Natural Gas, the Place for Job Creation

This week OFC's Environmental Engineer Christa Gunn and I participated in the 2010 Pipe Tech Americas Summit in Houston, Texas.  It was well attended and included an overview on the massive cross-border Keystone pipeline project; emergency repair systems; risk based management; and horizontal directional and environmental air drilling.

As OFC's Director of Permitting, Scheduling & Compliance I was part of a panel discussion on the current challenges facing the pipeline industry.  The panel was moderated by Michael Felt of Universal Ensco and included Joe Paviglianiti of Canada's National Energy Board and Jerry Rau of Panhandle Energy Company. 

Jobs, jobs and more jobs was the focus of the panel's discussion.  I noted that the Alaska natural gas pipeline would be the largest privately financed construction project in the history of North America, creating tens of thousands of jobs over its lifecycle.  I summarized the two mainline natural gas pipeline projects, Alaska Pipeline Project (TransCanada-ExxonMobil) and Denali (BP-ConocoPhillips) and then focused on the recurring theme during the panel discussion: personnel, succession plans for an aging workforce and training.  I explained that Alaska has built a 52-acre pipeline training yard in South Fairbanks. The Fairbanks field site offers an environment that replicates the actual pipelines right-of-way, complete with frigid temperature workspaces, mechanized welding operations, heavy equipment operation, ditching, stringing and other associated pipeline construction machinery. The training facility is focused on training a new and rejuvenated workforce for the Arctic energy industry.

A recent announcement by Progress Energy that it will be decommissioning eleven coal plants by 2017 leaves room for more reliance on clean natural gas, pipeline infrastructure and job creation.  Moreover, with a recent INGAA Foundation report finding that $120-130 billion will be invested over the next 20 years in infrastructure in the natural gas industry, including pipeline construction and connecting arctic resources to support growth in the electric generation and industrial sectors-Alaska's natural gas pipeline projects were front and center.