Singapore gas flow seen near normal by weekend: Report

ConocoPhillips expects natural gas flows in a Indonesia-to-Singapore pipeline that suffered a leak to reach "near normal" levels by the weekend, a company spokesman was quoted by Reuters as saying on Wednesday.

The pipeline had been pumping 325 million standard cubic feet per day to Singapore from gas fields in the Natuna Sea before the leak last Friday.

The leak in the 640-kilometre (400 mile) underwater natural gas pipeline operated by the U.S. oil group prompted three of Singapore's power generators to switch to diesel-fired power generation.

"We hope to have production by the end of the week back up to near normal levels," Jim Taylor, operations manager for ConocoPhillips Indonesia, told Reuters.

He said the cause of the leak was not yet known, but that work would begin on repairs within four to five days.

"That should mean that in 10 days to two weeks everything will be repaired," Taylor said.

In the meantime, less affected gas fields will feed additional gas into the line to compensate for damaged areas.

SembCorp Gas, a unit of SembCorp Industries Ltd is the Singapore buyer of the gas. It said in a statement that current gas flow was about 65 percent of what it was before the leak.

"The gas has been allocated accordingly to our power generation customers," SembCorp said in a statement.

A problem with the same pipeline in August 2002 caused electricity blackouts in Singapore when a gas valve was accidently turned off. (*)