In February 1988 the Energy Program of the East-West Center in Honolulu and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore agreed to undertake a joint research project. The goals of the Joint ISEAS and East-West Center Energy Project are to develop a data base and conduct analyses on key aspects of the energy economies of the Asia-Pacific region and its major constituent nations. A further purpose of the Project is to utilize the expertise of the Energy Program at the East-West Center for the development of a research capability within ISEAS with respect to major aspects of energy supply and demand of the region.

It is fitting that one of the first outcomes of the Joint Energy Project is the publication of Houston of Asia: The Singapore Petroleum Industry by Tilak Doshi. The “Houston of Asia” is an apt metaphor that captures Singapore's dominating regional role as provider of petroleum refining, blending, and storage services, exporter of petroleum products, port of call for bunker and jet fuels, and spot market for the Asia-Pacific petroleum trade. Singapore, in short, is at the very heart of the web of linkages that constitute the Pacific Basin's oil economy.

As the author points out in his introduction to the monograph, the industry has received scant academic attention despite the scale and importance of its activities. To be sure, the subject is both prominent within and well covered by trade and business journals catering to the “East of Suez” information needs of the world petroleum industry. Yet the Singapore petroleum industry has remained an almost mythical creature, the detailed understanding of which it seems is the special province of an elite of expatriate oilmen “who deal in the stuff” and some senior officials in government. The author, a Singapore national who is sponsored by ISEAS and currently pursuing his research interests with the Energy Program at the East-West Center, is appropriately a young economist associated with neither industry nor government.