Research Triangle Park, North Carolina (24 July 2012) – The Automation Federation announces that the Measurement, Control & Automation Association (MCAA) signed a Memorandum of Membership. As the newest member, MCAA has agreed to collaborate with the other Automation Federation member organizations to advance the automation profession.

The Automation Federation is an association of member organizations providing awareness, programs and services that continually advance all facets of the automation profession. The Automation Federation serves as the “Voice of Automation” by providing advocacy and industry-wide strategic analysis and coordination through its member organizations. The Automation Federation is bringing like-minded organizations, like MCAA, together to create a stronger “Voice” that will further spread the messages about the importance of the automation profession and the need to develop the next generation of automation professionals.

MCAA is a trade association whose purpose is bringing process control providers together to develop the resources they need to prosper. The organization helps the management teams of process control product and solution providers run and grow successful businesses by offering timely, unique and highly specialized resources acquired from shared management benchmarks and strategies where proprietary company information is secure. Because of the interest of its membership in workforce development, MCAA recognized the valuable work of the Automation Federation and has joined the Automation Federation as its fourteenth member organization.

Paris, July 9, 2012 - Total announces, together with its partners Repsol, Inepetrol and Otepi, having taken the final investment decision for a new development phase of the Yucal Placer gas field, operated by Ypergas*, and located in Guárico State, Venezuela.

The production capacity of this field, which came on stream in 2004, will be increased as soon as in 2012 and will ultimately reach a plateau at around 300 million cubic feet per day, which corresponds to three times the current production.

The sanction of this major expansion project follows the signature of an addendum to the gas sales and purchase agreement between Ypergas and PDVSA Gas. The project will significantly increase the gas resources available to supply the domestic Venezuelan market which is experiencing strong growth.

Yucal Placer’s gas characteristics - high-CO2 content, high-temperature - require specific technological expertise in sour gas and high-temperature deposits, which Total has developed and consolidated.

What is the market for the tools engineers use to design and build virtually everything in the world? The worldwide market for Engineering Design Tools for Industry and Infrastructure is presently quite strong in almost all sectors, and will continue to exhibit good growth according to a new ARC Advisory Group study.

Owner/operators of both industrial and infrastructure assets, many of which are nearing the end-of-life phase, are being pressured to “sweat the assets”. Owners are increasingly utilizing engineering design tools to prolong and extend the life and efficiency of assets in the Brownfield case. “Although engineering and design tools historically were previously designed more or less purely for design and engineering stakeholders such as AECs or EPCs, engineering design tool offerings have morphed into more robust collaborative agents that can be utilized by owners and agents for the entire lifecycle of the infrastructure or plant asset,“ according to Director of Consulting Russ Novak, the principal author of ARC’s “Engineering Design Tools for Industry and Infrastructure”.

For more details please click 'Engineering Design Tools for Industry and Infrastructure Driven by High Levels of Project Activity'

KBR has announced it has been awarded a contract for engineering and procurement services for DuPont’s first cellulosic ethanol plant in Nevada, Iowa. KBR will provide front-end engineering, detailed engineering and procurement services to DuPont's Industrial Biosciences Group for this first-of-a-kind plant to be constructed in the Midwest United States. The ethanol facility is designed to process 1,300 tons per day of corn stover and produce 27.5 million gallons of ethanol per year. The cellulosic ethanol product will be used as a blending component in gasoline by fuel manufacturers and will enable them to meet U.S. EPA-mandated requirements for ethanol derived from cellulosic sources.

KBR is executing the project from its Wilmington, Del. Operations Center, a bio fuels center of excellence. Ground breaking is scheduled for the second half of 2012 with a 12-18 month construction period. "KBR and DuPont have a long-standing partnership and a history of successful project execution," said David Zelinski, President, Downstream. "This award further affirms and solidifies KBR’s 20-plus year partnership with DuPont in the safe and efficient development and execution of capital projects, and reinforces KBR's position as an EPC leader in bio fuels projects."