KUALA LUMPUR: Once at the heart of the global spice trade, Malacca is pumping nearly US$3 billion into an ambitious plan to put itself in demand in a different hot commodity – oil.
The Malaysian state is reclaiming land along the Strait of Malacca to build a port that can handle the biggest tankers on the planet. The target: A slice of traffic sailing on to nearby Singapore, the top but congested trading hub in a region with US$600 billion in annual oil trade – a third of global oil demand.