Source: Barrel Blog | Eric Yep, Senior Editor | December 21, 2017

Earlier this month, Asia’s largest oil trading hub, Singapore, launched its first electric vehicle-sharing service with 80 cars and 30 charging stations. This will eventually hit 1,000 electric cars and 500 stations with 2,000 charging points.

The service was launched by BlueSG, a subsidiary of France’s Bolloré Group that runs the world’s largest electric car sharing service Autolib in Paris. BlueSG claims the Singapore electric vehicle sharing service will become the world’s second largest.

The fleet is largely meant to fight congestion in an increasingly densely populated city.

But there is another element to the move that’s hard to ignore.

It will introduce electric cars in one of the world’s top oil trading hubs and bunkering ports, a bastion of the fossil fuel industry that also includes one of the largest oil refining centers with a dense concentration of petroleum storage.

The irony is palpable. It’s a bit like Saudi Aramco investing in Tesla or Qatar investing in nuclear power generation. Or shipyards building zero-emission ships to carry crude oil and coal cargoes.

But once you get past the humor, the long-term implications for oil and related businesses are far more serious. The introduction of electric cars is a tacit acknowledgement of the global move towards electrification and away from liquid petroleum fuels in transportation.

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