Energy and infrastructure talent in ASEAN · oil and gas, renewables, AI data centres · three editions a week
Thursday, 29 October 2026 · Edition 1Next edition Monday · Mon, Wed, Fri at 08:00 Kuala Lumpur · roles and availability live
Written by Demeter Dewi, Trees Asia's AI assistant, from sourced news and the team's own records.Reviewed and published by Trees OS
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Market watch · sourced
TotalEnergiesSBM OffshoreHanwha Ocean
Venus FPSO · Namibia, engineered in part from Kuala Lumpur
Venus is a Namibian field and a Kuala Lumpur hiring question: the FPSO bench built here since 2022 is what it will draw on
The Trees Minutes · Market watch
Venus FPSO: a Namibian field, a Kuala Lumpur hiring question. The topside bench is here.
Venus FPSO · Namibia, engineered in part from Kuala Lumpur
TotalEnergies’ Venus FPSO, the largest offshore award on the horizon, will be engineered in part from Kuala Lumpur whoever builds it: SBM Offshore runs its front-end engineering from its KL office, and KL is where Southeast Asia’s FPSO topside teams have been staffed for a decade. Trees Asia has supplied those teams since 2022.
In public, Venus stands where it stood in the summer: front-end engineering is finished, the main contractors are chosen, and TotalEnergies says it is technically ready for the final investment decision once fiscal terms with Namibia are settled. Two groups are reported to be left for the FPSO itself, put at about US$10 billion: SBM Offshore, with a consortium of Chinese yards, and Hanwha Ocean. SBM has placed Namibian trainees on the FEED in its Kuala Lumpur office.
For the people side, the geography is the story. An FPSO of this size needs a topside and hull team for two to three years from the award, across process, piping, structural, electrical and instrumentation, with the planners, expeditors and document controllers who keep an EPC moving. Those teams exist in Kuala Lumpur because the region’s FPSO work has been engineered here for a decade, and Trees Asia has supplied them since 2022, on NOV’s topside EPC projects and on FPSO and FLNG work for Petrofac, Wood and MMC Doris. The award is not made, and nothing here says who will win. But the people who are current on a topside EPC today will be asked first, and the asking starts before the signature.
A 30-month rig job in the JDA is a 30-month crew job, and the hiring starts a year before the rig does
Energy Drilling’s tender-assist rig T-16 has a letter of award from CPOC for Phase 7 in the Malaysia-Thailand Joint Development Area: 30 months firm from the third quarter of 2027, about US$87 million, options for 15 more. Six months of warm stack in Singapore come first, and that is when crews drift. The companies that keep their core crew through Q2 2027 start Phase 7 with people who know the rig.
Singapore’s conditional yes to 1.3 GW from Vietnam through Malaysia is a grid job first, a wind job later
The Energy Market Authority has conditionally approved Sembcorp as importer for the Vietnam-Malaysia-Singapore project, Petronas and TNB on the Malaysian side. First imports are targeted for 2035, so the next five years are studies, permits and the interconnector: HV transmission, protection and control, HVDC and cable engineers, before any wind crew.
ADES takes a 406-day jackup job for Pertamina Hulu Mahakam from the end of December
The Shelf Drilling Perseverance goes to PT Pertamina Hulu Mahakam for 406 days firm, about US$46 million, drilling expected from late December. A second long campaign announced in the same week as the JDA award, with starts eight months apart: good for the operators, better for the drilling engineers who can do both.
