SPED – April 2011 - SPED in the UK & Ireland

I am delighted to read of the success of SPED in Calgary and all the enrolments from AMEC & Worley.  When you can spare a time why not tell your European colleagues of how you found the SPED courses.  It should be helpful to them and should also help increase the SPED family across the engineering world.

My colleague over here in Europe, Anton Dooley is transferring from his Dublin home to be Senior Piping Designer for Ausenco Sandwell in Vancouver.  All at SPED wish him and his wife and children well.

UK Process News

The UK government has commissioned a report on the implications Fukushima to the UK Nuclear energy plans.  Whether this means a shift from the stated intent of building more a nuclear plant alongside the ones to be de-commissioned is yet to be seen.  The technical press is still trying to sound up-beat, but whether the Liberal component of the UK Government would resist its environmentalist wing to support the coalition government remains to be seen.  I doubt if the Conservatives would risk losing office over the issue either.  Our politicians still seem to believe that wind will solve the issue.  Not too much or too little – you understand of course, but they do not.

Shell plans to invest $100bn over the next four years in drilling exploration oil and LNG.  The article mentions many probably sites, but not one in Europe or North America sectors.  That does not mean that our companies will not get the engineering work.

The UK process plant expenditure is set to increase by 14% to over the next 3 years.  Let us hope so.  The lion’s share is electricity generation.  If it is not nuclear it has to be still more LNG and clean coal.

Further indication that modern power generation make electricity a by-product of a chemical process is provided by the tie up to exploit clean coal between RWE (German Power Company) and the German chemical companies BASF and Linde.

Valero Energy Corp. of San Antonio, Texas, is to acquire Chevron’s Pembroke refinery.  A piece of seaside Wales for a bargain of $730 million.