Never enough knowledge

Dec. 22, 2014
Take a moment and try to think of an occupation in which performance improves as the knowledge-base of the people engaged in it stagnates or declines. It's tough to do.

Take a moment and try to think of an occupation in which performance improves as the knowledge-base of the people engaged in it stagnates or declines. It's tough to do. The more you know about something the better equipped you'll be to practice doing it and the better you'll perform.

The US oil and gas industry, including its pipeline segment, has a number of knowledge-based problems to overcome. These include educating the public regarding its energy future and replacing workers now nearing retirement with new staff who are as qualified as possible.

The industry's efforts at direct outreach are on-going. Another way to improve the public's knowledge, however, is to give the journalists covering the industry an opportunity to expand their own. Such was the case when Siemens and TransCanada loaded a bunch of reporters and editors on a bus in Omaha, Neb., for a 2-hr ride to the Keystone Pipeline's Stanton pump station.

Even in mid-November it was a cold day to be standing outside on the Great Plains: 26° F. with a steady 13-mph NNW wind, gusting to 21 mph. But there isn't much that will demystify a piece of technology more quickly than the combination of seeing it in operation and having an open audience with both the people who made it (Siemens) and operate it (TransCanada).

Everyone on the trip left with a better understanding of Siemens' automation architecture design and how it's used on a system like TransCanada's 550,000-b/d, 2,150-mile Keystone Pipeline. They can presumably now write and edit with greater authority on topics like the still-pending Keystone XL project, educating their readers in the process.

Academic expansion

The amount of North America's planned and current pipeline growth taking place in the Midcontinent goes beyond making it a suitable press destination, however, to creating an environment in which lasting academic study could and should be occurring.

Whiting Petroleum Corp., very active in the Denver-Julesberg basin, has grown to 1,100 employees from just 450 in 2008, and is regularly recruiting an additional 250 in any 12-month period. US Department of Labor statistics meanwhile show a near doubling of people directly employed in US oil and gas extraction since 2004.1

This growth in the oil and gas upstream has placed similar demands on pipeline operating companies and their labor pools as they seek to provide the transportation needed to move extracted hydrocarbons to market.

On Dec. 9, Applus RTD partnered with Kiefner & Associates to support Iowa State University's (ISU) Center for Non Destructive Evaluation. The partnership coincides with a US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) award to ISU as part of its Competitive Academic Agreement Program (CAAP).

PHMSA created CAAP to introduce MS and PhD students to common pipeline integrity challenges and demonstrate how their engineering or technical backgrounds might contribute to the field of pipeline safety. Under the agreement, Applus RTD and Kiefner will provide ISU with the technical background and applied industry knowledge to address CAAP's aim.

Kiefner engineers have been contributing technical articles to Oil & Gas Journal regularly for decades, addressing topics such as criteria for evaluating corroded pipe, pig performance on the 800-mile Alyeska crude oil pipeline, analysis of low-frequency electric resistance flash-welded pipe for high-consequence area integrity assessments, and defect assessment for integrity management.

Applus acquired Kiefner in 2011 and the partnership with ISU should not just provide the pipeline industry with much needed new, skilled professionals but also create a pool of new you authors from which OGJ can continue to draw well into the future.

Here's to more knowledge than ever in 2015.

References

1. Hume, T., "Energy Pipeline: Finding Talent is More Complex, Difficult in Today's Market," The Greeley Tribune, Dec. 4, 2014.