A bright orange flare visible from parts of Singapore on the evening of Oct 15 was caused by flaring activities at a chemical plant in Pasir Gudang in eastern Johor Bahru.
In a Facebook post on Oct 17, the National Environment Agency (NEA) said the flaring was the result of recovery work following a power outage at one of Lotte Chemical Titan’s chemical plants.
The power outage began at 4.13pm on Oct 15, Lotte Chemical Titan said in a Facebook post on Oct 16. It added that recovery works began at about 6pm, and were completed at about 9.30pm.
Flaring is a common safety measure in petrochemical plants, and the products of combustion are mainly water vapour and carbon dioxide, NEA said.
“Flaring is the controlled burning of excess hydrocarbon gases that cannot be recovered or recycled, during both planned and unplanned situations,” it explained.
NEA added that the air quality at its nearby air monitoring stations – including at Punggol, in the north-east of Singapore and across the Johor Strait from Pasir Gudang – is within normal variations, and that it will continue to monitor the situation.
On Oct 15, some netizens in Singapore took to social media to share images and videos of the flares.
In posts on Facebook group Cloudspotting & Skyspotting Singapore, users posted sightings from Punggol Northshore, and from even as far away as Choa Chu Kang.
Calista Wong for The Straits Times
