More Flowers

Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2004 9:43 AM
Subject: Weekly Email

This week the sakura petals are starting to fall. The trees are still pretty much covered with blossoms but in some areas there is a light pink carpet on the ground. When a gust of wind comes there is a shower of petals. So by next week it will probably be pretty much gone. When I walked to work yesterday the Zo-jo-ji temple was flooded with blooms and they were having a festival of some sort. The azaleas are starting to bloom right behind them and right now the weather is really beautiful. All of the Japanese were out and walking about yesterday.

All the visitors I had told me I needed to watch the movie "Lost in Translation" about Bill Murray in Japan. I'm not much on movies but one of the guys at work had it and let me borrow it. It really enjoyed it. I think it must be a bit hard to identify with if you have never been dropped in a strange country but I could identify with a lot of it, especially since it is set in Tokyo. You can see my apartment building in it. After seeing it, I still can't tell you where the dinosaur building is - maybe Ginza - I'm not sure. The Family Mart is out of the Sapporo Beer Dog - I'll go back and look today.

We have been working on getting our FEED (Front End Engineering & Design) package ready for bidding the job. Last Wednesday it went out. Our management was in Japan just prior to release and I spent 3 days briefing them. Prior to today I had worked straight days since Teresa, Megan, and David left. Yesterday I only worked a couple of hours and today I am taking off. I can feel the release of tension already. But tonight I will try and get the income tax finished.

The project that I am working on produces liquefied natural gas (LNG) for transport and sales. It is the same gas you use to heat your house and cook on. The process refrigerates the gas down to about -260 degrees and turns it into a liquid. At that temperature, the LNG can be stored and transported since it reduces in volume down to about 1/600th of what it would be at the burner tip. It weighs about half what water does so the special tankers that transport it don't draw much draft. In the process we make propane, butanes, condensate, sulfur, and if we want, helium.

The LNG trains that we are designing are about twice as big as anything built before. Each train is about a kilometer long and uses three GE Frame 9 turbine-compressor-generator sets. Frame 9s are the "big boys" of gas turbines and this is the first application in this kind of mechanical service although there are a number of them in generator service. It now looks like we may build 6 to 8 more trains. If this is done, the trains that we are designing will produce a third of the world's LNG. The size of each train is such that the financing of one train alone will be the second largest project finance in the world today.

When our management was here they asked me to be project manager through start-up on the first train which is about 3 and a half years from now. I have been working hard to put myself in a place to be considered for that so I was pleased. You don't get many opportunities like that in a career - it will change the way LNG is produced and shipped and have an impact on a world scale. There are details to be figured out but it is something I would like to do. In any event, I have agreed to stay in Japan an additional 3 months to do post-FEED technical work and oversight of the technical bidding.

So, this has been a big week. I am trying to arrange to go see David in concert at the Walt Disney auditorium later in the month. It was really great to see everyone here and I look forward to getting back home for a while.