Saturday Star 2009-03-14 – Job Opportunities

March 16, 2009

Another week, another scan of the Saturday Star newspaper. Here’s a list of job ads in the paper:

  • ExxonMobil has an advert for a wellwork supervisor. Did I mention an ex-EPMI gathering is planned for April 24th?
  • Unintentionally I’m sure, but on the same page, Helix RDA has an advert for reservoir engineers, completion engineer. Helix RDA is a fully integrated subsurface and wells consultancy.
  • Occidental Petroleum of Qatar Ltd. (OPQL) is looking for an operations engineer. Job ref: 6175. To apply via the Internet logon to: www.oxy.com, click Careers, click Available positions, click Vie Open Position, Select: Location QA-Doha. There, I’ve contributed to the Malaysian brain drain. PETRONAS, please stop me.
  • M3Nergy is looking for a marine engineer (conversion). That’s converting a tanker to an FSO/FPSO.

Sigh, since I have moved with Synergy out of KL, will you patronise Chee Meng in my memory? Or invite me to meetings around Bukit Bintang at lunchtime? Is he doing packet specials?

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IEM Shout Out – Talk on ‘Malaysia Oil & Gas Deepwater Development – The Experience Thus Far’

March 14, 2009

This is a shout out for the IEM. My Technical Division will be having a talk on the 19th March as titled above. It’ll be at 5:30 pm (makan-makan at 5:00) at the IEM , Bangunan Ingenieur, PJ.

My friend, Ahmad Sedek will be giving the presentation. The synopsis is:

It is anticipated that there will be less commercially viable oil & gas fields in the Malaysian shallow water. As such, there is an equal push towards developing fields in the deep (200-1000m water depth) and ultra-deep (more than 1000m water depth) water. In line with this shift, PETRONAS has set the tone by stating its ambition to make Malaysia as the regional deepwater hub and, along with its Production Sharing Contractors, has set the ball rolling by the successful oil production from Kikeh Deepwater Development. The presentation intends to share presentor’s general experience in the deepwater projects, which covers background, introduction to technologies, challenges/opportunities, and Kikeh development examples.

Come all, and get your 2 CPD hours.

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Taken from AOG – Kutei Basin

March 13, 2009

Taking the article from the Asian Oil & Gas magazine,

More Kutei Basin fields in development frame: Indonesia’s first producing deepwater field, West Seno, looks set to be joined by several other fields in the Kutei Basin in the Makassar Strait off the coast of East Kalimantan, all under the operatorship of Chevron.

AOG 2009-03 Kutei Basin

AOG 2009-03 Kutei Basin

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Flooding at UOA II

March 12, 2009

Just to show you I do know what’s happening in town, the 18th floor of UOA II had a nice pool of water build up over the weekend (2009-03-09). The root cause was allegedly a broken water pipe that fed into an office pantry.

What you need to know is that there are no built in water supplies to the individual offices, i.e. someone (I know who) jury rigged a pipe for their convenience.

I hope that someone pays for all the damage caused on the floor.

The 18th floor has a number of oil & gas companies. Go visit them sometime.

Lata Iskandar

Lata Iskandar

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Recruitment – Looking for Engineers

March 11, 2009

As a favour to an ex-colleague, I am reposting this job opening for experienced engineers. The position is Malaysia based. As far as I can understand, there are positions for 10+ and 5+ years offshore experience. You’ll be working with an FPSO, and out on the field a lot. In this case, all disciplines are welcome to apply.

Send an email here if you are interested. And I get to vet the applications.

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Can PETRONAS stem the O&G Brain Drain?

March 10, 2009

Here’s a thought for you. Some O&G production companies don’t like their former staff coming back and interfacing with their current workforces for a number of reasons:

  • morale: staffer is doing the same (or less!) work for more pay.
  • dilemma: would a recently departed staff member be as loyal to the project, she’s already shown a tendency to grab opportunities regardless of timing.

And I guess it would be logical that the longer the time between departure and returning to the ex-employer fold, the less the pain of reconciliation.

In addition, there have been discussions in the past about production companies (aka PSCs) pinching staff from each other.

Now, PETRONAS / PCSB has tentacles into all PSCs in Malaysia. If there is such a policy, doesn’t that mean that any staff who leave PNAS are discriminated against when applying for work with a production company? Sure, they could apply to work with the service providers, but I would think that really isn’t where their strengths lie.

So, what do you do? Some staffers join a ‘stop gap’ company to reset their CVs as it were before working for (notice I didn’t say applying to) a PSC.

Another option is to get out of Malaysia altogether. If you agree to the above logic, or a variant of, you would stop wondering why PNAS staff go overseas once they decide to leave the ship. There’s a push and pull factor involved here.

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Saturday Star 2009-03-07 – Job Opportunities

March 9, 2009

Another week, another scan of the Saturday Star newspaper. Here’s a list of job ads in the paper:

  • OTEC  Kemajuan, Advance Gas Turbine Solutions Sdn. Bhd and Rolls Wood OTEC are looking for people. Let’s see, OTEC is looking for field service representatives, assistant project engineers and customer support engineers, RWO is looking for assistant project engineers, and AGTS is looking for field service representatives. You’ll have to email in to OTEC, AGTS and RWO respectively.
  • Talisman is looking for a Subsea Inspections engineer.
  • Muhibbah Petrochemical Engineering is looking for electrical / planning / contracts engineer. You can send your resume in here, here, or here.

Sigh, since I have moved with Synergy out of KL, will you patronise Chee Meng in my memory? Or invite me to meetings around Bukit Bintang at lunchtime? Is he doing packet specials

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Saturday Star 2009-02-28 – Job Opportunities

March 2, 2009

Another week, another scan of the Saturday Star newspaper. Here’s a list of job ads in the paper:

  • Here’s a new one. Ombak is looking for people. They want trainee field engineers. You gotta submit something by March 4th. You can mail them at zamri@omback-marine.com. There offcies are at Kelana Square.
  • Aker Solutions is recruiting Lead and Senior engineers for all disciplines. Apply here.

And for those of you who were wondering whether Offshore Works exist, I have proof:

Offshore Works Signage

Offshore Works Signage

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Engineering Computer Language of Choice?

February 28, 2009

I had a meeting with some folks about a certain program which calculates some important numbers (gotta be vague, I don’t want to be banned from KL).

Anyhow, they mentioned that the program is written in Fortran 77. When they asked their IT folks about maintaining the program, they were told that there were no Fortran programmers to be had.

I find that difficult to believe. When I was a young lad, it was Fortran or nothing to do engineering calcs. The famous Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) programmed in F (there was a C version if you were so inclined).

So, what language is taught nowadays to young Turks? If it’s BASIC, please murder your IT lecturer and bury the body during a moonless night. I assume it’s either C++ or one of the .NET languages. I wouldn’t think you’d do engineering calcs with Java or Perl or PHP, though I guess you could.

Anyhow, if you are pretty sharp with Fortran, let me know and I may keep you in mind for something in the future. Oh, and be familiar with VMS and DB2 as well.

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Vietnam’s First Refinery

February 27, 2009

Rumour has it that “the first flow of commercial oil” was turning on the crude distillation column… and turning it off later.

From the pages of Bernama:

Vietnam’s First Oil Refinery Begins Production

QUANG NGAI, Feb 23 (Bernama) — Vietnam officially inaugurated its first oil refinery on Sunday, in what is being hailed as an important event in the country’s development and energy security, Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung attended the inauguration ceremony and pressed the button to launch the first flow of commercial oil of the Dung Quat oil refinery that is located in the central province of Quang Ngai.

I believe the other comment that the refinery has received is that it is in the middle of the country, far from any petroleum production centers. What gives? Here’s an article from Reuters:

The Vietnamese government may view cases like Yen’s as proof its decision to build the refinery here was visionary, bringing economic opportunity to one of Vietnam’s poorest regions.

But economists and political analysts have criticised the refinery project as, perhaps, the mother of all examples of how politics interferes with economic decision-making in Vietnam.

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