The legacy things we have on our offshore assets (Malaysia’s, not mine).
Offshore Toilet Stop
September 21, 2016IEM Shout Out – 2016/10 One Day Course on Demolition Using Explosives
September 20, 2016My technical division will be hosting a 1 day course on the 20th October, 2016, presented by Brig General Mustapha Omar, Ir. Look Keman Sahari and Ir. Dr. Mohamed Alias Yusof. It is worth 6.5 CPD points, and held at Wisma IEM. I expect that you register using your actual names, not your Pokemon handles.
Malaysia is considered a young country and rapidly developing. We see many new high rise building coming up even on small plot of land in city area. This is due to high cost of land. However, anything that goes up some day, sometimes it will have to come down. It can be due to aging, high cost of maintenance, availability of new technology, new planning by the owner or authority or whatever other reasons. It is very rare when forwarding development plan, the subject of the need for demolition later is ever considered. Bringing down a building or any structure by mechanical means for example will subject the neighbours to vibration, dust noise and numerous other dangers to them for a long time. It may even take several months. There are also incidents where demolition workers were injured and some were killed in line of duty. Demolition by using explosive may require the services of civil/structural engineer working together with the blasters and blasting engineer. The preparation may take months to study the structural plan of the building to be taken down, to survey the surrounding area and plan how to mitigate the effect of airblast, fragmentation, dust and ground vibration.
Hj Look Keman bin Sahari graduated in mining engineering from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland in 1979. He joined the Mines Department initially as Geotechnical engineer specialising in Slope engineering particularly technical investigation on slope failures. He later joined the Inspectorate division of the Department until retirement in 1996. In 1990 he continued his studies at Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University, England and obtained MSc in Explosives Ordnance Engineering. His interest was then on the use of Shape Charge in the industry. On retirement he worked as Consultant Engineer in the use of explosive for mining, quarrying and construction. He had also served as expert witness in control blasting in Arbitration. As a committee member of IEM Training Board he had attended many courses particularly on Geotechnical Engineering, Health and Safety, forensic engineering and also tunnelling as Auditor. He is a Professional Engineer with Practicing Certificate and a Fellow of IEM. He had also given lecture on explosives application at IEM and Institute of Quarrying, Malaysia. He is also a qualified Shotfirer..
Brig General Mustapha bin Omar is a qualified Ammunition Technical Officer and had rose through the rank in the Malaysian Army to become to Chief Ammunition Technical officer He is an expert in the application of military explosives including demolition. He also had a Diploma in Industrial Management from UKM in 1993 and subsequently Bachelor in Business Administration from UPM in 2001. In 2002-2003 he further his studies at Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University at MSc level in Explosives Ordnance Engineering. He is also knowledgeable in the use of commercial explosives and had attended a Shotfirer Course organised by Institute of Quarrying, Malaysia. He is currently a Senior Research Officer at STRIDE ( Institute Penyelidekan Sains Teknologi Pertahanan)
Associate Professor Ir. Dr. Mohamed Alias bin Yusof obtained his Bachelor Degree in Civil Engineering from UTM in 2002, MSc in Project Management from UITM in 2005 and PhD in Civil Engineering in 2012 from University Pertahanan National Malaysia. He is also a Professional Engineer registered with the Board of Engineer. Dr Alias specialises in the Blast Effect on Structure. He is also knowledgeable in Commercial and Military explosives and had also attended course in Explosives Engineering at Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University He also attended Shotfirer Course and Blast Vibration, Monitoring and ControlCourse at Institute of Quarrying Malaysia.
Saturday Star 2016-09-17– Job Opportunities
September 19, 2016Happy Brunei Week.
Donate to your favorite charity (me), buy my recommendations, or through my Amazon store. Or get the Young Turks series (3 books until I can get YTP republished). Where are those corporate sponsors? Or throw donations at me, my camera dive case flooded, and I need a new replacement. Heck, if you want to send me a Canon 5D Mk III plus dive case, I will not say no.
- A mate of mine is looking for a MD/EngMan type person to help run his engineering company (the main business is skid manufacturing). He can’t handle the work volume, so you know that his oil & gas company is bucking the trend, and has a bright future ahead. If I know you, send your CV’s to me. If I don’t know you, send your CV along anyway, but note I will contact your references. I am not getting a commission for this ad, you know.
- I have a feeling that The Star isn’t the preferred O&G job recruitment portal now. I see more adverts via social media. What do you think, is it a step change that the papers need to embrace?
- I’m looking for jobs for 4Q2016. Send me your POs.
Support your local bookshop! Bookalicious at The Summit Subang is a good choice. I think they focus on trilogies, quadrilogies, and other ologies. Tell them I sent you, and enjoy the look of perplexity on their faces. Those of you who have dropped my name, thanks!
Food choice of the week? Any weight loss diet.
Let’s get a bit nostalgic with the book selection.
Wetter, Louder, Stickier: A Baby Blues Collection (Baby Blues Scrapbook), BBXX: Baby Blues: Decades 1 & 2, Bedlam
Malaysia’s PETRONAS Voices Concerns Over Sarawak’s Work Permit Moratorium
September 18, 2016Report from Rigzone, perhaps giving a different slant on this historic milestone, for which we will celebrate the anniversary in 2017, 2021 and 2066.
Dateline 2016-08-10, Rigzone:
Malaysia’s national oil company (NOC) Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS) voiced concerns Tuesday over a recent decision made by the state government in petroleum rich Sarawak to place a moratorium on all new applications for permits for non-state NOC employees to work within its borders.
“PETRONAS believes the decision, announced over the weekend, may have been made based on the misperception that PETRONAS’ recent group-wide business restructuring had unfairly impacted its employees from Sarawak,” the NOC said in a press release.
The issue surfaced last week after Suarah Petroleum Group (SPG) President Hamin Yusuf commented on the abolition of 29 permanent positions, resulting in the retrenchment of 13 experienced staff from Sarawak in PETRONAS’ upstream restructuring exercise in the state, local media Borneo Post reported Aug. 4. Hamin added that the restructuring exercise would hamper the development of skilled workforce and the job market in Sarawak.
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Shout Out – Talk on “Trilogy of Rare Earth Elements”
September 17, 2016This is a shout out for the IEM. My Technical Division will be hosting a talk on the 1st October, 2016 by Professor Ka Kheng Tany. It’ll be at 9am (makan-makan at 8:30), before the AGM
Deng Xiaoping famously said in 1992 that “The Middle East has oil. China has rare earths.” Following China’s reduction of the export of the critical raw materials in 2009, some countries tried to neutralize China’s 95 percent global supply of rare earths. The performance and fate of three rare-earth plants will be scrutinized with four factors: Process technology, Profitability, Siting and HSE (health, safety and the environment). The RE trilogy tells of the tragic extinction of an old plant and the exuberance of trauma of a new one in Malaysia, and the bankruptcy of the world’s oldest and massively reworked plant in America. More important, their massive failures have very adverse impacts in industries and investment, although they also offer valuable insights and lessens to the public and bureaucrats, investors and users of rare earth elements. The myth of China’s monopoly of REE will be exposed. Substitutes and recycling of REE, alternative technology for efficiency improvement and new technology will be discussed briefly.
Professor Ka Kheng Tan studied Chemical Engineering at University of Birmingham (UK) in 1977 and Environmental Engineering at University of California at Berkeley in USA. He conducted PhD research at Cambridge University and developed the Theory of Transient Instability caused by unsteady-state diffusion in non-Newtonian liquids. He has more than 35 years’ experience in the academia as a lecturer and professor, and four years in industries, and provides expertise and consultancy service to government agencies, World Bank and private firms over the last thirty years. He was inaugural Head of Department of Chemical Engineering at University Putra of Malaysia and Director of School of Engineering and Science at Curtin University (Malaysia) before joining HELP University. Professor Tan is a pioneer and world leader in transient hydrodynamics instability theory driven by buoyancy, surface tension and shear force in Newtonian and non-Newtonian liquids, porous media and plasma. The theory has been successfully applied to the prediction of the boundary layer instability and the formation of mantle plumes in deep earth, which has been presented to the prestigious Penrose Conference and Beijing Geology University, IUTAM Symposium, Cambridge University and Tsinghua University.
Register here or download the form here. A map to Wisma IEM is presented here.
IEM Shout Out – CETD 30th AGM 2016-10
September 17, 2016The Chemical Engineering Technical Division AGM will be held at Wisma IEM Wisma IEM, 01- Auditorium Tan Sri Prof. Chin Fung Kee, Third Floor. You get 2 CPD points.
It will be held at 11am on Saturday, 1st October 2016.
Register here, and download the flyer here. A map to Wisma IEM is presented here.
Come, y’all and heckle us. We need a quorum.
IEM Shout Out – Talk on “Gaslift System Optimization”
September 17, 2016My technical division will be hosting a talk on the 21st September, 2016. It is worth 2 CPD points, and held at Wisma IEM. The course will be presented by Ir. Ridhuan Affandi bin Abu Bakar.
Gas lift is one of the most widely used artificial lift techniques. It plays an important role in Malaysia’s oil fields production, as around 70% of active oil production strings are currently on gas lift. This shows how critical gas lift contribution to sustain Malaysia’s oil production. It is important to have good practices in gas lift implementation to ensure successful and optimum gas lift operation. Sub-optimized gas lift operation not only wastes the valuable gas resources and compression capacity but also resulting in a system bottleneck, if the planning for gas lift is not in place. Gas lift optimization can bring value for immediate and significant production gain and perceived as the most cost effective in production enhancement.
As the efficiency of overall gas lift system is much dependent on network integration between subsurface and surface system, a holistic view on performance and setup of each system is crucial to obtain optimum gas lift operation.
This talk will cover and discuss the gaps identification in the current gas lift implementation from the Surface Engineering’s perspective. The recommendation and best practices for gas lift optimization effort with associated oil gain will also be discussed and shared in this talk
Ir. Ridhuan Affandi bin Abu Bakar graduated from Universiti Putra Malaysia with a degree in Chemical Engineering. He has 10 years of working experience in the engineering industry, covering the design of onshore and offshore facilities. He has involved in conceptual, FEED (Front End Engineering Design), detailed design and modification projects for various types of structures (including wellhead platforms, central processing platforms, FPSO, production-drilling platforms and living quarter (PDQ)
He has worked on a number of projects globally including Singapore, Vietnam, United Kingdom and Iran. Recently, he has represented PETRONAS MPM (Malaysia Petroleum Management) to conduct assessment and evaluation on gas lift operation for the selected fields and Oil & Gas Operators in Malaysia.
He is currently a Process Specialist who provides consultancy services to the Oil & Gas industry.
Perak to have new gas network
September 16, 2016Do you need a custody transfer philosophy? You know who to call.
Dateline 2016-08-10, The Star:
The lack of piped-in gas supply, which has been preventing Perak from attracting major investors to the state, will be a thing of the past when a new gas supply network is built.
International Trade and Industry Minister II Datuk Seri Ong Ka Chuan said work on the gas supply network was expected to start in October and would take about two years to be completed.
Ong said it would cost about RM180mil to implement the gas supply system, whereby Gas Malaysia has agreed to allocate RM120mil, while the remaining RM60mil will come from the state and the Federal Government.
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IEM Shout Out – Technical Writing Workshop 2016-10
September 15, 2016This is a shout out for the IEM. My Technical Division will hosting the above seminar on the 4th and 5th October, 2016, presented by Ir. Danaraj Chandrasegaran.
This two day course is designed to help you develop skills that will enable you to produce clear and effective technical documents. We will focus on the basic principles of good writing which technical writing shares with other forms of writing and on types of documents common in technical fields and organizations. While the emphasis will be on writing of technical information, oral communication will also form an important component of the course as well.
Participants learn the protocol for proper technical report writing. Subjects include punctuation, grammar and research techniques, as well as the creation of title pages, tables of contents, format pages, glossaries and appendices. It will also cover other common engineering documents such as specifications, technical reports, operating manuals and emails. The workshop will also emphasize style, tone and the importance of writing in plain, comprehensible English.
As a great deal of class time will be spent in a variety of interactive formats, active participation is essential.
Ir. Danaraj Chandrasegaran, PEng, MIEM, CEng, MIMechE graduated from University Teknologi Malaysia in 2001 with Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (Hons), subsequently, pursued his Master Degree in University of Malaya. He has published in international journals and conferences in the past. His career has a diverse outlook on project execution ranging from building construction, marine, mining and energy industry; as a mechanical engineer. He is also a Chartered Engineer of Engineering Council UK and Corporate Member of Institution of Mechanical Engineers (UK).
You can register for the above event here, and flyers may be obtained here.

Posted by Wata 





