Land-starved Singapore opened the first of five huge underground storage spaces for oil products today, local media reported.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong inaugurated the Jurong Rock Caverns, which when completed will consist of five nine-storey-high caverns hewn out of subterranean rock, the reports said.

The five caverns, located 150 metres below the surface of Jurong Island, south-west of the city-state’s main island, can store up to 1.47 million cubic metres of liquid hydrocarbons, the equivalent of about 600 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The facility on the island, where most of Singapore’s petrochemical operations are based, cost S$950 million (US$760 million), The Straits Times reported.

The first two caverns were completed in March this year and have already been leased out to an aromatics firm. The remaining three caverns are expected to be completed by 2016, the report said.

The caverns’ developer, JTC Corporation, said the underground facility had saved Singapore 60 hectares of land.

“We are constantly pushing boundaries in our quest to overcome our scarce land resource. The Jurong Rock Caverns required us to venture into unfamiliar grounds and surmount engineering challenges never encountered before,” TODAY newspaper reported JTC chairperson Loo Choon Yong as saying.

- dpa