Saturday Star 08-08-02 – Job Opportunities

August 4, 2008

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

  • DPS Bristol (M) Sdn Bhd and DPS Consultant Malaysia Sdn Bhd are looking for a lot of engineers. Examples are Project Eng (6 pax), Lead Process Eng (10 pax!), Lead Mech/Pipe (10 pax)… I wish my company was expanding that fast. Anyhow, closing date is 15th August, 2008, You can fax your resume to +603 9206 2626 or email it in.
  • RasGas is looking for engineers. Snr Integrity, Snr Mech, Snr Programmatic, Snr Elect/Power, Measurement Specialist (Way hay!), Snr Rot Eqt, Snr. I&Control, Analyser Eng Specialist. CVs to be submitted here. I believe RasGas is a JV, one of the partners being ExxonMobil. Hmm, I notice that the local headhunting house is no longer AP Recruitment, but is now Marsya Technology Sdn. Bhd.
  • Qatargas is looking for operators, interviews scheduled for mid-Sept, 2008. You can inquire and apply via email here. They do have positions for Controls Eng, Facilities/Process Eng, Metering Eng (Way hay again!)
  • Murphy Oil is looking for a subsea installation engineer. CVs to be submitted here.
  • Qatar Airways is recruiting for female cabin crew. Turn up at Renaissance Hotel, 9th August 2008, 9 am sharp. Thought I’d throw that in for you engineers out there.

IGL Process Solutions is looking for high paying work, preferably of a 6 month duration.

I put in a free advert for my favourite chicken rice place, Chee Meng. Go, people, go! I’m waiting for their loyalty card to come out. If you want to meet me, I’m usually there most Wed lunches. BTW, anyone been to the nasi kandar in the Sungai Wang rooftop foodcourt lately? Is it still there?

Happy hunting. Let me have some feedback if you find this list useful. Even better, spread the news. PayPal donations welcome.

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Posted by Wata

Affiliates: from Partner to Satellite Office

August 3, 2008

Here’s a story: One major oil and gas consultant had an office in shell I say, KL and another in, say Bangalore. The office in KL was swamped with work, having to hire (expensive) consultants to supplement their workforce.

The office in Bangalore was under utilised. So, in a fit of sheer blinding obviousness, the KL office started giving a lot of work to the Indian office, and said that the two offices operated as one entity. Everyone was happy.

I don’t know about you, but I would be unhappy. The Bangalore office seems have gone from equal status to receiving handouts. Why is the local office management team not getting enough work on their own? Which higher management decided that having an oil & gas consulting office in India was a good move? Do you even need Indian office management, or could you manage remotely from KL?

This is an example where having a partner doesn’t help you in developing your own skills and people. An even worse example is when you ‘second’ your experienced people out to your affiliate, and have a 100% non-return rate. Can you say ‘Malaysian body shop’?

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IEM Drilling Seminar – the Writeup

August 2, 2008

My colleague Hui Hin has provided a summary of the half-day course. An overview of the course is provided here.

Did I say that there were no oil and gas job in last week’s Saturday Star?

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Wind Turbines on Perhentian Island

August 1, 2008

I haven’t been to Perhentian Island (or Islands) for a long time. One thing there that will excite the techie in me (apart from the gadgets that make up my dive gear) is that renewable energy is powering the island, in the form of wind turbines.

Perhentian Island - Wind Turbines

Perhentian Island - Wind Turbines

Here’s an overview of the other systems installed, including solar cells and batteries (and diesel engines as backup).

Go, green movement!

55 Comments | engineering, Malaysia | Permalink
Posted by Wata

Office – Falling Light Cover & HSE

July 31, 2008

As the lighting cover falls off the ceiling, I was wondering how such an incident would be handled in the oil and gas industry:

  • Filling out a near miss incident report.
  • Reading out the incident in the morning meeting.
  • Incorporate any lessons learnt about the incident (redundancy? Better designed support bars?).
  • Tabulated in whatever incident database exists, to be inserted into the yearly HSE report.

At the office what happens is:

  • Building maintenance comes round, re-installs the light (matter of a push, and pressing the spring loaded tongues in), leaves.
  • No lessons learnt

Did I say that the same thing had happened a month ago? Different light fixture.

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And Now for Something Different

July 30, 2008

Sorry, it’s been a busy week, and been kinda distracted from updating this blog. In the interim, enjoy the photos I took last weekend.

6 Comments | diving | Permalink
Posted by Wata

IChemE 2nd regional safety seminar – Part IV

July 28, 2008

Continuing on the same topic above, a presentation was delivered by Ir Abdul Malik bin Alias, engineering manager, DPS Bristol (M) Sdn Bhd entitled ‘DPS – Process Safety for FPSO design.’

  • Agenda
    • Safety Strategies
    • Inherent Safety Concept
    • FPSO Inherent Safety Concept
  • Safety strategies (in order of decreasing reliability and robustness)
    • Inherent
    • Passive
    • Active
    • Procedural
  • Inherent Safety
    • Eliminate hazard
      • built-in safety
  • Passive safety
    • Control hazard
  • Active safety
    • Control hazard
  • Procedural safety
    • Control with operational actions.
  • Inherent safety (methods of implementation)
    • Eliminate of minimise
    • Substitute
    • Moderate
    • Simplify

1 Comment | engineering, Malaysia, oil and gas | Tagged: | Permalink
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IChemE 2nd regional safety seminar – Part III

July 26, 2008

Continuing on the same topic above, a presentation was delivered by Ir Harminder Singh, ex director-general, DOSH entitled ‘CICM-Responsible care initiative – its development and challenges.’

  • Developments in responsible care
  • Implementation
    • CEOs commitment to 10 guiding principles & code of management practice
  • Responsible care codes at a glance.
  • Milestones
    • Responsible care names and logos.
    • Responsible care awards.
    • Mentor mentee program.
    • Responsible care for SMEs.
    • Working group for safe transport of chemicals.
    • Code of management practice for security.
    • New responsible care management systems.
  • Implement “Policy-Plan-Do-Check-Act” process.
  • International developments in the chemicals industry.
    • Elements of responsible care global charter.

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Faraday cage for your laptop?

July 25, 2008

We’ve all heard about how people can detect laptops left in cars, even if you keep them out of sight in your car boot. I guess the only way they perform this detection is if they are picking up a unique resonance frequency from a radio circuit on the device. The most widely installed device with such a circuit is your wireless chip (does this mean that old, pre-wifi era laptops are more secure?). I suppose that if you had a tv tuner card or bluetooth, that could provide a resonance frequency as well.

Wifi operates at 2.4 GHz (125mm), so you could probably build one out of standard metal mesh to place your laptop in, making it invisible to RF scanners.

Alternatively, buy a ready-made bag here.

9 Comments | business opportunity, Malaysia | Permalink
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Need help – Sizing Slug Control Valves

July 24, 2008

Anyone know how to size slug control valves? What I can figure out is this:

  • Only applicable for multiphase flow and where you predict slugs will appear, ex. upstream of your slug catcher.
  • Steady state case, you want the valve fully open, if not you would be wasting energy throttling when it is not required. So, maybe you want to design a valve with 50 kPa pressure drop at 100% opening? I label this case N, for normal.
  • If your design has included sufficient room to handle a slug (ex. between NLL and LAHH), I suppose you wouldn’t need to include a slug control valve.
  • During the throttling phase, you assume the inlet stream is 100% liquid. What flowrate do you want to throttle to? Would it be the vessel design liquid flowrates? Or since the vessel design flowrates assume that liquid dump valve at 80% opening, do I use the maximum flow at 100%?
  • If you take the vessel design flowrate, what upstream pressure would you use? If you use the steady state pressure, doesn’t it make the required Cv for this case (call it S1, for slugging case 1) smaller than that required for N?
  • If you are using the results of a dynamic simulation, how would you interpret the results to use as your slug control valve design case? The reports I’ve seen give the slugging conditions, and I don’t know how they will change if the slug control valve throttles the slug. The upstream pressure on the valve must be higher than without it, but by how much?
  • Another sizing case is where you assume the inlet is 100% gas. However, I don’t think you do include this in the sizing case, as you would assume the flare control valve on the vessel would manage the vessel pressure.

4 Comments | engineering, oil and gas | Tagged: , | Permalink
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