Another week, another scan of the Saturday Star newspaper. Here’s a list of job ads in the paper:
And for those of you who were wondering whether Offshore Works exist, I have proof:
Offshore Works Signage
2 Comments | 
engineering | Tagged: Aker Solutions, Ombak | 
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Posted by Wata
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.
4 Comments | engineering | Permalink
Posted by Wata
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.
Leave a Comment » | engineering | Permalink
Posted by Wata
I was going to solicit y’all’s help to help me out here, but the IEM beat me to it.
Jabba’s gonna have a field day on this one.
IEM Council Wata
Anyhow, I’ll be at Technip tomorrow (Friday, 2009-02-26) to give a talk on the Road to be a Professional Engineer.
10 Comments | engineering | Tagged: IEM | Permalink
Posted by Wata
When I was a lad, one of the first things I was taught in fluid mechanics was the hydraulic jump. Though I have not met any use for the theory in my professional life (how many offshore O&G assets have channels rather than piping), I still know theory.
Anyhow, I met a nice example of hydraulic jumps while messing about at Desa Water Park.
You can see a Photosynth of some of the park’s attractions here.
Leave a Comment » | engineering | Tagged: Desa Water Park, Photosynth | Permalink
Posted by Wata
Another week, another scan of the Saturday Star newspaper. Here’s a list of job ads in the paper:
None.
Hey, is the oil & gas industry in Malaysia in really bad shape, you wonder
12 Comments | engineering | Permalink
Posted by Wata
As part of Synergy’s cost cutting measures, we are going through all our basement cupboards, and seeing what can be used in the new company. This is an example of the hard hats we will issue to new grunts:
There used to be a Malaysian company called Protech that was one of the Umbrella Design Contractors (UDC, there’s a story in itself).
Now, my memory get hazy, and I wasn’t particularly interested at the time, but I believe they were bought by Stork, and the local company became Stork Protech. Eventually, Stork Protech sold the local company to Technip, and S P disappeared of the face of Malaysia.
Stork Protech does still exist, though.
Any old timers want to elaborate on this story?
And who know what other age tested equipment we’ll find? Maybe is can convert a SCBA kit to a scuba system.
5 Comments | engineering | Permalink
Posted by Wata
Date line 2009-02-20:
PETRONAS - ROn 92
PUTRAJAYA: The price of RON97 petrol will be increased, when the Government introduces RON95 to replace RON92 in July, said Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shahrir Samad.
He said this was to encourage consumers to use RON95, which was cheaper compared to RON97.
“The Government intends to subsidise more on RON95, when it is introduced in July to make it the same price as RON92,” he told a press conference here on Friday.
He said the price of both RON95 and RON97 petrol would be announced in July.
Don’t know about you, but I would have kept RON95 at the current price, and got RON97 users to pay a premium. If most cars can use RON95, then from the user’s end nothing has been changed, but the government can reduce its fuel subsidies.
From the crude oil price perspective, this will cause … no change at all.
Leave a Comment » | Malaysia, oil and gas | Tagged: petrol price, The Star | Permalink
Posted by Wata
As I go round marketing Synergy, I find all sorts of nooks and crannies that I didn’t know existed. For example, here’s a haven of tranquility behind Wisma Selangor Dredging:
City Centre Retreat - Wisma Selangor Dredging
And here’s a video shoot.
3 Comments | Malaysia | Permalink
Posted by Wata
An interesting topic. So interesting that I’m going refer to the sources here and here, but quote verbatim as well.
BTW, the price of gasoline in the US (2009-02-16), according to my calculation method, is Rm1.85/liter.
Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry Domestic Trade Division Senior Director Ismail Ahmad has revealed to all how the price of petrol and diesel at the pump is calculated in Malaysia.
The formula used to calculate the price of fuel is called the Automatic Pricing Mechanism (in place since 1983) and its function is to stabilize the price of petrol and diesel in the country to a certain extent, via a variable amount sales tax and subsidy, so the retail price only has to be changed if the difference in price exceeds the threshold of the tax and subsidy, at the discretion of the government.
In the table on the left, you can see that the Cost Of Product is not derived from the price of Crude Oil on the NYMEX, but it is based on the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS). The cost is the already refined product, which means the refinery cost are already included and indexed in the MOPS.
You may ask what exactly is the MOPS? Many countries in this region base their fuel prices on the MOPS, including alot of ASEAN countries and even Australia. The index is tracked, assessed and updated by Platts, a McGraw-Hill company in Singapore and is based on the daily average of all trading transactions between buyer and seller of petroleum-based products.
A buyer of a finished (refined) oil product will refer to the MOPS index as a better indicator/benchmark of world prices rather than crude oil prices. The MOPS price typically has a premium over the crude oil prices. This is why the Malaysian government uses MOPS to determine fuel prices rather than NYMEX crude oil prices. Unfortunately it is hard to track MOPS prices as individuals because the data is only available to those who purchase it, unlike the publicly available charts from the NYMEX.
Next up is “Alpha”, which is fixed at 5 sen per liter for petrol and 4 sen per liter for diesel. This is sort of a buffer for the oil companies. If the price of the product that the oil companies buy is higher than the MOPS published price, and the difference is higher than Alpha, the oil company will bear the extra cost, and vice versa.
Operational costs should be self explanatory. They are set at 9.54 sen per liter, 8.98 sen per liter and 8.13 sen per liter for the Peninsular, Sabah and Sarawak respectively. Operational costs cover transport and marketing costs. Then comes where the oil companies make money, which is set at 5 sen per liter for petrol and 2.25 sen per liter for diesel. The stations make more money
per liter of petrol – 12.19 sen per liter for petrol and 7 sen per liter for diesel.Sales tax and subsidies are combined. According to the Sales Tax Act 1972 (this is not something new!), the government CAN collect a maximum sales tax of 58.62 sen per liter for petrol and 19.64 sen per liter for diesel. This comes into effect when the real price of petrol and diesel at the pumps are lower than the fixed retail price. The government can pocket this, or it can revise the fixed fuel price to be lower to remove the difference in price so the savings go into the rakyat’s pocket.
On the other hand, if the fixed retail price is lower than the actual cost of the petrol and diesel at the pumps, the government can pay a subsidy of the same range. Right now the government says it will give a maximum subsidy of 30 sen per liter instead of the maximum allowable subsidy of 58.62 sen per liter, IF NEEDED. This 30 sen maximum subsidy is as part of an improved Automatic Pricing Mechanism, which the Ismail Ahmad says is designed to stabilize fuel retail prices and allow industry players to manage expenditure in a more orderly manner.
So, if you are trying to figure out how crude oil price and pump prices are related, they are disconnected by the use of MOPS.
11 Comments | engineering | Tagged: diesel price, petrol price | Permalink
Posted by Wata
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