According to a government official, the Singapore government will take over the development of its first liquefied natural gas terminal project; thereby pushing pushed back the start of its operations by a year to 2013.

At an industry conference, S. Iswaran, Senior Minister for Trade and Industry, said that PowerGas was facing difficulties in proceeding with this project on a commercial basis.

Initially, the terminal was supposed to start operations in 2012.

It should be noted that Powergas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Power, was appointed to jointly build and operate the terminal with French-utility Gaz de France.

A new company dubbed Singapore LNG Corp., would be set up by Singapore's Energy Market Authority in order to own the terminal.

Furthermore, by the end of this year it also holds plans to award the engineering, procurement and construction contract.

Iswaran said at the Next Generation LNG Asia-Pacific 2009, “There is now greater uncertainty about the pace at which future demand for LNG will build up, which would in turn affect the utilization of the terminal and its revenue stream.”

It has been learnt that the terminal will have initial capacity of 3 million metric tons a year and would be built on a 30-hectare site on Jurong Island.