RFA War Sirdar, or a lighter.
Both the Army and RAF also had significant storage of petrol and aviation in their own fuel depots on the island, although nowhere near the capacity of the Navy. For civilian use there was another fuel deport at Woodlands, which sat between the Naval Base, to the east, and the causeway, to the west, with a further depot behind the wharfs of Keppel harbour.
And in addition to all this, there were the enormous oil farms on the islands laying off the southern coast of Singapore. Four miles west of Keppel harbour, on Pulau Bukum island, the Asiatic Petroleum Company had built 49 oil tanks to hold either crude oil or refined products, from the oil fields in Borneo and Sumatra, to be distributed onwards. They also had five wharfs to refuel ships. Close by, on Pulau Sebarok island, the Standard-Vacuum Oil Company also had an oil farm, and a long concrete jetty for bunkerage, while Anglo-Saxon Petroleum had three tankers, SS Pleioden, SS Solen and SS Spirila moored off Pulau Blakang Mati, in use as storage fuel hulks. Nine miles southeast of Keppel Harbour, on the Dutch island of Pulau Sambu, the Royal Dutch Shell company had their storage tanks, again also offering bunkering facilities.
So, it wasn’t just Japan that had a thirst, a need for oil, and Singapore was the distribution centre for the British in the Far East, serving Australia & New Zealand, Singapore & Malaya, Thailand, China & Japan, Ceylon & Eastern India. If the oil fields of Sumatra and Borneo were lost, the British would have to look for Abadan, at the end of the Persian Gulf, for alternative supplies. But much of her output was for the British forces fighting in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, there wouldn’t be enough for all, alternative supplies from the Caribbean or the USA would be required.
And while we mention the good old USA, they also had something of a problem. Oil, they had plenty of it, and all its refined products, but the oil farms at Hawaii were critical to the US Pacific Fleet, holding 4.5 million barrels of oil, there was nowhere else, other that the western coast of mainland America, nearly 2,400 miles away. Without the oil on Hawaii, they would have to retreat back to the mainland. Furthermore, projecting power forward was also a problem for them, the war plan against Japan demanded they cross the Pacific, but the shortage of fleet tankers meant the march across would be more of a shuffle. The Pacific Fleet crossing the ocean and fighting in defence of the Philippines could only be done with access to the British and Dutch oil, coming from Singapore
Yes, Japan was facing the bleak prospects of being without oil in about 18 months, but the US and Britain were not without their own conundrums. All navies need oil.
