This anniversary episode of the Pipeliners Podcast features host Russel Treat reflecting on eight years of the show, highlighting its mission of education through conversation and the breadth of technical topics covered. He discusses the evolution of the show, acknowledges key contributors and sponsors, and offers insights into what may be ahead for the podcast.

8th Anniversary Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Russel Treat is the host of the Pipeliners Podcast. Connect with Russel on LinkedIn.
• Pipeliner – A professional working in the pipeline industry, often emphasizing a culture of responsibility and safety due to pipelines’ proximity to communities.
• POEMS (Pipeline Operations Excellence and Management System) – EnerSys Corporation’s software platform supporting pipeline operators with safety programs, control room management, and field operations.
• Control Room Management – A regulatory and operational discipline focused on ensuring safe, compliant, and effective operations within pipeline control rooms.
• Field Operations – Activities performed in the field to operate, maintain, inspect, and manage pipeline assets and facilities.
• Public Awareness – Pipeline safety communication programs required of operators to inform the public, local officials, and stakeholders about pipeline safety, risks, and emergency procedures.
• Integrity Management – Programs and processes designed to ensure pipeline physical integrity, including inspection, assessment, and maintenance activities.
• Pipeline Integrity – The practice of maintaining safe pipeline conditions through inspection technologies, risk evaluation, and repair programs.
• Smart Pigs – In-line inspection tools run inside a pipeline to detect anomalies, measure pipe wall thickness, and identify corrosion or defects.
• Leak Detection – Systems and methods for identifying potential leaks in pipelines, ranging from computational detection to advanced sensing technologies.
• Cybersecurity – Protective measures and technologies used to secure digital systems and operational technology in pipeline operations.
• Image Analysis & Cameras for Leak Detection – Advanced technology solutions using imaging tools or optical systems to identify leaks or anomalies.
• Phase Changes (CO₂ Pipelines) – Technical considerations in CO₂ pipelines due to phase behavior (gas–liquid–solid changes) affecting monitoring and safety.
• Hydrogen Embrittlement – Material degradation caused by hydrogen exposure, impacting pipeline integrity and requiring specialized engineering approaches.
• Regulatory Content – Information related to government regulations impacting pipeline operations, compliance, and safety.
• Fiduciary Responsibility (Pipeline Context) – A heightened duty of accountability and care due to pipelines’ proximity to public spaces and communities.
• Measurement Schools / Conferences – Industry gatherings for training and knowledge exchange related to gas/liquid measurement and pipeline operations.
• Back-Office Support / Training Resources – Educational materials, transcripts, show notes, and documentation used to support organizational learning.
• Technical Standards – Industry-developed documents (often by API) outlining best practices, specifications, and guidelines for pipeline operations.

8th Anniversary Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat:
Welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast, Episode 415,” sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, providers of POEMS, the Pipeline Operations Excellence and Management System — operations and compliance software for the pipeline operator to address safety program management, control room management, and field operations. Find out more about POEMS at enersyscorp.com.

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Announcer:
The Pipeliners Podcast, where professionals, bubba geeks, and industry insiders share their knowledge and experience about technology, projects, and pipeline operations. And now, your host, Russel Treat.

Russel:
Thanks for listening to the Pipeliners Podcast. I appreciate you taking the time. To show that appreciation, we give away a customized Yeti tumbler to one listener every episode. This week, our winner is Melanie Osborne with Alyeska. Congratulations, Melanie — your Yeti’s on its way. To learn how you can win this signature prize, stick around till the end of the episode.

This week, I’m going to be the sole guest of the Pipeliners Podcast as we recognize and celebrate eight years of weekly podcasts.

First, I just want to say thank you to the listeners, to all the guests, the sponsors, and the whole team behind the show. In particular, I want to make a shout-out to Chuck Dotson, who takes care of all the sound and does all the work to make me sound intelligent — which is sometimes a high bar.

I also want to shout out to Greg Dunn. Greg is our marketing coordinator. He does all the heavy lifting around getting people scheduled, coordinating, getting all the things done for transcripts, building the web pages, and getting everything released through the podcast networks and such.

Those guys, who you hardly ever hear me talk about on this podcast, do a whole bunch of the heavy lifting and allow me just to be the person who gets on the microphone and talks — which is the part of this I like.

The Pipeliners Podcast was originally launched in 2017. When I launched this podcast, the whole idea was education through conversation.

I learned measurement by going to measurement schools and conferences, sitting in the meetings, then finding the smart people, introducing myself, carving them out, and asking hard questions.

That’s what I’ve done with the Pipeliners Podcast. I’ve had a lot of help. A lot of people have introduced me to various guests because there were areas that, before I started this podcast, I didn’t really know much about — public awareness, integrity management, or many of the technical disciplines we work in within oil and gas — but I do now.

It’s been an interesting journey. We’ve had people reach out who wanted to use the content for training or who wanted to come onto the podcast and do episodes that they could then use for orientation for new engineers — and I welcome that.

I think it’s awesome. I know there are a lot of people who use this content. I encourage people to use this content for that purpose because, really, why I do this is to help in two ways.

One, to orient new people — to learn various things and understand the details and subtleties of our business. The second is to work with companies to help them create content that helps them educate their customers, their users, their employees, their partners, their stakeholders, and so forth. That’s really the whole mission.

One of the things that has been really valuable for me in all of this is the opportunity to learn a whole lot about pipelining — particularly technical areas that I didn’t know much about prior to starting this podcast.

The other thing I want to do is make a shout-out to our sponsors. We have two really critical and key sponsors who have helped us to do this. We don’t really make money doing this podcast. We make our money at EnerSys Corporation, selling our software and supporting our clients.

The podcast is funded by our sponsors, and they help us underwrite the cost of production. Now, I would say that related to that, there are ways to do this that are less expensive than what we do — but I really wanted to do this in a way where the sound was high-quality, and all the things we do to build the website, the transcripts, the show notes, the resources section, and all that on the website…

There’s a lot of cost that goes into that, but I know it’s of great value to the industry. I want to shout out our sponsors who help us underwrite the cost of doing all that.

First and foremost, I want to shout out Babst Calland. Babst has been a long-term sponsor. We’ve had a perennial guest, Keith Coyle, who is now senior counsel for PHMSA but previously was a partner at Babst Calland.

We continue to have a relationship with Babst Calland as we continue to go to them and their pipeline attorneys to help us stay current on what’s going on in the regulatory rulemaking world — what things are happening and what conversations are occurring around all that rulemaking.

That’s been hugely valuable for the podcast. There’s been a ton of really good content built because of Babst’s contribution, both as a sponsor and as guests.

Then, at the same level — and again, one of our very early sponsors — was API. The American Petroleum Institute and their pipeline group have been supporters of this podcast almost since inception. For years now, we have worked with them. It’s been a real pleasure. They help us, and we help them.

One of the big things we do with API is, as new standards are published, we get to talk to the people involved in writing those standards and learn about not just what’s in the standard, but why it was written, what was changed, why those changes were made, and what was happening behind the scenes.

If you’re like me and you’ve sat down and read an API standard in an area you’re not familiar with, it can be pretty dry. But when you talk to somebody and understand the conversations occurring in the room and in the committee as they worked to update or write the standard, you get a very different experience.

We’ve done a ton of episodes with API around not just the standards themselves but also their standards process and how that works. We’re blessed that the relationship has expanded with EnerSys — we’re going to be incorporating their standards into some of our software. Really excited about that and thankful for the relationship we’ve had with API.

We’ve had a lot of other sponsors and a lot of other guests, but API and Babst Calland in particular have been instrumental in helping us create excellent content and do things of value for the industry.

Let’s talk a little bit about what’s been accomplished. If you think about this, we’ve been doing this for eight years. This is Episode 415. We’ve been doing this every week, and the episodes on average are 30–40 minutes long. That’s over 200 hours of technical and regulatory content for pipelining.

We’ve done some interesting stuff. If you want to know the history of pipelining, there are some great episodes on pipeline history all the way back to the early days. We’ve had people on whose grandfather was operating a mule team in Appalachia and stringing pipe.

We not only have history from people who studied the books — we have history passed down through families. That stuff’s pretty cool.

We’ve covered a wide breadth of topics. Leak detection — we did a whole series on fundamentals. Pipeline integrity — lots of content there. We did a full series on smart pigs: the various technologies, what they find, how the data is used and analyzed. Really great content.

Then, of course, cybersecurity. One of the most-listened-to episodes is one I did by myself: “What Every Pipeliner Should Know About Cybersecurity.” I recently re-listened to it just to see if it was still current — and by and large, it still is. That’s one every pipeliner ought to listen to because it helps you understand why it’s getting so hard to use our computers with all the security requirements.

We’ve even talked about advanced technologies and niche topics — image analysis, cameras for leak detection, data processing, and a whole range of things.

One of the things I’m really blessed by — and shocked by, because when I started all this, I had no notion this would even be possible — is that we’ve had a large number of high-profile guests: former PHMSA administrators, regulators, association leaders. Many of these people have become friends. It’s been a gift to get to know them.

I think it’s helpful for pipeliners to understand what people in those positions are doing, how they’re thinking about the industry, and what they’re hearing. It’s important. It helps us do a better job in our day-to-day work.

There’s a whole weekly cadence to all this because we drop a show every week. I know we have listeners who listen weekly and who even pass certain episodes to others in their organization.

I’m always amazed. One thing about doing a podcast like this is every week you’re having a conversation, recording it, and pushing it out — but there’s not a lot of ways to get feedback from the industry.

Some people reach out, some contact me on LinkedIn, some submit forms through the Pipeliners Podcast website — and I see all of that. It’s awesome.

I encourage you to do that if you haven’t. If you want to hear about something, learn something, or ask a question, I encourage you to use those avenues.

By and large, it’s hard to see the impact. Then I’ll end up going to a company to talk about our software, or I’ll be at an association meeting, and somebody will come up and be very grateful for the podcast. They’ll tell me a story about an episode and the difference it made. I love hearing those things. It helps me recommit to doing this every week.

Because I will tell you — doing a podcast every week and having a different guest every week can become a grind. It can be challenging. But it’s very worthwhile when you see how much people appreciate it.

Another thing people probably don’t know — and I didn’t know this, because I never really talked about it with anyone — but I assume a lot of people just listen to the podcast as it comes out each week and move on.

We have a website, and every single podcast is on that website. Every one of them has a full transcript. All of that is searchable. We have links to resources, videos, white papers — all kinds of things across a wide range of topics.

We plan to continue doing that. I’d encourage you, if you’ve never been to the website, go take a visit. Look at the Resources section. Search for something you have a question about. I think you’d be surprised.

Lastly, I want to say thank you to the guests.

We’ve been blessed by the level of professionalism, knowledge, and expertise our guests bring.

We’ve had people come in and talk about controversial subjects — subjects that may have risk associated with sharing that information publicly. We’ve had people share personal experiences related to certain incidents.

I have to shout out — I do this all the time — to Larry Shelton for sharing his personal story related to Bellingham.

We as pipeliners — and Larry says this — being a pipeliner and living into what that means, we have a different level of responsibility to the communities we serve because our infrastructure runs through neighborhoods.

Most heavy-industry critical infrastructure is behind a fence. There’s a certain set of things you have to learn to even enter the facility.

With pipelining, our facilities are in people’s backyards. They’re literally running behind their back fences. We have a different level of fiduciary responsibility. When people are willing to share stories that might be difficult or risky to share, they’re doing a service to the industry.

And without exception, what I hear back from people who share those types of stories — not only pipeliners but other stakeholders like the Pipeline Safety Trust — is gratitude. They understand the value of the learning and how it helps us get better.

Again, big shout-out to all the guests. For those who’ve been on and talked about everything you knew, I want you to realize that even if you were on a few years ago, it might be time to come back and talk about the same topic again.

I’ll say one more thing about the guests and the huge variety of topics we’ve covered: I am certain that even though we have 400+ episodes and 200+ hours of content, we have not even begun to talk about all the technical details and topics that deserve conversation and would be helpful to pipeliners.

That’s a call-out: if there’s something you want to hear about or someone you think should be on, please reach out. Let me know. Some of the people who’ve been on came directly from someone saying, “Hey, I’d like to hear about such-and-such. Maybe talk to this guy.” I will run those things down.

Now, I want to talk about what’s next. When I started the podcast in 2017 — pre-COVID — at that time, to my knowledge, nobody was doing a podcast in the pipeline space. Now, there are several people doing great work in the podcasting space for pipelines.

That was eight years ago. Back then, getting a guest on via the internet and having them get a good microphone was a challenge. Nowadays, that’s normal. We’ve come a long way with technology and acceptance of the format.

Going forward, we’ll stay true to our mission — sharing knowledge, education through conversation, and helping pipeline professionals get better. We’re going to keep doing that.

The question is, what will the vehicles be?

I’ve been noodling on some ideas. Pure audio podcasts aren’t as engaging. There’s still a space for them — there are things you can do with audio you can’t do with video — but we’re getting to a point where we need to look at video and what we might do with it.

I have a notion about doing a series of affiliated video podcasts covering all the fundamentals of pipelines. Another resource. Something we’re thinking about. We’ll see where it goes.

I’m also curious about subjects. I’ve stayed away from advocacy and politics. I’ve talked a little about hydrogen and CO2 — specifically the technical issues with those pipelines — hydrogen embrittlement, phase changes in CO2, leak detection, things like that.

If there were a lot of folks who thought there were things we ought to cover in that domain, I’d be interested in hearing about it. It’s something I noodle on, but I always come back to: “Let’s stay with the technical — that’s what I like.”

Lastly, some updates on what we have going on. Within the last month, we signed a memorandum of understanding with SGA — the Southern Gas Association. SGA is going through a revitalization.

We put together an agreement to go to three of their major conferences this year. We’re going to capture podcasts at the conferences, and we’re looking for more opportunities to do that. We’ve done that for years with API.

We’re going to do more. We’re going to formalize it and get a little fancier. Be looking for us out and about more. If you see me and you’re a fan of the podcast, come say hello, shake my hand, and let’s chat. I’d love to meet you.

As a wrap-up: I launched this in 2017. It wasn’t until the end of 2018 that I felt we needed to get committed and stick with it. At that point, we’d done enough that I said, “People are liking it. It has value. We should continue.”

We’re now well over 400 episodes. We’ve built a vast archive of knowledge, and we’re going to keep going.

Please, if you haven’t already, subscribe. The easiest way to find us is Apple Podcasts, but we’re on Spotify and pretty much every podcast platform.

Tell your friends. And register for the Yeti. If you’re on LinkedIn, you may see people posting pictures — these are nice, big Yetis with the podcast logo.

Register to win one. And if you do win it, carry it around everywhere with the logo facing outward so people ask, “How do I find out more about the Pipeliners Podcast?”

Final comment. Thank you to all the listeners. You’re the reason this is worthwhile. If it weren’t for the listeners and the occasional person tapping me on the shoulder saying, “Hey, I heard this on the podcast,” it wouldn’t be worth it.

The first time I went to an API Pipeline Conference and someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I listened to your series on leak detection. It was really helpful. We built it into our training program,” I was like, “That’s awesome.”

For those looking for content to help train and orient, take a look — see if there’s something on the podcast that’s helpful. If not, reach out and let me know. We’ll see if we can put something together.

Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Just a reminder — you should register to win our Pipeliners Podcast Yeti tumbler. Go to pipelinepodcastnetwork.com/win and fill out the form.

If you have ideas, questions, topics, or want to respond to anything I talked about, the best way is to find me on LinkedIn — it’s very simple. Just search for Russel Treat.

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Russel:
Or go to the pipelinepodcastnetwork.com website and fill out the Contact Us form. I see every single one of those, and I respond to every single one. Again, thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.

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