In this episode of the Pipeliners Podcast, Mike Kern joins the show to discuss the work of the AGA Transmission Operations Committee and the value of participating in industry trade groups.

The conversation explores key committee initiatives, including regulatory awareness, white paper development on in-situ material testing, and the importance of addressing normalization of deviation in pipeline safety practices.

Listeners gain insight into how collaboration and shared learning influence operational decision-making and career development in the pipeline industry.

AGA Transmission Operations Committee Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• American Gas Association (AGA) is a major U.S. trade organization representing natural gas utilities and operators, providing forums, committees, and technical guidance for transmission, distribution, and operations professionals.
• AGA Transmission Operations Committee is a technical committee within AGA focused on transmission pipeline operations, including regulatory awareness, engineering practices, safety topics, and industry guidance development.
• AGA Operations Conference is AGA’s flagship event where committee meetings, technical paper presentations, and trade shows bring together operators, engineers, vendors, and regulators to discuss operational issues and industry trends.
• American Petroleum Institute (API) is a global standards-setting organization that develops industry standards, recommended practices, and safety guidance for oil and natural gas operations.
• Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is the U.S. federal regulatory agency responsible for pipeline safety regulations, enforcement actions, data collection, and public safety oversight.
• Regulatory Environment refers to the evolving set of federal rules, enforcement priorities, guidance, and proposed regulations that pipeline operators must monitor and comply with, particularly those issued by PHMSA.
• Proposed Rulemaking is the regulatory process where PHMSA proposes new or revised pipeline safety rules, often requiring operators to plan years in advance for compliance, staffing, and capital needs.
• GPAC (Gas Pipeline Advisory Committee) is a PHMSA advisory committee that reviews and provides input on proposed gas pipeline safety regulations.
• Integrity Management Program (IMP) is a required pipeline safety program that identifies, evaluates, and mitigates risks to pipeline integrity through data analysis, inspections, testing, and remediation activities.
• Transmission Integrity Management Program (TIMP) is the specific integrity management framework applied to gas transmission pipelines, incorporating data, inspections, material properties, and risk-based decision making.
• White Paper is an industry guidance document developed by committees to share best practices, lessons learned, and technical recommendations with member companies and the broader industry.
• In-Situ Testing is a material evaluation technique that measures pipe properties such as tensile strength, yield strength, and toughness directly on exposed pipe without removing full pipe samples.
• Material Properties refer to measurable characteristics of pipeline steel—such as tensile strength, yield strength, and toughness—that affect how a pipeline performs under pressure and stress.
• Tensile Strength is the maximum stress a pipe material can withstand before failing, a critical factor in integrity and fitness-for-service evaluations.
• Yield Strength is the stress level at which pipe material begins to deform permanently, used in assessing safe operating limits.
• Toughness is a material’s ability to absorb energy and resist fracture, particularly important for understanding crack behavior and failure resistance.
• Minimal Destructive Testing describes testing methods like in-situ testing that remove very small amounts of material, minimizing impact to the pipeline while still providing valuable data.
• Nondestructive Testing (NDT) refers to inspection methods that assess pipeline condition without removing material, contrasted in the discussion with in-situ methods that remove small samples.
• Integrity Dig is a planned excavation of a pipeline segment performed as part of integrity management to inspect, test, and collect data on pipeline condition.
• Material Test Report (MTR) is a manufacturer’s certification document that provides original pipe material properties, often used as a reference or validation point for field testing data.
• Normalization of Deviation is a human-factors concept where unsafe or non-standard practices gradually become accepted as “normal” because no immediate negative outcome has occurred.
• Pig Trap is a pipeline facility used to launch or receive pipeline inspection tools (“pigs”), recognized as a high-risk operational activity requiring strict procedures and safety controls.
• Process Safety Management System (PSMS) is an industry framework for managing pipeline safety through structured processes, procedures, training, and continuous improvement.
• Boots on the Ground refers to frontline field personnel whose real-world work practices and behaviors are critical to operational safety and risk management.
• Data Dashboards are visual tools used to aggregate, trend, and analyze operational and safety data, increasingly used to support regulatory reporting and internal decision-making.
• Operations Risk Data encompasses data collected from operational activities, incidents, inspections, and near misses that can be analyzed to identify trends and emerging risks.
• Trending is the analysis of data over time to identify patterns, increases, or decreases in risk indicators, often used to support integrity and safety programs.
• Joint Committee Session is a collaborative meeting between multiple AGA committees to address overlapping topics such as data quality, safety, engineering, and regulatory compliance.
• Abstract is a short proposal submitted by operators, vendors, or researchers outlining a technical paper topic for consideration and selection by an AGA committee.
• Trade Association refers broadly to industry organizations like AGA, INGAA, and regional pipeline associations that support professional development, technical collaboration, and regulatory engagement.
• INGAA (Interstate Natural Gas Association of America) is a trade association representing interstate natural gas transmission pipeline operators, focusing on regulatory and policy issues.
• Young Pipeline Professionals (YPP) is a professional organization designed to engage early-career pipeline professionals, providing networking, education, and leadership development opportunities.
• Regional Pipeline Associations are localized industry groups that provide networking, technical education, and professional development within major pipeline hubs such as Houston or Tulsa.

AGA Transmission Operations Committee Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat:

Welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast,” episode 391, sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, driving safety, environmental protection, and sustainability across the natural gas and oil industry through world-class standards and safety programs.

Since its formation as a standards-setting organization in 1919, API has developed more than 800 standards to enhance industry operations worldwide. Find out more about API at api.org.

[background music]

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

Russel:

Thanks for listening to the podcast. We appreciate you taking the time. To show the appreciation, we give away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener every episode. This week, our winner is Doug Stucky with Sunoco. Congratulations, Doug. Your YETI is on its way. To learn how you can win this significant prize, stick around till the end of the episode.

This week, we speak with Mike Kern about the work of the AGA Transmission Operations Committee.

Mike, welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.

Mike Kern: Thank you. Thank you for having me on.

Russel: I appreciate you taking your Sunday afternoon here in Denver to spend the time with me to talk. We’re at the AGA Operations Conference. Mike’s with the Transmission Operations Committee, and we’re going to lean into that. Before we do that, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? How did you end up chairing the Transmission Operations Committee?

Mike:

Russel, I’ve been in the pipeline business, including the water pipeline business, for 39 years. One day, I did have the transmission asset for the company, and the vice president came to me, this is very close day after San Bruno, and said, “AGA’s forming a new technical committee, and I want you to be on it.”

Then he said something to me that I found a little funny, because I knew him very well. He said, “You’ll thank me later.” It was so out of character. I love the guy. Tim Small, I love him. It was so out of character that it’s something I remembered in my mind. I went to the first meeting around 2010, 2011. Then it took a meeting or two for me to catch on how everything worked.

Russel: That’s always been my experience. That’s true with every committee. You can be on one committee, move to a new committee. You got to pay that again.

Mike:

Yes. Then in 2014, I was the chair of the committee, first time. I just enjoyed it. Then I wanted to take a little step back and let other people try it. It’s not fair that I…I love doing it. Here we are 11 years later, and they came back to me and said, “Hey, we still need another person.”

I have to be honest with you. I’m not the chair. I’m the third vice-chair, but that got lost in the conversation. We’re just all working together on it anyway. We talked multiple times. I felt funny saying, “Which chair am I?” 11 years later, I’m back. This time, I had my experience and I had multiple years in between to get a different perspective on different people’s styles and topics.

There’s certainly meetings I go to and I’m like, “Hmm, I don’t know if that was as good as the one in the spring. What was different about the spring one?” As a whole, it is just immense what you can take away for your career by being part of a trade organization. I don’t know how you’re going to really be a player in the industry unless you get involved at that level.

Russel: I couldn’t agree with you more. You’re absolutely right. Certainly been true for me. That’s the distinction between having a job and having a career, in my view. You’ve got to lean in and give back. You’ll get more than you give, for sure. You got to give and lean in to get back. What has it meant for your career since you started with AGA in 2010? What has it meant for you?

Mike: The first people to think about when you ask that is advancement. It certainly helped my advancement. Was it meteoric rise? No. What it meant for my career is I’m very confident. I’m confident in what I know. I’m confident in my ability to make decisions. I’m confident that if I don’t know the answer, I know who to talk to to find the answer.

Russel:

That is so true. I would say that in integrity management, in particular, or asset management, whatever you call that domain, that is so broad. It’s so technically diverse that being able to navigate decision-making with confidence, that is no small thing. [laughs] That’s no small thing.

I’m thinking of some jokes. I’m not going to tell them. My wife says I got to quit telling some of my jokes on the podcast.

Mike: [laughs]

Russel: I’m with you. I know when I know and I know when I don’t know. When I don’t know, I know where to go. That’s basically what you’re saying. What are you guys working on in the transmission committee at these days? What are some of your key initiatives and undertakings?

Mike:

One of the key initiatives that we’ll work on at the spring and the fall meeting is just an update on a regulatory environment and any kind of new proposed rulemaking meetings or a GPAC meeting that would request all of us to attend and just give us the sense of the playing field, where they think things are going, because you really have to know that if you’re going to develop a plan to try to be in compliance and get the resources you need for it.

That’s very important. I really enjoy that. I know there’s emails several times a month, but the spring and the fall meeting really pull all that together.

Russel:

That is such an important conversation. This is true throughout all the committees because they all do that, but in transmission operations, the level of planning required to get the resources and knowledge you need to be able to navigate this stuff.

You make a really good point, because you can read all the emails and all the stuff that comes out of PHMSA and Pipeline Safety Trust and other places you can read all that and be current on the noise, if you will, like everything that’s happening. Very different than somebody sat down and done analysis and said, “This is where we’re going and why.” That’s what you find out when you come here.

Awesome. What else?

Mike:

One of the things that we work on from time to time, and we’re just about to kick another one off, are white papers. We spent a lot of time putting a white paper together about in-situ testing of materials. We’re just about finished that up.

One of the topics we’re going to talk about at this meeting is, where do we want this to go next? We put a poll together last several months. We got to digest that with all 100 members and see what we want to do with that.

Russel: Can you tell me a little bit about the in-situ testing? What is that all about? What is the nature of that content?

Mike:

In-situ testing is being able to quantify pipe material properties, tensile and yield, and eventually toughness without cutting a cylinder of pipe out. It’s removing a small piece or a small amount of material, either by sanding or there’s another device for the toughness where it’s moving about ten thousandths of an inch of material off.

You’re able to quantify that instead of cutting out the pipeline. We’ve been extensive user of it. We were at a point that we wanted to give members a guidance document on how you would implement a program around that technology.

Russel: That’s really interesting. My degree is civil engineering structural. When you start talking about this stuff, I’m transported in the Wayback Machine. This is not nondestructive testing, but it is minimal destructive testing. Is that…

Mike: Correct.

Russel: I don’t mean that technically, just conceptually.

Mike: There are several vendors out there that their technologies are all just a little bit different, but some of the basis of the engineering is they’re all rooted in similar engineering.

Russel: That’s the kind of testing you do on the pipe when you expose it and you want to take a look at it?

Mike: Yes.

Russel: I want to ask a question. This is me seeking to understand, because this is not the world I live in. Would you say it’s a common practice that when you expose pipe, you do some kind of this testing every time you expose the pipe?

Mike: It varies by company and it varies by condition. Do you want me to explain that?

Russel: Yeah, please.

Mike: You’ll get my company that every excavation that we make over the transmission system, that’s planned. We’ll do a complete suite of tests. Unless we have a test 200 feet away, then you’re probably not. If it’s just exposed on a third-party construction project or by somebody else, no. Wherever we’re doing an integrity dig…

Russel: It’s a planned dig.

Mike: Planned integrity dig.

Russel: There’s data be gathered of value that you don’t otherwise have.

Mike: There’s a couple places we’ve even been doing it where we do have an MTR just as a sanity check. If you did one…

Russel: MTR, I’m sorry?

Mike: Material test report. If you’ve done one too close and we have teams that’s tracking it so that the IMP team would call them and say, “I’m digging here, here, and here. What’s your pleasure?” They could either say, “Full suite of tests,” or, “You don’t have to do this and this. We have plenty of data. Don’t waste the money.”

Russel: That’s really helpful to me. Then that makes a huge amount of sense. I would gather that those are the kinds of things that you’re talking about in the committee about what are different companies doing and why. It’s in the understanding the why that you learn.

Mike: Yes.

Russel: That’s really helpful, Mike. I appreciate that. What else are y’all looking at?

Mike: This is a big topic lately around normalization of deviation, this is a huge topic, but we’ve done something a certain way so many times and we’ve gotten away with it. We’ve done it so many times since you were trained that you’re not even really sure what the right way is anymore, but I know what I did yesterday. In this case, this week, we’re going to talk about pig trap safety.

Russel: That’s a big one.

Mike: I’m assuming they’re going to review some incidents and we’re going to…

Russel: That’s probably one of the riskiest things we do as pipeline operators, is operate pig traps, for sure.

Mike: Go ahead.

Russel:

Again, [laughs] this is a really interesting conversation to me because this is one of those areas I want to know more. You’re talking about deviation. You were alluding to the human reality that if we do a task over a long period of time, we deviate from the correct way to do the task or the first principles around the task. That’s just human nature.

That deviation occurs very, very slowly over a very long period of time. Getting back to first principles from a safety performance standpoint, that’s a huge, huge thing.

Mike: That’s a topic.

Russel: Let’s see. There’s a whole podcast just on that subject around how do you look for that, how do you measure it, at what level of deviation does it become consequential and require correction. All that, that’s a huge topic. That goes right to PSMS and really getting it to where you’re in contact with boots on the ground and at the metal.

Mike: When you just retrain people, imagine taking a 40-year person, say, “You have to be retrained,” they’ll be…

Russel:

This is an aside. Did you ever see the movie, the Knute Rockne story? No. Who was the coach of the Green Bay Packers? Vince Lombardi. The Vince Lombardi story. At the beginning of the movie, it starts with training camp. He says, “Here at the Green Bay Packers, we start with first principles. This, gentlemen, is a football.”

Then takes them through the season and they win the first Super Bowl. Then at the very last scene of the movie is Lombardi’s at training camp and goes, “Gentlemen, welcome to the Green Bay Packers. This is a football.” Bart Starr puts his hand up and says, “Could you run that by me again, Coach?”

[laughter]

Russel: This is what we’re talking about. It’s like really going back to the basics. For some of us that are old gray hairs, it can be irritating.

Mike: There’s a million ways to have an accident. If we weren’t taking all that information and taking it back to the employees that are on the front line and said, “Hey, if you do this, this might happen,” this is where this starts to get to.

Russel: I’m talking to a number of the committees and that subject is thematic throughout everybody. This is coming out of some of the work we’re doing in PSMS. Excellent. What else? This is really good stuff. I want to come to your committee meeting.

Mike: You can. We’ll invite you in. The committee meets on day one and two. The third day, and the committee sponsors this as well, and I have to count how many papers, but we’re giving about eight different papers. There’s all different topics. The way that works, in the fall, after the spring meeting, vendors, companies, other interested parties submit their idea or a little thesis for…

Russel: An abstract.

Mike:

…an abstract for a paper. Then we vote on that. Then we narrow it down in the fall meeting, and then they have all winter to develop that because they know they’re going to do it. Those were selected by a full membership of the committee and they’ll be presenting.

That part is open to everybody that’s attending the conference. The committees are only for committee members. Then the papers that are being presented, as well as the trade show, that’s open to all attendees of the conference.

Russel:

Thanks for sharing that, because we haven’t really talked about that. The nature of the operations conference, then likewise the fall committee meetings, is the operations conference is first couple of days are committee meetings. That’s behind closed doors with focus groups, basically.

That’s not necessarily just industry. It includes vendors as well. It’s people who are participating and adding value to the conversation. Then you have the open part of the conference, which is the papers and the trade show, which is every other year for this.

Mike: It’s getting bigger and bigger.

Russel:

It’s immense. It’s huge. AGA does a very, very good job of organizing all this. I’m always amazed at the quality and depth of the committee work and the size of the committees. I’ve been doing this for, I don’t know, 20 years. It seems like the committees are three or four times the size they used to be.

There’s a real hunger. Again, I’d be interested in your perspective. I would assume it’s similar. One of the things that’s different from when I started is that you came here to actually find out what was going on. Now you can pretty much get that from the Internet, different feeds, and LinkedIn. You can get what’s going on. You come here now to figure out what it means. [laughs]

Mike: Talk about it. Absolutely.

Russel: This is what it means. This is what I think it means. What do you think it means? What does it mean for you? This is what it means for me.

Mike: A lot of that going on. A lot of that.

Russel: Exactly. That’s where the value is. Absolutely. You mentioned one other thing that you’re doing, before we got on the microphones, I want to talk to you about. You said you’re doing something around operations risk data and a collaboration.

Mike: That’s actually just a joint meeting that we’re having on…We’re having a joint session together. Sometimes you have topics that are so much overlap. You would think that the other group would be the experts, but they want to bring it in, the transmission groups, so that they take the benefit of that. You’ll see that.

Russel: What things do you expect to be talking about in that session?

Mike: Starting to talk about PHMSA with data dashboards and how you support PHMSA’s data dashboards, trending, then just other trends that could help you support your TIMP initiative. I’m anxious to see what they have to say, what this is all going to be, because this is a topic we had not discussed last fall.

Russel: This is something that’s come up, which probably means it’s an initiative and the folks in the other committee…What’s the other committee that you’re working with on this one? Or is it just an initiative around AGA?

Mike: It’s safety, operations, and engineering. It’s Noel Chisaka. I’m not…

Russel: I’ll know notionally about that committee. Their focus is more around data and quality management. Of course, there is a quality management committee, but quality management tends to be more about PSMS and this tends to be more about data and engineering. I could have that completely wrong. If somebody from AGA hears this and wants to call and correct me, I’ll issue a correction…

Mike: [coughs] Excuse me.

Russel: [laughs] I’m speculating a bit just based on my knowledge. It makes sense that there’d be a collaboration there to me, because there’s a need to cross-pollinate, if you will.

Mike: Occasionally, you’ll see that.

Russel:

We’ve seen that in the gas control committee, around cybersecurity stuff, and some other things. It’s really interesting to me. The nature of what you guys do in the transmission committee is so technical and so technically diverse.

It’s really where the nerd engineers want to go, because you guys are getting into material science at a level that most of us might have a hard time even comprehending. It’s really real hardcore engineering. I’m enough of a geek. I love that stuff, but I don’t know that I have the chops to do it.

Mike: [laughs]

Russel: I’d like to think that I do, but I don’t know that I do. Anything else that we haven’t talked about that we ought to talk about in terms of what you guys got going on in the…

Mike:

Can I put a plug in for another…We talked about how important AGA membership and everything. Typically, AGM membership on a committee or more seasoned employees maybe through starting at the midpoint of their career. There is a group out there right now and you have INGAA and the regional gas associations, all important.

Now you have something out there called YPP, Young Pipeline Professionals, which is a really good way of getting people’s feet wet, because they throw you out when you’re 35. Then that’s close to your midpoint. You’re now a tenured person.

Russel: That’s when you’re beginning to transition from purely technical work to now managerial work.

Mike: That gets people’s feet wet. The time demand is not the same as AGA. It’s really not that expensive. I just want to put a plug for that. If you have employees that are younger and you’re like, “I can’t send them, they’re not tenured enough to be sending them to AGA,” send them to that. Eventually, then that lays the groundwork for bringing them in. Then those will be AGA people eventually.

Russel:

It’s been a while since I’ve done it. I did a couple of podcasts with the leadership of the Young Pipeline Professionals. They’re very active in the Houston area. They’re active in conjunction with the Houston Pipeliners Association.

You tend to find these pipeliners associations. They’re more regional, if you will, like there’s one in Tulsa. It’s in the centers of pipelining. They have lots of programs and they do a lot of stuff online and such.

I’m with you. If I were a brand-new person in the pipelining industry and I like the business, that’s where I would go, because you’re going to learn things, you’re going to make connections, and they’re going to serve you well throughout your career. I couldn’t agree with you more.

Come to the end. I don’t know enough to ask more questions.

[laughter]

Russel: I want to ask, what am I missing, Mike? I’m sure I’m missing a lot.

Mike: This is a constant changing world we live in around pipeline, constantly learning more. You have to stay on top of it. Belonging to AGA, INGAA, or a regional trade association is probably the most valuable thing you can do for your career and make you a better engineer.

Russel:

I concur. Thank you so much for taking your Sunday afternoon to come talk with me. It’s been great to meet you. I’ve learned a few things. Appreciate you.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the Pipeliners Podcast and our conversation with Mike. Just a reminder, before you go, you should register to win our customized Pipeliners Podcast YETI Tumbler. Simply visit pipelinepodcastnetwork.com/win and enter yourself in the drawing.

[background music]

Russel:

If you have ideas, questions, or topics you’d be interested in, please let me know on the Contact Us page at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.

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