from the ground Up

CRUDE oil hit a new record of nearly US$120 a barrel yesterday as a workers’ strike closed a major British oil pipeline and fresh violence in Nigeria reignited supply fears.

Rationing is already being enforced at some British outlets amid panic buying.

Soaring oil prices are hurting Singapore car drivers at the petrol pump, just as they are adding to corporate costs around the globe - fuelling growing inflation fears.

The question on everyone’s lips now: Just how high will oil prices go?

ONE design defect was all it took for a manufacturer’s toxic waste to leak into
the water supply of a nearby community.
The firm – faced with legal action by many people affected by the pollution –
had to pay millions of dollars in compensation.
It was, however, fortunate in one respect: A growing awareness of environmental
issues meant it had taken out insurance against such accidents, so its costs
were covered.
The demand for this type of liability insurance is growing despite its
relatively new status in the Asia-Pacific, said environmental risk expert Karl
Russek.

House-hunting for soon-to-be- married Jolyn Toh used to be a discouraging affair as prices were out of her reach.

But things are looking up for the engineer.

Just six months ago, home- owners in Bukit Batok, where she is looking to buy an HDB flat, used to demand nothing less than $50,000 cash upfront.

In the last month, however, this has dipped to about $20,000 to $30,000. “This difference means my fiance and I can now afford a home before our wedding in July,” said Ms Toh, 25.

New government figures released last Friday will bring cheer to those hunting for their dream Housing Board flat as they reveal that median cash-over-valuation (COV) prices in many popular estates like Marine Parade, Queenstown and Clementi are falling.

BUSINESSES should take the initiative and invest in making their operations more environmentally friendly, National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan said yesterday. Those that learn to be more resource-efficient ahead of the competition can gain a “first-mover advantage in a new carbon-constrained world”, he said.

THE hugely popular deferred payment scheme (DPS) – scrapped last year – may now
be a thing of the past, but what sort of shadow will it cast on the Singapore
property market going forward?
This has been the question on market watchers’ lips since the Urban
Redevelopment Authority (URA) revealed last week that as many as 29,250 homes
offered under the DPS, including 5,760 unsold units as at the end of last
month, will be completed from this year to 2013.

A LANDMARK project to build an ecologically sustainable city from scratch in Tianjin will see a touch of HDB living in northern China. It will feature an LRT station within walking distance of flats, which will also be close to amenities such as eateries and schools – all familiar sights in HDB estates here – to cut down on the need for transportation.

SINGAPOREANS should get accustomed to the thinking that environmental warming through climate change can be bad for health. The Government is spending $200,000 a day on vector control to prevent dengue fever from growing into an endemic public health menace. It has been barely weeks since the health authorities managed to stop an outbreak of chikungunya from spreading beyond Little India. Global warming may be implicated in these diseases more than is known.

Swanky new facilities at Jurong Lake District will turn area into top commercial hub The property market might have slowed in recent months, but for home hunters seeking good-value, long-term investments, there is one suburban estate screaming for attention: Jurong. The Housing Board (HDB) town in the western region of Singapore might conjure up images of sprawling factories and sleepy suburbia, but in 10 to 15 years’ time, it will undergo a transformation that could propel the estate to the forefront of the suburban property market, say industry experts.

BY NEXT year, the world must reach an agreement on curbing greenhouse gas emissions or businesses could face a crisis of confidence, warned a leading British economist on climate change. Failure to do so will also ruin all the efforts made to mitigate climate change, said Lord Nicholas Stern at the London School of Economics (LSE) forum.

Ever since I’ve started covering climate change, there isn’t one person’s name that I come across more frequently than Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, than probably former US vice president Al Gore.

Gore, I’ve had the chance to meet last August and save asking questions from the floor, I didn’t have very much interaction with him.

Yesterday, however, I had the privilege of meeting Lord Stern, most famously known as the author of the Stern Review - a 700-page ground-breaking report on the financial impact of climate change on the global economy, and actually interviewing him in depth. It was one of the best doorstops I’d done; he was articulate, his responses were stimulating, and he was pretty charming in person, and his talk was accompanied by that famed British sense of sardonic humour.
[click on link above to read full story and interview]