Blaze at Petronas gas processing plant in Malaysia kills one, injures 35
A worker was killed and many others were injured on May 9 in a blaze at a Petronas gas processing plant at Kertih in Malaysia's Terengganu state, the state- owned oil giant said in a statement. Petronas Gas Berhad said the deceased, 31-year-old Rosli Mansor, was servicing the plant in Complex A under a scheduled maintenance shutdown when the fire broke out. Most of the injured were contractors of maintenance consortium Hyndai PFCE, according to Xinhua. Petronas said its operations and gas supply to the peninsula's gas pipeline network were not affected. Malaysian daily The Star quoted a witness as saying thick smoke billowed from the plant after two explosions. On May 15, the online version of the newspaper said...

Yemeni gas pipeline hit by third terrorist attack
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) terrorists blew up a gas pipeline transporting LNG from Maarib to the Balhaf export terminal in the Gulf of Aden late on May 13. This was the third attack on the pipeline in recent months, a Yemeni government official said, and was claimed to be in response to government attacks on the group, which have killed dozens of its members in recent weeks....

US workplace fatalities up 3% in 2010
The US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics says there were 4,690 work-related deaths in 2010, up 3% on the total for the previous year. In a new report, the Bureau says the higher number in part reflects a string of high-profile disasters in 2010.  ...

Hindsight bias in high hazard incident investigations
The purpose of this paper is to explain the concept of hindsight bias and explain how this bias can be minimised in incident investigations.  Hindsight bias promotes the belief that adverse events are more foreseeable than they actually are and that errors in the causal chain are more culpable with the knowledge of the consequences.  

UK panel on fracking gives cautious approval for continued operations
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, should continue under strict conditions, a government-appointed panel of experts says. The gas extraction method triggered two earth tremors near Blackpool in 2011, and has proved controversial elsewhere in the world with accusations of groundwater pollution and seismic damage where operations have been carried out on a large scale.

Cenelec Standards Inspections 30th anniversary
Cenelec Standards Inspections Ltd was formed in 1982 by current Managing Director Alan Gibson to assist companies with their requirements to inspect and maintain electrical and instrument equipment in potentially explosive atmospheres.

Engineers needed urgently...
One issue that keeps being raised at the UK company and industry events I attend is the shortage of qualified engineers to take over from the cohort currently going into retirement. And this at a time when a number of large-scale engineering projects including High Speed Rail and the scaling up of UK nuclear power are on the horizon.