A $7 billion pipeline to be laid across northern Malaysia will divert up to a third of oil now being carried through the Strait of Malacca, ensuring a secure supply from the Middle East to East Asia, officials said Monday.
The pipeline would stretch 300 kilometers, or 185 miles, from Kedah State, on the northwestern coast, to Kelantan State, in the northeast.
Work is scheduled to begin in 2008 and finish in 2014, said Rahim Kamil Sulaiman, chairman of the project owner, Trans-Peninsula Petroleum.
"This is not a political project," Rahim said at a news conference. "It is a commercial undertaking. The project is economically viable."
He said the pipeline would be a substitute for the Strait of Malacca, through which half the world's oil is shipped. The strait is also notorious for robberies and hijackings, although the number of attacks has fallen since Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, which share the waterway, increased patrols in 2005.
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