Jordan

Arab Potash, Aqabe, Jordan, 1997-2002

Request for proposal  was received by our US parent company and delivered to us, since we were the closest jv company to respond in the region. Arab Potash company wanted water tube fueloil firing 120 tons per hour steam output capacity boikers for their existing plant near Aqabe city on RedSea coast. We were invited for siteseeing the existing steam boiler house in the Aqabe plant first to get prequalified.
We flu to Amman from Ankara via thy flight.
We met with our local representative for breakfast at Amman sheraton hotel.
Together we visited the engineers who prepared the tender documents at the Arab Potash company center.
We had a joint meeting in Arab Potash Amman head office all day.
We presented ourselves, our company capabilities, our references.
The next day our local representative drove us to Aqabe by his landrover.
we headed to the Arab Potash factory outside the city of Aqabe,
on the Red Sea coast.
We saw the existing steam plant in its place, took photographs, received copies of the technical drawings, got our siteseeing registration document and left.
On our return journey, we visited  the ancient city of Petra and the dead sea on the wayback. Then we took nonstop Amman Ankara thyflight to return home.
We prepared our offer in Ankara, price was about 4-million-dollar Abd $,
Then we sent our proposal documents via courier to our local representative in Jordan.
The proposal was replicated, presented to the client in Amman by our local representative. It was evaluated in 90-days, got confidence, approved to proceed.
This time the technical drawings were not ready, it took time to prepare new detaied shop drawings. The design was not a package, the steam boiler was produced in pieces,  and transported in partial shipment to site.
In Aqabe Arab Potash Company plant site, we worked together with local sücontractors for assembly and site erection.
Aqabe We have worked with a local contractor in the Arab Potash factory.
Jordan was a replica of the British royal order in the Arab geography.
Everything was  like British practices.
Royal air force, royal science institute, royal bridge community.
They had a certain distance historically against the Turks.
As it is in the whole Arab region, there were many parties in the mediator role for facilitating the work, but we were refering all of them to our local representative.
We completed our job on time.
Arab Potash is still using our steam boilers, there is not much operational problem.
Do we do business in Jordan? Turkish contractors can always do business in the Arab geography, Arab geography is our natural business environment, in a sense it is our backyard, let's not exaggerate, let's stay in mutual respect, let's not remind them the bitter Ottoman period.

Prinkipo, 29th July 2018

Barking dog never bites

Barking Dog Never Bites

A Turkish proverb which means someone who makes threats all the time is not likely to carry them out.

It is a saying that is quite common in international relations, such as when The Guardian used the term while talking about the sanctions following the downed Russian plane; when Greece Foreign Ministry used it about the Aegean crisis; or when the US referred to it when talking about Pakistan in the past.

We are witnessing lots of barking around these days from the verdict in Halkbank case to the sale of F-35 fighter jets, to Hakan Atilla to Father Andrew. Despite all the threats and the rhetoric making the rounds around traditional and social media, we are yet to see any action that will hurt Turkey.

When the Russian plane was shot down, there were some serious repercussions for the Turkey-Russia relationship: application of travel visas, preclusion of Turkey as a touristic destination for Russians, the halting of exports of fresh produce from Turkey, the demise of contractor jobs, difficulties in Natural Gas sales. Turkey had to give out serious financial compensation for these hardships to be lifted. We had to give concessions for the Turk Stream pipeline. Now that the relations are more or less repaired, we immediately began talking about international envy for the friendship between Turkey and Russia. There is an understanding that sanctions like Russia implemented on Turkey do bear fruit eventually.

The USA administration is often likened to an aircraft carrier: it is hard for it to maneuver, and once it does change course, it is difficult for it to set a new route for itself. That means, if the US does go ahead with the sanctions it is threatening Turkey with, it will be very difficult for them to take back. They can really hurt us, and we won’t have much room to move.

The S-400/F-35 dilemma is a most interesting one. It may be tough for both of them to co-exist. The Russians will sell S-400 to whoever is paying them, no problem. But, the question is: will the US sell F-35 jets to a country who has just purchased S-400 from Russia? Not very likely -especially now that the sale of a simple handgun overseas has to be approved by the Congress. The Russian S-400 systems will designate any aircraft without the electronic description in its system as an enemy weapon. That’s how it will treat the F-35s.

The fallout from Halkbank verdict is sure to hurt us. I am not even sure if we would be fine if we had let the pastor go, but it is certain that house arrest will not cut it. Our judicial system has next to no credibility whatsoever. We are below investment grade. Our Central Bank is not independent by any stretch of the imagination, it cannot control the money markets. You try to curb the interest rates, the exchange rate blows up. All we see is talk and no action.

I live in a neighborhood with a lot of stray dogs lying around. The other day while I was walking in the woods I came across ten of them. I kept my pose, and kept walking, careful not to make eye contact. They left me alone. On my way back at night, I took a shortcut, but I was hearing the howls of the dogs from far away and it sounded scary. I probably wouldn’t dare walk through them.

Prinkipo, 30 July 2018

Steam boiler sale in Poland

Sale of 80 tons / hour Mcr-capacity watertube steam boiler to Poland, 1996

In 1996, Usa Akron Ohio based Goodyear tire company  acquired a tire factory in Debica, Poland. The company began investing in renewals for tire production in compliance with US standards. First, the old steam boiler of the plant was demolished.
They tendered to buy a new watertube 80 tph saturated steam boiler similar to their boiler at home plant in Ohio. They asked Usa and European companies to deliver their proposals. Asme american boiler standard was the base requirement. Our us parent company received the thender documents and delivered us to propose direct to the client, since were the closest jv company in the family. Request was the biggest size package water tube steam boiler. We had the license, we had also a reference of same capacity in our home market in Sasa Sabanci company in Adana.
We have prepared our proposal file in English, sent it by courier to Goodyear headquarters, for evaluation. Polish companies also participated in the tender, but they did not have the design of package type watertube steam boiler to burn the package type fuel oil. They could not meet Asme boiler norms.
We promised to deliver the boiler free-on-truck (fot) basis in one-year.
Polish companies could not go delivery under 2 years.
Our price was cheaper. Our proposal was the best choice.
At the end of the tender we have stayed at  around 1m US $ price.
We have won the steam boiler tender, and we would sell it to Poland.
We got our advance payment. Since we delivered the same size same type boiler earlier in Turkey before, detailed technical drawings were ready.
We made letterhead corrections on technical drawings, we got approval from Goodyear head office to proceed, we started manufacturing, we bought material in 3 months, we finished factory production in 8 months.
The steam boiler was ready for the factory (free on truck) on time.
Transportation logistics firm would take delivery, they would load truck, they would take to road to Poland Debrica plant,  the steam boiler was very heavy.
there would  be pilot cars in the front and rear, permission to pass toll highway road and Bosphorus bridge was necessary.
Speed 5 km per hour would not be exceeded, only daylight travel would be taken.
The transport company would get 50K US$ for this transportation.
All the permits, and the total time of transport was calculated about  3 months.
In the meantime, The Polish Debrica tire factory was ready for operation. They were waiting for the steam boiler for their tire production. Boiler was in our plant ready for transportation.
We got a new request from Goodyear headquarters in Akron. Could we make transportation by heavy duty cargo aircraft? We have never thought that option before for that big size, steam boiler 120 ton in weight in aircraft transportation.
We asked the shipping companies. They asked Steam boiler dimensions, weight, center of gravity. The answer came positive.
Yes, this large package type watertube steam boiler could be transported  by Russian production Antonov-124  cargo transport aircraft.
We were only required to tilt the steam boiler 90 degrees so that it could get into the Antonov-124 plane. We checked if we could, yes it was possible.
The price of the plane transportation from Ankara to Debica was 250 thousand US$.
Goodyear approved the air transportation.
In our Ankara plant we turned the boiler 90 degrees, put it into a steel construction cage for transportation, took it to Ankara Esenboğa airport on a trailer.
Antonov-124 cargo plane came to the open space where the new terminal is now.
With two heavy-duty crane we brought  the boiler on Antonov-124 onto the entry pallets. The plane's technicians got in the steam boiler into the aircraft on pallets.
That day, all our company personnel  were at the airport in Esenboğa Antonov-124 in front of the heavy transport aircraft. We took family photos in front of the boiler and the aircraft.  Then the plane door was closed. The plane took off in the air strip, then slowly accelerated, and disappeared.
Four hours later Antonov landed at an airport near the Debrica tire factory in Poland.
It was then moved to the factory with heavy transportation vehicles.
It was placed by the Turkish site erection assembly team which we sent earlier.
The transport business was priced independently from us, we did not earn money from the transport business, but we had the reference of a Turkish company that could sell steam boiler to Poland. Then we sold four similar steam boilers to Kazakhstan.
In 1999, Our US parent company had financial difficulties, and subjected to Chapter-10  procedures to overcome bankrupcy. Consultant company Deloitte advised them to sell all their overseas jv  company shares to get cash to pay local debts. So US parent company sold their 50% shares to our local parent company for 1-m US$, and left.
Local parent company got board decision to get smaller. They changed the field of work, closed the factory, sold the land. We employees were asked to leave the company.
We built a utopian American company in Turkey, we were working like an American company, we had a US license to build steam boilers in accordance with Asme boiler norms. Our internal correspondence was English (and Turkish), we could produce steam boilers at all capacities for all kinds of fossil fuels.
We could serve in our local market as well as MiddleEast, Russia and Eastern Europe.
We sold steam boilers to Poland, Kazakhstan, Syria, Jordan and Pakistan.
It was like a dream, a fairy tale, came and passed.

Prinkipo, 28th-July 2018

Airbnb

airbnb, booking home rental applications

Over the past few years, we rented apart or flat in Milano, and in Berlin by airbnb.com, in Vienna, and in Amsterdam via booking.com and stayed with family.
booking.com works in more corporate style, rents apart hotels,
airbnb.com is more personal, works more in human way, rents individial homes.
In both cases, there is almost everthing inside the rented home, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, tv, dishwasher, washing machine, internet modem.
In booking.com apart hotels, cabinets are empty.
In airbnb homes, it is more humane, more personal. The person who rents his/her home leaves personal items, full of refrigirator, boards full of dresses shoes of owner, books, notes, half used shanpoos, washing powders, half used cleaning supplies, even alcoholic drinks. You just put them aside to allocate some space for yourself.
Payment is done with credit card in advance. Marketing company keeps 25% of payment, and pays the remaining to the home owner after stay is completed.
Both companies ask your detailed personal information before reservation.
Booking.com apart hotel owners ask your passport photocopy. They ask you to sign a few papers, prior to key delivery. In airbnb, there is no paper registration. Everything is done before internet reservation. Taxation procedures are not clear. Booking.com works in more corporate style, so it is taxed in their home country, although they may use offshore accounts. Airbnb members are small home owners, so taxation of small home owners are not so feasible, since their annual income stay below specific quotas. However municipalities of Berlin, london, paris, newyork put a maximum 90-day per year rentable day limilation' in order to levelize with normal taxable real estate markets.
In foreign business metropols, you pay almost 100-200€ per night for hotel room for double bed and breakfast for one bedroom with bathroom.
Here you get a home, with one or two rooms, bathroom, kitchen with all utensils, and machines, library with books, internet modem for sure.
Upon arrival you have limited or even no regitration. There is no reception. A private person welcomes you, helps you to carry your luggage, delivers your key, gives you internet modem password, shows you how to use tv, kitchen equipments, answers your questions, shows you the nearest supermarket, then leaves. At the end of your stay, you are asked to leave the keys on the living room table, close the main gate and leave. You are expected to leave the house before 10:00 am in the morning.
Newcomer guests are expected to arrive later than 14:00pm, better if after 17:00pm. In between, the owner or a hired cleaning person, cleans the house, cleans the fridge, bathroom, changes bed linings,  cleans garbage, makes the home clean  and ready for the newcomer family.
We experienced airbnb application, in Moscow, where a young entrepreneure rented a room at the center of the city, in his grandparents house. A retired old grandmother and grandfather hosted the foreign guests in their spare empty romm at the back. If you can not speak Russian, you can only exchange friendly similes during your stay. You can get a Russian breakfast if you pay a small premium.
In Newyork, we experiences another case. A young Chinese American real estate agent hired the couche at his hall for the guests.
The guests are to share kitchen and bathroom with the owner during their stay.
In Berlin, there are DW reports that even balconies are rented during summer time.
In our country, booking.com is forbidden due to taxation purposes, however airbnb is free since it works in smalł size family business in smalł earning not to worth to tax.
There are local internet pages working in the same home rent business for short stays.
However these locations may be used for illegal purposes beyond original intentions.
For many years, There are summer rental houses in Prince islands in istanbul. These were independent apartments, villas, houses rental weekly or monthly during summer period, all established with mutual negotiation for years, without any need for internet.
Now airbnb covers this market and invites international guests to Prince islands.
Guests come and stay for short period, then they like the place, return  in winter time when real estate prices are lower at more reasonable levels, buy a new house.
They refurbish the house, paint interior, change floor, install naturalgas piping for heating, make the house livable for whole year. Western people, Russian families in majority due to Prinkipo island's orthodox christian heritage, come more every year. We see them in ferry port waiting for sea transportation.
This summer, an old empty  house was refurbished, renewed and rented to a Russian family of four, young father- mother- 3-year old small child and old grand daddy. We exchange 1-2 word kind greetings in the morning with Comrade Russian grand daddy. Next year we expect more short term summer rentals nearby for international guests.
In Prinkipo island, between 10-18 hours daytime we have rich Middle eastern families, on their daily mission to the island, touring the Prinkipo island on horse carts (pheitons), having lunch at restaurants, eating icecream.
They watch Turkish pop-opera tv series, which take place in rich mansions of Prinkipo island, an example for their lifestyle. They wish to visit during their stay in istanbul.
They inspect the environment in huge numbers everday.
But the local life norms are not in line with their life norms at their home countries, so they return without thinking to settle here.
brave new world makes new jobs, new opportunities are created.

prinkipo, July 18, 2018

MeeToo

The brave new world, "MeToo"

If there is a harassment situation, the rapist will lie and say,
"There is no such thing, she gave me a green light, there was a mutual consent",
This is not the case in the United States,
In the USA women say, "this man has dumped me, harassed me, raped me"
Even the defense of the harlot is not taken too seriously, the punishment of harassment is almost immediate,
Therefore, harvay weinstein is in jail,
Dustin hoffman, Ben Afflect, morgan freeman,
They publicly apologized to the women they harassed earlier,
Kevin Spacey was fired from movie sets,
The unpleasant harrassment situations that have been happening for many years in the past have come back again in the last few years.
Perhaps the most impressive was the once-popular TV star Bill Cosby.
After Bill  Crosby incident, the women who were harassed earlier, appeared in the social media, the social pressure direction on them changed.
In social media "MeToo" hashtag started, that is to say publicly,
"MeToo" harrassed earlier by that person.
there were impressive events,
Jill Kelley finished David Patreous
Monica Lewinsky  disgraced Bill Clinton but could not finish him
Stormy Daniels defamed Donald Trump', everything was revealed.

In the US there are at least half an hour of training videos on in-company training,
Everyone in the US state department has to watch a video,
it is obligatory to answer the questions at the end,

https://www.state.gov/s/ocr/c14800.htm

https://diplopundit.net/2018/02/14/statedepts-mandatory-harassment-training-overview-video/

Those who watch this video have to watch and finally get an online test,
or otherwise the workstation account will be frozen

There are casino bosses in this world who sleep with new stars,
The player who can not stay together is not in the tv line, not in the movie,
There are stage directors who harrass players before they step on opera theater stage,
There are bosses, managers, supervisors who are harassing the staff that they employ
Victims are not only young women but also young men
Rock hudson, antony perkins, lots of new names.
A similar cultural change is taking place in LGBT. Non-gay people do not play well.
There are many Lez woman comedian, Lez-gay talk show presenters.

We had a local political figure, who had an Turkish American interpreter who was assigned to help him on his trip to the United States,
He had unpleasant approaches to the girl, girl complaint the situation to her managers,
Trip was cancelled, political figure was sent back home immediately, noe hw can not get US visas. There are many similar events, google is full of these incidents.
Here we are talking about adult harassment,
We do not accept any consent of children under the age of 18, this is shamelessness.
The justice system has direct rules to penalise the abusers.
In American culture,  there are strick rules to people, who could face harrassment,

Do not touch anyone, just give a short handshake, do not think that every smiling person is in love with you, do not look at someone for a long time, do not have eye conta t with strangers, do not be alone with an opposite sex in the elevator,
Do not get in the car of people you never knew, do not accept invitations of strangers,
Do not stay late hours with your boss in the office.

Middle Eastern immigrants experienced cultural conflicts and clashes in European countries, Middle Eastern men accustomed to repressive women in their own countries, they misunderstand the comfortable free attitudes of European women,
They misinterpret comfortable communication as an invitation,
In the end, a large number of harassment even rape incidents took place in Germany,
Female social welfare officers who came to help immigrants were  raped,
Angela Merkel has been criticized for her immigration policy.
To eradicate misunderstandings, Middle Eastern immigrants were given trainings to understand the communication orientation for cultural differences.
In Denmark, immigrant children are now raised in accordance with the Danish norms,
German children nursery teaches German culture alongside German language.
Donald Trump closed the US to immigrants, making it difficult for foreigners to enter US.  In Germany, Businessmen travelling alone to SouthEast Asia are labeled as  "pedophile". Those who travel to Certain poor countries alone, can not explain that it was for commercial purposes. Those elderly gay people who travel to Middle East are publicly disclosed, since there is no women in public there.
How are all these rules regulations laws enforced in the United States?
How women complain, and men apologize?
What do my readers say about these issues? What do you say?
Write me your comments directly, to my email "HalukDireskeneli at yahoo dot com"

Prinkipo' 15-july 2018

On thermal power plants

Overview Of Thermal Power’s Current Global Market Conditions

The past few years have been a difficult period for the thermal power generation industry. In 2017, only 20 GW of new capacity were added to the entire US grid: that was 10 GW of natural gas, 6 GW of wind and 4 GW of solar. In the 1999 global market bubble, only one customer, Duke Energy, ordered 104 GE gas turbines in one year, which by the capacity standards of the era comes to almost 10 GW, i.e. one customer bought from one supplier GTCC orders equal to all the GTCC capacity added in the US last year. No wonder GE is in trouble, and so are Siemens and MHPS, with global capacity to produce turbines at over triple the actual numbers being built and sold.

Last month’s "ElectrifyEurope" 2018 conference in Wien Austria, (Powergen Europe) was emblematic of the current global state of power business. Neither GE, nor Siemens, nor Ansaldo had a booth. At the registration, the traditional long lines were missing, and, at the end of the show there were many hundreds of unclaimed badges still at registration. The energy show was dead. Major global EPC firms are exiting Power business, PB did exit, and Fluor has stated they will no longer bid fixed-price EPC contracts for Power Plants, which means an effective exit; and there are hints that Bechtel may also exit soon. The following recent reports from the US’ EIA helps to explain the US situation. The electricity consumption growth rate in the US was in the 5% range in 1990, down to 2% in the ’92/’93 recession, up to about 3% in the ’94-’99 bubble, but dropping to less than 1% with the 2000 crash; rebounding to 1.5% then into negative territory with the 2008 crash. Since then, it has oscillated around zero despite the recovery, presumably due to increasing energy efficiency in illumination, lights, TV’s, home appliances, etc. The EIA thinks it will rebound then stay in the 1 % range for a few decades.

The next recent report shows the mix of “fuels” used to generate electricity, up to 2017 it is fact, and beyond it is “group think”, (or common wisdom). The group think says that by 2050 about 37% of US electricity will be generated from natural gas; about 31% from renewables, 21% from coal, and 11% from nuclear and other – implying that natural gas GTCC is very far from being dead yet.

Our own instinct is that coal will be much lower by 2050, and renewables are unlikely to exceed 25% because batteries are unlikely to prove economical on a mega scale, hydro storages are limited, so it seems that natural gas will be in the 50-60% range by 2050. As such, we remain sanguine about our business for the long term.The fuel mix well into the future is one side of the coin. The other is plant ageing, rehabilitaion, repowering and replacement of the existing equipment in operation. There are other business opportunities, such as Pumped hydro, off-shore wind, compressed-air energy storage, battery storage in industrial facilities, efficient small power plants, hydrogen from coal with carbon capture, carbon capture for fossil fired power plants. There are many project opportunities to compensate for lack of 1000-MW thermal power plant projects (except in the Far East). Problem is lack of regulatory framework and firm revenue stream, which renders projects not "bankable".

The US coal and nuclear plants are very old, mostly built in the 1960’s – 1980’s. GTCC’s have a shorter service life than coal or nuclear, and the ones built before 2000 are at or past their useful life. Thus, even with zero electricity demand growth, there will have to be a wave of new capacity within the next ten years, another reason to remain optimistic for the longer term.

Although all the above observations are focused on the USA, the situation in Europe is very similar, and even worse. In Asia things are much better, but the big picture still has many similarities, except for the time shift due to Asia being in a major growth phase, similar to the West a few decades ago.

What does all this mean for the market professionals?

(1) We’ve seen a steady decline in business for the past three years, and this decline will continue or even get worse for another year or two;

(2) There should be a significant rebound in business at some point, and our guess is that this will be by 2020;

(3) We shall weather this decline due to our conservative approach and stable income revenue model;

(4) This decline should weed out weaker players, with their Ponzi-scheme revenue model that lacks required annual income to turn their business,

(5) Irrespective of our own views, we have to serve the market, and right now the market’s group-think is renewables and batteries,

So we have to play catch-up as quickly as we can in this area because we were all late in acknowledging this trend, but so were GE, Siemens, MHPS and the other OEM’s.

---

Haluk Direskeneli, is a graduate of METU Mechanical Engineering department (1973). He worked in public, private enterprises, USA Turkish JV companies (B&W, CSWI, AEP), in fabrication, basic and detail design, marketing, sales and project management of thermal power plants. He is currently working as freelance consultant/ energy analyst with thermal power plants basic/ detail design software expertise for private engineering companies, investors, universities and research institutions. He is a member of ODTÜ Alumni and Chamber of Turkish Mechanical Engineers Energy Working Group.

Prinkipo, 22 June 2018