1. Home
  2. Magazine
  3. 2010
  4. December 2010 Vol. 237 No. 12

Business Meetings & Events

The Board of Managers of PipeLine Machinery International (PLM-Cat) announced Dec. 10 that President Mel Ternan will be retiring effective December 31, 2010. The Board offers their sincere thanks and congratulations to Ternan as he begins the next facet of his life.

Features

David N. Parker is retiring at the end of 2010 after 13 years at the helm of the American Gas Association. He has been called a “player-coach” by people in the organization because of his transparent, encouraging management style. As supply challenges, climate concerns and operating issues have arisen, he has patiently achieved a great deal as president and CEO of the association. One achievement that is likely to be long appreciated by the natural gas utility industry is the increased influence the fuel enjoys today in the halls of government power.
Revisions have been approved to the Canadian standard dealing with the use of plastic pipe in oil and gas pipeline systems. The standard is CSA Z662-11 “Oil and Gas Pipeline Systems.” The revisions to be published next year include:
  • Added rapid crack propagation (RCP) required value of a full-scale critical pressure greater than 1.5 times the maximum operating pressure for polyethylene (PE) materials...
Simulation of deepwater, cold heavy oil production (CHOP) using the captured carbon dioxide (CO-2-EOR) technique has been investigated as part of the Well Engineering Research Group’s unconventional oil reservoir management studies being undertaken at The Robert Gordon University (RGU) in Scotland. The modeling considered transportation of CO-2 from an onshore compression station using a 240-km subsea pipeline and injected into a heavy oil reservoir (2 km below the seabed) via a vertical injection well.
More pipelines are being built and going into service. Shale gas plays are expanding the possible upstream sources. Squeezed by a lackluster economy, LDCs, manufacturers, and other downstream users are understaffed and under stress. For a pipeline company, it’s a climate where high customer satisfaction can be the difference between profitability and disaster — and at the same time, harder than ever to achieve.
It is forecast that $193 billion will be spent on onshore pipeline projects worldwide through to 2015, according to data in energy business analysts Douglas-Westwood’s third edition of The World Onshore Pipelines Report 2011-2015. The report notes that in recent years, levels of activity in the onshore pipelines market have been affected by what can be considered, in relative terms, short-term macroeconomic factors.

Government

In The News

Projects

Web Exclusive

ONEOK, Inc. and ONEOK Partners, L.P. were recently named to the Platts Top 250 Global Energy Companies List for 2010, a global survey that measures financial performance by examining each company’s assets, revenues, profits and return on invested capital. ONEOK ranked first among natural gas utilities in the Americas region, moving up one spot from 2009. ONEOK also ranked seventh worldwide among natural gas utilities and 64 in overall performance in the Americas region.