The recommended configuration, and why the alternatives lose
Upgrade at the mills and inject into the existing pipeline; every liquefied route pays about four dollars a unit for a step this case does not need.
The numbers
| Configuration | Route cost, USD/MMBtu | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Pipeline, compressed gas | 1.65 | Malaysian tariffs, an estimated Thai leg, an injection station |
| Tank container on a feeder service | 5.75 | Liquefaction, container freight, handling. No jetty |
| Marine, liquefied, own jetty | 6.15 | Liquefaction, shipping, an export terminal |
| Road to Johor | 6.12 | Liquefaction, an 800 km haul each way, border, handling |
| Truck compressed gas to Malaysia and toll-liquefy | 8.86 | A 350 km haul of gas at about a sixth the energy density of the liquid, then a toll |
Upgrade at the mills, compress, truck to a collection point near the Songkhla corridor, and inject into the pipeline for delivery to Singapore. Do not liquefy.
Upgrading near the mills rather than at the export hub, because raw biogas at 55% methane carries 0.0209 MMBtu/Nm3 against 0.0361 for upgraded gas, so moving it the full 150 km to the coast would mean about 1.7 times the truck volume for the same delivered energy. Raw gas still moves, but only about 15 km and by pipe, from the mills in a cluster to the train they share. Pipe is what makes that acceptable: a gathering line costs about 703,000 THB/km once, where trucking costs by the tonne-kilometer forever. Both operating regional precedents, Gas Malaysia at Kluang and Straits at Muar, buy compressed gas from producers rather than trucking raw biogas. The client's concept trucks raw gas and does not cost the difference.
Pipeline rather than ship, because liquefaction costs about $4.00/MMBtu and the pipeline alternative costs $0.85/MMBtu on published Malaysian tariffs plus an estimated $0.50 on the Thai leg and $0.30 for an injection station. The route cost is $1.65/MMBtu against $6.15 for marine liquefied delivery. Nothing else in the case is worth $4.50/MMBtu.
The alternatives, priced:
Three of the five cluster between $5.75 and $6.15 because liquefaction at about $4.00/MMBtu dominates all of them, and the transport leg that distinguishes them is worth at most $0.40. The choice among liquefied routes barely matters. The choice between liquefying and not is worth $4.10 to $4.50, which is the whole decision.
One demand pool has no route in that table and it is the largest one the memo found. Singapore's LNG bunker market moved 1,565 tonnes a day in 2025, 84% more than a 300 MW sandbox burns, and its biofuel blends grew 54% in a year under maritime fuel regulation that already binds. A pipeline cannot serve it, because a bunker customer needs liquid fuel alongside a ship. So the bunker market is the one case in which liquefaction earns its $4.00/MMBtu, and it is served today by Straits Bio-LNG from Muar with 250,000 tonnes a year of design capacity and its own jetty.
What that pool would need is a delivered price above the $25.78/MMBtu the marine route requires at this scale. The Rotterdam reference for subsidized bio-LNG bunker fuel is EUR 23.45/MMBtu, a EUR 13.83 premium over conventional liquefied natural gas (Argus), which is roughly $25 to $27 at recent rates and therefore below what this project needs. On that comparison the bunker market is attractive and not attainable at 100 tonnes a day from Southern Thailand, and it would become attainable only at a scale where liquefaction unit cost falls far enough to close a gap of several dollars. Sizing that properly needs a bunker price series this we do not hold, and it is the largest single piece of analysis still outstanding.
Two of these deserve a sentence each because they were plausible before they were priced. The tank container option is the cheapest liquefied route and needs no jetty, which removes capital as well as cost, and it uses feeder services that already run from Songkhla to Singapore and Tanjung Pelepas. It is the right first physical delivery if one is needed to prove a supply chain, and it still does not clear the hurdle. Tolling liquefaction in Malaysia looked attractive because it removes the largest capital item, and it fails on arithmetic: compressed gas carries about a sixth of the energy per truck that liquid does, so hauling it 350 km to Muar costs $3.51/MMBtu before any toll is paid, and the route ends up the most expensive of the five.