Folks, the news about employee shedding has now become common with current industry situation and to be honest, it was expected as it's a common choice by companies in difficult times.

Much worse news would be if projects (exploration or even worse, development) get shelved and companies take the wait and see attitude. Has anyone heard of confirmed news of this type? Any mothballed projects in the news lately ?

im not sure on the epcc side of things, but drilling wise there has been a spike in activity. east msia especially. more rigs coming in for pcsb, inpex, nippon. shell just started a batch drilling of 20 wells off marjuram/malikai(im unsure wch block).

development wise its really slow, every one is quite focused on explorations at the moment.

With current oil price going mega sale, smaller oil export countries will be greatly impacted.

Im interested in the work mentioned on the drilling side, willing to gain experience and work my way up.

I have degree in mechanical engineering and working in industrial maintenance for about 2years now.

Actively looking to for job in ong,and i really dont mind the backbreaking work.

This post has been edited by r3horakhty: Dec 15 2014, 01:53 PM

Dear otais otais, i have been proposed the position Offshore Technical Assistant from Dayang Enterprise(OnG contractor). What is the job mainly about and how is the future? Thanks in advance.

On the other hand, I am a recent chemical engineering graduate.

This post has been edited by Max1018: Dec 15 2014, 02:07 PM

Hi,

If you stay in this line your future will be in offshore construction (top side maintenance, hook up and commissioning). There is good and bad about your job. I will start with the good. This position is generally a clerk, you will be keeping track of the personal on board arranging incoming and out going crew both for the construction crew and marine crew as well as marine department equipment and other necessities like food, you will have the chance to learn how the offshore barge is managed which will allow you to be an Operation engineer. You will have a lot of free time in the day, if you use it to explore the construction activity and learn the work they do instead of playing computer games that knowledge is going to be very handy in the future. Some of the most in demand engineers started from the bottom like TA because they know almost everything as compare to the ones starting as a graduate field or operation engineer in companies like Dayang. Your advantage over them will show up after 5 years or latter when more competency is expected of you in higher profile jobs during job interview. Lots of holidays because you work on sunday.

The bad. It is the lowest position in the rank, so have to deal with the humble heart. Getting a better job is slightly harder because of your title (technical assistant not technical engineer) so careful how you write your CV.

The line of hook up maintenance is quite a bright one. Pay is alright(don't compare to drilling) with lots of employment opportunity As long as there are offshore platforms to maintain and upgrade there will be plenty of jobs. So use your free time to explore everything from marine, construction and operation side, then one day through the contacts you build and if you don't create for yourself a bad reputation you will most likely end up as a field or operation engineer. And in your senior years when more is expected you will be able to deliver better than most that couldn't go through the humiliation.

This post has been edited by Binyamin: Dec 15 2014, 03:37 PM

Bro...can you enlighten more about this?
Means 2 months no crude oil to process, so all plants will be idling?

time for the dreaded pm's yo! haha.

shut down je mesti ada accident lol

Nope, what ever the crude oil price is, they still have to buy. The impact usually are short term only.

Thanks for the advice. Very informative. Tmr is the interview btw. Wish me luck!

Even after 4 years of working exp in onshore plant..when apply to offshore co. they still offer technical assistant with the reason of 'u never work offshore'..hell to me the only difference is how to get to work & the living environment. The method of executing the work is the same a.k.a require permit hot / cold & knowledge of how to do the work.

This post has been edited by DuFfz: Dec 15 2014, 06:55 PM

That's interesting, thanks for sharing. I'm wondering if these are only the contracts that have already been committed. Curious to see if it would continue.

What you think you see rarely represents the industry as a whole. Oil prices are affecting rig counts.

Petronas already said they will honor all existing tendered contracts.

The thing about this people in this part of the oil and gas sector is, they think that offshore experience is more superior than onshore experience whether oil and gas or not. I have work on both onshore and offshore project and I disagree, the construction work is not much different. Technically speaking the major difference is, onshore you have to pay more attention to space constraint. But reality is affected by majority's perception not what we think reality is.



All the best, I think I know who will interview you.

This post has been edited by Binyamin: Dec 16 2014, 09:26 AM

anyone work in AMEC here?

yep. this may the ones planned way back then. and they could just alter their plan to drill 1 well instead of any proppsed number before. plus they could delay and wait on the drilling for exploration.

any N2 membrane applied gas technician ? got some contract job for you. Urgent, please PM me.

This post has been edited by fahmietalife: Dec 16 2014, 04:13 PM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30394137

The largest vessel the world has ever seen

Climbing onto the largest vessel the world has ever seen brings you into a realm where everything is on a bewilderingly vast scale and ambition knows no bounds.

Prelude is a staggering 488m long and the best way to grasp what this means is by comparison with something more familiar.

Four football pitches placed end-to-end would not quite match this vessel's length - and if you could lay the 301m of the Eiffel Tower alongside it, or the 443m of the Empire State Building, they wouldn't do so either.

In terms of sheer volume, Prelude is mind-boggling too: if you took six of the world's largest aircraft carriers, and measured the total amount of water they displaced, that would just about be the same as with this one gigantic vessel.

Under construction for the energy giant Shell, the dimensions of the platform are striking in their own right - but also as evidence of the sheer determination of the oil and gas industry to open up new sources of fuel.

Painted a brilliant red, Prelude looms over the Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard on Geoje Island in South Korea, its sides towering like cliffs, the workforce ant-like in comparison.

Soon after dawn, groups of workers - electricians, scaffolders, welders - gather for exercises and team-building before entering lifts that carry them the equivalent of ten storeys up.

On board Prelude, amid a forest of cranes and pipes, it is almost impossible to get your bearings. Standing near the bow and looking back, the accommodation block that rises from the stern can just be made out in the distance.

The yard, one of the largest in the world, is a mesmerising sight with around 30,000 workers toiling on the usually unseen infrastructure of the global supply of fossil fuels: dozens of drilling ships, oil storage tankers and gas transporters.
Park and produce

Prelude is not only the largest of all of these to take shape in this hive of activity - it also pioneers a new way of getting gas from beneath the ocean floor to the consumers willing to pay for it.

Until now, gas collected from offshore wells has had to be piped to land to be processed and then liquefied ready for export.

Usually, this means building a huge facility onshore which can purify the gas and then chill it so that it becomes a liquid - what's known as liquefied natural gas or LNG - making it 600 times smaller in volume and therefore far easier to transport by ship.

And LNG is in hot demand - especially in Asia, with China and Japan among the energy-hungry markets.
Graphic showing FLNG project and its mooring to the seabed

To exploit the Prelude gas field more than 100 miles off the northwest coast of Australia, Shell has opted to bypass the step of bringing the gas ashore, instead developing a system which will do the job of liquefaction at sea.

Hence Prelude will become the world's first floating LNG plant - or FLNG in the terminology of the industry.

In Shell's view, this means avoiding the costly tasks of building a pipeline to the Australian coast and of constructing an LNG facility that might face a long series of planning battles, and require a host of new infrastructure on a remote coastline.

So Prelude will be parked above the gas field for a projected 25 years and become not merely a rig, harvesting the gas from down below, but also a factory and store where tankers can pull alongside to load up with LNG.
Prelude in the shipyard The Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard on Geoje Island is one of the world's largest
Prelude in the shipyard Prelude is 488m long and its processing modules dwarf the workers

The computer animations make it look easy. In practice, the engineering challenge is immense. To speed up construction, the key elements of the processing system are being assembled on land before being installed on the vessel.

During our visit, we witnessed the extraordinary sight of a 5,500-tonne module being winched into position on the deck. Like a massive jigsaw piece, it was a tight fit - given that Shell is planning to squeeze the LNG plant into one quarter of the space you would expect on land.

This was the third of 14 modules.
Figures relating to the FLNG project

The installation took less than a day and was successfully completed but there's clearly a lot of work still to do, which is why Shell officials are coy about committing to a date for when Prelude will actually start work. It looks like being several years at least.
Bridge too far?

The Shell pitch is that gas, as the cleanest of the fossil fuels, is set to become more important in the coming decades as a far more climate-friendly alternative to coal.

And as China tries to clean up its polluted air, largely caused by coal-burning power stations, as I reported in January, switching to gas would surely make a difference.

Only up to a point, however: the gas-is-cleaner argument only works if the new supplies of gas actually replace coal rather than become an additional source of fuel.

And the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that while gas would be a welcome "bridge" between coal and low-carbon energy for the next 20 years or so, in the long term it will need to be phased out, like all fossil fuels, unless a way is found to capture the carbon dioxide that burning it releases.

Shell is banking on gas being in such demand that prices will remain high enough to justify Prelude's cost - which has not been stated but must run into billions.

Obviously there are risks. The gas price might collapse, if China's economy dips, or Japan restarts its nuclear power stations, closed since the Fukushima disaster, and suddenly needs less gas.
modules on board Prelude Shell wants the enormous vessel to collect and liquefy gas at sea for 25 years
Buses and cars in the shipyard About 30,000 people work in the shipyard

Shell's ambition is to launch a fleet of future Preludes to pioneer a new chapter in the story of fossil fuels by opening gas fields previously thought to be too tricky or expensive to tackle.

As our lift brings us back down to the quayside, the winter sun bathes the dockyard in golden light and convoys of buses ferry the multitude of workers home.

During the night, specialist teams will check for the strength of the welds and the quality of the work. A project of this kind has never been tried before and, like all firsts, Prelude is something of a gamble.

Follow David on Twitter: @davidshukmanBBC

hoo prelude dah nak siap akhirnya...and oil price x la menarik tp gas?? masih ok kot

LNG price still on high side (for spot sale cargo) as it isnt link to Brent oil crude benchmark. LNG price usually benchmark against JCC (Japan Crude Cocktail) for Asian market. For Europe & North America they have their own gas price marker I forgot the term

This post has been edited by mohdyakup: Dec 18 2014, 12:30 AM