Petrol Price Drop (again) Malaysia

October 2, 2008

From the alibaba site (I can’t seem to find the Star article):

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 24 – Malaysia will cut petrol prices by 10 sen to 2.45 ringgit ($0.719) per litre from Thursday, Domestic Trade Minister Shahrir Samad said on Wednesday.

The government also cut diesel prices by 10 sen to 2.40 ringgit a litre, Shahrir told reporters.

This the second reduction in fuel prices in a month following lower global crude prices. The move is likely to help curb inflation, which hit a 27-year high of 8.5 percent in July and remained at that level in August, according to data released on Wednesday. ($1=3.408 Malaysian Ringgit)

 For those in Malaysia: you must know this by now. Those overseas: this is an interesting titbit of information.

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Eid Mubarak

October 1, 2008

It’s a change of pace today. Malaysia celebrates the first day of Shawal, so I’m taking the day off. Please remember that there are a lot of engineers and technicians out there producing hydrocarbons to keep the nation running.

Pool Sukajadi Hotel, Bandung

Pool Sukajadi Hotel, Bandung

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Hopes high for release of second MISC vessel and crew

September 30, 2008

Taking straight from Malaysia’s The Star:

PUTRAJAYA: Hopes are high that negotiations with Somalian pirates for the release of the Malaysian International Shipping Corporation (MISC) vessel MT Bunga Melati Dua and its crew members will be successful.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said yesterday that negotiations for the release of MT Bunga Melati Dua were still ongoing following successful talks for the release of MT Bunga Melati Lima.

Abdullah said: “All its crew members have been released and the vessel is now heading to Djibouti (East Africa). The crew members are all in good health.

“A medical team from the Defence Ministry comprising doctors, medical assistants and counsellors are providing assistance to the crew.”

…

MT Bunga Melati Dua, with a crew of 29 Malaysian and 10 Filipinos was hijacked on Aug 19 in the Gulf of Aden where rampant maritime piracy is taking place.

One of the Filipino crew members was killed when he was hit by a stray bullet.

Ten days later, the MT Bunga Melati Lima, with 36 Malaysian and five Filipino crew members, was also hijacked while sailing from Yanbu, Saudi Arabia to Singapore.

Malaysia has sent two warships, the KD Lekiu and KD Inderapura, and an offshore patrol vessel, the KD Pahang, to escort MISC ships sailing in the risky waters following the two hijacking incidents.

The last paragraph is a bit strange. Didn’t Malaysia and Indonesia complain when the US proposed to escort marine vessels throught the Melaka Straits using armed vessels and personnel?

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Saturday Star 2008-09-27 – Job Opportunities

September 29, 2008

Let’s see what the Star has in store for us this week:

  • Global Process Systems(GPS) is looking for engineers, among those listed are senior process eng, junior process, mech eng, structural, piping and a lot of designers. Emailand web presence available. I have the impression that GPS KL could do with a lot more growth and expertise if it wants to grow up from package suppliers to compete with the EPC boys.
  • My company, Pöyry, is advertising for people. We’re trying to go multi-discipline, hence the mess of senior positions open to you for the taking! Please join, we would be so happy, and maybe someone can teach me non-process stuff (I reaaally don’t get electrical).

Hey, is that it?

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Offshore Equipment

September 27, 2008

If you had to figure out what the ID number and service of the item below is, how would you go about it?

Offshore Equipment - corroded

Offshore Equipment - corroded

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Registration with the BEM

September 26, 2008

People have asked me about how the Board of Engineers, Malaysia (BEM) registration categories for Professional Engineers clashes with their work experience. Questions have come to me either when I’m presenting on the topic, during IEM meetings, and over the ‘Net.

For those not in the know, it’s a legal requirement to register with the Board within 6 months of starting work. There’s a form you fill up. You have to state that you want to be registered in the same field you graduated in.

Now, what happens when your work experience does not match your degree? Or you want to be apply to be professionally registered in a speciality of your discipline. Here are my thoughts:

  • You have to work with the system. If you have clout to change the system, please do so. Don’t forget the paperwork and procedures the BEM has to establish to determine whether the PE speciality is correct, which will also be applied to those applying for the traditional categories. And compare this with other systems. The IChemE only gives Corporate Membership, it doesn’t allow you to pick a specific category.
  • Do you really care what category you are registered under? The only place I’ve seen this crop up is when I have to endorse tech documents, and how many of us do that? Engineering houses would require PEs working in their own disciplines, but they would make sure their staff had the right disc. EMEPMI wouldn’t care what your PE qualifications are, or even if you were a PE.
  • For those who say that their current work has nothing to do with their BEM registration category, I say: are you sure? The classical disciplines have more leeway than you think. Material selection can be ChemE, turbine maintenance can be AeroEng, corrosion inhibitor selection can be MechE. Wrap project management around all this, and you have enough tech content to take the Professional Interview.

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Business Idea – Analyse Phone Bills for Mobile Number Portability

September 25, 2008

A while back, I notified you the reader about Malaysia’s foray into Mobile Number Portability. As one barrier tumbles, and while I still wait for the price war, I wondered if anyone wanted to start a service to analyse a consumer’s phone habits, and suggest which provider was the best for them. Since changing carriers costs RM25, I would suggest that you charge RM10-20 for this service. If you can convince someone that they could have saved RM20 per month if they maintained their usage habits but used another courier, then that would be a 240/45, about 500% annual return on investment.

What I wonder is why the carrier companies themselves don’t do this, to promote their products. Could it be that for every one customer they convince, they send one customer towards their competitors?

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Welding possible cause of Miri blast

September 24, 2008

Us in the offshore oil and gas industry know the pain and anguish if you have to do welding offshore. If welding must be done, the location is usually shut down, any potential hydrocarbon sources are purge or kept as far away from the flames and sparks, and a fire watch (with fire extinguishing equipment) must be in place during the welding activity.

Why do I mention this? Taking a page out of Malaysia’s The Star:

MIRI: The explosion that ripped apart a fuel-laden vessel in the Miri River and killed two crew members last week was possibly sparked off by human carelessness, initial investigations revealed.

A spark from welding work being done on the ship could have triggered the fire which resulted in a huge explosion at about 9am on Sept 13.

The ship, Ark 2, was berthed along the bank of the river, adjacent to a petrol-station, for servicing.

It was supposed to ferry hundreds of drums of fuel for people in the deep interior settlements.

State fire chief Mohd Shoki Hamzah said yesterday investigations and testing was still being carried out on board the wreckage to pinpoint the cause.

Miri police chief Asst Comm Jamaluddin Ibrahim said the initial probe showed that the fire and subsequent explosion happened when maintenance workers were carrying out servicing on board the ship.

“There must be strict compliance with safety measures on board such high-risk vessels,” he said.

Experts from the Sarawak and Brunei forensic departments were trying to identify a corpse found in Brunei’s Seria district, 50km from here, to determine if it was the vessel’s missing crew member Ting Huang Ung.

Ting went missing after the explosion and was believed to have been thrown into the river from the impact of the blast.

Brunei police found the body near Kuala Belait.

The other crew killed in the blast, Richard Emang, was found floating near Bintulu, 250km south of Miri two days ago.

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Fasting – Offshore Style

September 23, 2008

Taken from The Star:

For oil platform workers off Terengganu, work must go on
By NURBAITI HAMDAN

TERENGGANU: For most people, the Hari Raya holidays are the time to spend with family and friends.

But for a group of workers, the end of the fasting month will have to be marked some 240km off the Terengganu shore in the middle of the South China Sea.

They are the staff of Exxon- Mobil’s Lawit A oil platform who are tasked with ensuring that petroleum production is not disrupted.

Operations supervisor Jawead Allahrakha, 50, said whatever happens, the work must go on.

“We are sacrificing our Hari Raya so that other people in the country can celebrate,” he said, adding that 90% of the 81 platform crew are Muslims.

He will be one of 45 people who will spend the first day of Hari Raya on the oil platform.

The rest were lucky enough to get leave to celebrate at home.

Chef Hanizul Hamzah, tasked with feeding those on the platform, said a sense of duty makes him carry on.

Hanizul has never celebrated Hari Raya at home since he started working at the platform in 1999. But this year, he hopes he would be home in Kota Baru for the festivities.

“Being able to serve the crew with the best meals I could cook makes it all worth it.

“Good food makes people happy,” said the 46-year-old from Kelantan.

His main concern at the moment was making sure there was lemang and ketupat for the crew as it would just not be Hari Raya without these favourites.

For maintenance worker Sulaiman Samsudin, 55, the platform has become a second home.

“I have celebrated Hari Raya 12 times here. It was hard initially to be so far away from my family in Perak,” said Sulaiman.

He said some of the younger crew members would lock themselves in their rooms because they were too sad.

“But this is life at the platform. Being one of the seniors here, I would talk to them and try to make them feel better,” he said, describing the crew as his ‘family.’

Mechanical worker Nazman Muhammad, 35, from Kelantan, shared a way to deal with home sickness.

“The important thing is not to be alone. You need to keep yourself occupied,” he said,

Nazman said he would also re-enact the first morning of Hari Raya once he got back home onshore, even if it was the 15th day.

“With the decorations still hanging and food served, my wife and I would treat the day as if it was the first day of Aidilfitri,” he said.

(Did I mention I was part of the Lawit Design team?)

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Saturday Star 2008-09-20 – Job Opportunities

September 22, 2008

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

  • Shell wants you to come to a open day. Catch is, you have to invited, and you get invited by sending in your CV to SPS-AsiaXPRecruit@sheel.com. Oct 6th’s the closing date. Positions available are Instr, Elect, Subsea, Drill and Well, Struc, Process & Material, Resv, Project.
  • Murphy is looking for a deputy production manager, and a reliability engineer. CVs to be submitted here.
  • Titan Chemicals has a mess of jobs up for grabs.
  • Optimal is looking for a Kerteh-based Reliability and Electrical Engineer. Email and web presence available. A lot of people moved to Optimal when it first started up, though I think the renumeration package isn’t as good nowadays. However, it’s still better than PETRONAS because Dow Chemicals is running interference.

Can someone please join RNZ? I need them to supply me more engineers. If you have 3 years offshore experience and are available for the next 8 weeks, call me.

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