May 8, 2008
As a facilities engineer (usually known as an operations engineer to the rest of the oil and gas trade), I have to deal with instrumentation. I deal with old (aka proven) technology, so most of the gadgets I dealt with send signals via the good old 4-20 mA standard, which is reliable and very well understood.
This standard is old school. Current and upcoming field control technologies heading towards LAN-type data systems. One system you hear of often is the Fieldbus protocol. From the write-ups I’ve seen, it defines protocols for levels 1, 2 and 7 of the OSI model, which corresponds to the physical, data and application layers (read this excellent free book on TCP/IP). Ethernet defines levels 1 and 2.
So theoretically, you can swap up your cheap, off-the-shelf home Ethernet gear with industry standard Fieldbus equipment, as long as you can get software that is able to translate between the data and transport layer (layer 3). What’s stopping you?
If you were a real geek, you’d build a Fieldbus router to access the Internet, and maybe make it IPv6-ready as well.
Trivia: did you know that you can send power over Fieldbus lines?
3 Comments | 
business opportunity, engineering, oil and gas | Tagged: ethernet, fieldbus, geek | 
Permalink
Posted by Wata
May 4, 2008
Attorneys and lawyers may get retainer fees, that is ‘a contract between two people or companies where one pays to reserve the other’s time’ (Wikipedia entry).
Now, are there opportunities for engineers get paid for ‘reserved time’? Well, examples are:
- The client wants certain engineers to work on the next phase of a project, but they currently don’t have work to stop the engineers seeking other jobs.
- The client has work coming up which is not guaranteed, and the consulting company wants compensation to keep grunts on the back burner, ready to leap into action once the PO / LOI / gentleman’s agreement kicks in.
What can a company do with their engineers on retainer? Unless they can get full compensation (40 billable hours a week), you need to have the engineers earn their supper.
- Have the engineers based in the office, don’t second them out on 3/6/9 month sessions. Maybe have them contribute but not lead in-house projects.
- Make sure there is sufficient time between the request for engineering support and when the bodies have to be handed over. One week should be sufficient.
- Make sure your accounting systems can handle retainer fees. If not, you will probably have more than 100% reimbursability, infinite return on investment, income coming in without a cost centre to park them, you get the idea.
9 Comments | business opportunity, engineering, oil and gas | Permalink
Posted by Wata
April 15, 2008
Hmm, it’s 10 in the morning, and I’m at the Kerteh Airport tea room. Yup, Kerteh does have an airport, though it’s unique in the sense that it is a PETRONAS owned facility rather than a Malaysian Airports Holdings Bhd asset. The only scheduled flights in and out of here are helicopters designated for offshore locations, and the twice daily Subang-Kerteh turboprop.
No, Kerteh Airport does not have a wifi hotspot, I’m surfing via my N95 and unlimited 3G access. Hey, there’s a business opportunity. Establish a wifi hotspot here, and those who have their own PCs can rent access to it.
I’m scheduled to go offshore, but there seems to be a dearth of choppers. Me and another 40 people are hanging around the airport, in the KIV category. Let’s hope that I can get on a chopper this afternoon, if not the next 2 hours waiting to see if I get on the 1400 flight is will be wasted.
What’s the engineering spin? I work for a consultant company, and when you cut a contract, you should make sure that hours spent in transit are chargeable. Considering the state of transport these days, at least you get some compensation for listening to muzak.
6 Comments | business opportunity, Malaysia, oil and gas | Tagged: choppers, Kerteh, Kertih airport | Permalink
Posted by Wata
April 13, 2008
Another week, another scan of the Saturday Star newspaper. Here’s an incomplete list of job ads in the paper:
Happy hunting. Let me have some feedback if you find this list useful. Even better, spread the news. PayPal donations welcome.
Leave a Comment » | business opportunity, engineering, oil and gas | Tagged: Chiyoda, ESSO, ExxonMobil, GPS, optimal, oval, sgs, star | Permalink
Posted by Wata
April 12, 2008
I recently performed an internal meter tube inspection using a tractor type system. It was great in allowing us to view the whole meter tube, all 20+ meters of it. As the tube was a single piece, we couldn’t take it apart and touch or visually inspect the inner surface with the naked eye.
Or naked eyes, as it were. Stereoscopic vision allows us to get a feeling of depth, assuming we can’t touch an object. From the images transmitted back to us by the tractor, it was unclear whether a blemish was a pit, a bubble or a surface mark. We were limited in the ability to view a spot at different angles, which would give us a better three dimensional feel.
This leads on to my question, why doesn’t someone invent a stereoscopic remote inspection system? It’s an old idea. It’s been done on a large scale (doesn’t get bigger than the sun), small scale (microscopes), so why not at a scale that is useful to us operational grunts?
2 Comments | business opportunity, engineering, oil and gas | Tagged: inspection, meter, nasa, stereo, tractor, visioneng | Permalink
Posted by Wata
April 7, 2008
Another week, another scan of the Saturday Star newspaper. Here’s an incomplete list of job ads in the paper:
-
-
Giant is looking for management trainees in Kerteh, a prime oil and gas centre. I suspect that it will be located in the white elephant that will be called Kerteh Mall.
-
Pöyry is looking for a whole mess of people in Bangkok, Abu Dhabi, KL, Brunei. Disclosure: I work for Pöyry KL. Hey, apply and say you saw the advert here.
-
-
This is interesting. RasGas is recruiting, but using an agent in Jakarta.
Email address and
here.
Happy hunting. Let me have some feedback if you find this list useful. Even better, spread the news. PayPal donations welcome.
1 Comment | business opportunity, engineering, Malaysia, oil and gas | Tagged: ExxonMobil, Giant, Kerteh, Poyry, Qatar Petroleum, RasGas | Permalink
Posted by Wata
April 5, 2008
Full disclosure: I was a student at Cambridge (England, not the other Cambridge).
I noticed that, of all the other department tea rooms I went to, the tea pot in ChemEng dribbled the most. Is this done on purpose, to highlight that we as ChemEngs should not apply our skills indoors, but should go forth and find other tearooms to invade, and find something else to gripe about and inspire our collective juices?
For the non-ChemEngs, no drip teapots are sold here, and written about here and here.
The writer of the above article mentions that “tannin in the tea stains the surface of the inside of the teapot, this in effect in simple terms makes the surface smoother.” Now, a lot of money is spent offshore to increase the throughput of crude pipelines by reducing the amount of friction between the fluid and the pipe walls. A lower pressure drop means for a given arrival (anding) pressure, a given upstream pump can provide more flow (look up a typical pump flow-head diagram).
Is a tannin a miracle drag reducing agent?
3 Comments | business opportunity, engineering, oil and gas | Tagged: chem eng, crude, drag reducing agent, no drip, tannin, teapot | Permalink
Posted by Wata
April 3, 2008
I earlier reported that TCOT / OSC were being handed over to PCSB. Now I can note that ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Malaysia Inc’s (EMEPMI) Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) were extended.
At 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, EMEPMI signed with PETRONAS and PETRONAS Carigali the Main Principles Agreement that will lead to the execution of a new Production Sharing Contract (PSC).
In summary, the new PSC will enable EMEPMI to continue production of the existing reserves in the seven fields currently under the 1995 PSC until 2033. It will also be pursuing additional oil development and will have the opportunity to pursue Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) activities.
As part of the arrangement, EMEPMI will retain operatorship of all the existing offshore fields, and will extend this to 2033. Operatorship of the onshore assets, and in particular the Terengganu Crude Oil Terminal (TCOT), will be transferred earlier than initially planned, and will be accelerated from 2012 to no later than June 2009 along with the gas and condensate facilities (i.e. OSC). This transfer is strategic to PETRONAS due to national interest considerations.
Other aspects of EMEPM’s current onshore operations at Kemaman Supply Base will
remain as is.
9 Comments | business opportunity, engineering, Malaysia, oil and gas | Tagged: EMEPMI, EOR, KSB, OSC, PCSB, Petronas, psc, TCOT | Permalink
Posted by Wata
March 18, 2008
My family and I went to see the fireflies along the Yak Yak river, near Ijok, Kemaman, Terengganu. We went after dinner at Tong Juan, which is in Chukai, and well known among oilman for its stuffed crabs (though to be honest, they aren’t the only stuffed crab game in town).
Turns out that the firefly attraction is not well developed. You have to arrange for a boatman to meet you at the jetty. The boats are equipped with electric motors, so the tour is nice and silent.
The light produced from the stern of the firefly comes from the oxidation of luciferase with luciferin as a catalyst. The reaction is apparently 90% efficient. It got me thinking, is there a place for bio luminescence in the oil & gas industry? One place it could be useful is in the production of Class I Div 2 (or Div 1) lighting sources. There is little heat generated, and possibly requires some sort of pump to mix the two chemicals together. Concerns entrepreneurs have to think about are:
- light intensity (is the light bright enough to be useful).
- cost (the chemicals have to be made, most likely through bio engineering).
- transportability (two chemicals have to be kept oxygen free till the time of use).
- engineering (circulation systems, delivery of oxygen, control mechanisms).
Anyone have any other ideas?
6 Comments | business opportunity, engineering, Malaysia, oil and gas | Tagged: Class I Div 2, Firefly, light source | Permalink
Posted by Wata
Wata - Malaysian Oil and Gas Engineer 