This month’s Pipeline Technology Podcast episode sponsored by Pipeline & Gas Journal features our host, Russel Treat, connecting with fellow industry members at the annual Pipeline Pigging & Integrity Management Conference & Exhibition that was recently held February 12-16, 2024. 

Conversations from PPIM 2024 Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Pipeline & Gas Journal is the essential resource for technology, industry information, and analytical trends in the midstream oil and gas industry.  For more information on how to become a subscriber, visit pgjonline.com/subscribe.

• PPIM (Pipeline Pigging & Integrity Management Conference & Exhibition) is the largest technical exhibition of its kind in the world, designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of utility and in-line inspection pigging.
• Josh Wilson discusses what’s new at Allan Edwards and “Tested By Travis.” Connect with Josh on LinkedIn.
• Jeremy Groover and Brandon Porter discuss the demagnetizing equipment created by Industrial Degauss.
  • Jeremy Groover is the Principal and Founder of Industrial Degauss. Connect with Jeremy on LinkedIn.
  • Brandon Porter of Western Plant & Pipeline Products, USA.

• Wilton Cardoso with Pigs Unlimited discusses what the company is known for. Connect with Wilton on LinkedIn.
• Jason Huff talks about the new pigging tool offered by T. D. Williamson. Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.
• MFL (Magnetic Flux Leakage) is a magnetic non-destructive testing technique used to detect corrosion and pits in steel structures and to accurately measure corrosion damage.
• Pigging refers to using devices known as “pigs” to perform maintenance operations. This tool associated with inline pipeline inspection has now become known as a Pipeline Inspection Gauge (PIG)
• The POLYSTOPP® Quick Connect system makes it easy to safely perform hot tapping, plugging and branching on polyethylene (PE) pipelines — and to do it faster than with any other isolation technology.
• THREAD-O-RING™ (TOR) fittings are used as purge and equalization fittings.

Conversations from PPIM 2024 Full Episode Transcript

Announcer: The “Pipeline Technology Podcast,” brought to you by “Pipeline & Gas Journal,” the decision making resource for pipeline and midstream professionals. Now, your host, Russel Treat.

Russel Treat: Welcome to the Pipeline Technology Podcast, Episode 43. This month, we are going to be speaking to multiple people from the floor of the Pipeline Pigging & Integrity Management trade show in Houston.

I continue to be roaming around Pipeline Pigging & Integrity Management. I’m sitting here in the Allan Edwards booth, and I’ve been having a hard time corralling anybody to talk to me.

Tommy said he didn’t want to do it again because he did it last year, so he pushed it off on Josh. Josh was trying not to do it. No, I’m kidding..

Josh, great to have you. How are you doing today?

Josh Wilson: Doing great, Russel, appreciate it.

Russel: What are you doing at Allan Edwards that is new or different or interesting this year at PPIM?

Josh: This year, we’ve been doing a lot of “Tested By Travis” videos.

Russel: Oh, yes.

Josh: A couple of spoof kind of testing, just fun. Testing products in different ways that’s not so serious. We had Travis here this year, taking pictures with his cutout over here in the booth. Taking the sledgehammer and beating on some of the composites.

Russel: Excellent. I had Travis on the podcast a while back. I don’t remember the specific episode, but we’ll link that up in the show notes for anybody that’s interesting. I think what you guys are doing with Tested By Travis is hilarious. It’s an exercise in humorous creative destruction.

Josh: That’s right.

Russel: It’s, “How do you break things and have fun doing it?”

Josh: That’s exactly right, and it’s all about having fun. Everything is so serious, so…

Russel: That’s absolutely right. What we do as pipeliners, what we do around pipeline integrity and pipeline repair, and all that, it is a serious business. We need to not take ourselves that seriously.

Josh: There’s a time and a place.

Russel: Exactly. The whole stuff with Tested By Travis is awesome. I’m disappointed I waited too late to get here. I would have liked to shake Travis’s hand and get to meet him personally. He seems like he’d be a good time.

Josh: He is an absolute blast.

Russel: Travis, he’s a welder/worker/constructor guy. I bet he’s having a blast getting to go to the trade shows, because that’s all new and different thing for him.

Josh: Absolutely. He runs our machines. He can do the plasma table. He can do the roll. He can do any of the machines in the shop. He’s such a versatile guy, but he’s got this personality that’s so big. He’s fun to be with.

Russel: That’s right. For listeners, you should google Tested By Travis, and watch the videos and have fun. Then, you can show them to your family and say, “This is what I actually do.”

Josh: That’s right.

Russel: What else do you have going on here at Allan Edwards this time?

Josh: We’ve been showing off a couple of our new products. We’ve had our composite wraps here for a few years. Starting to get a lot of good traction with those. We’ve got our new compression sleeve, showing that this year.

Getting out there and talking to all these customers we’ve had for a long time, and some new customers. It’s funny, you hear a bunch of applications all the time. You never think you’re going to hear another new one that you haven’t heard of before. By God, you get here and there’s new ones. It’s something new every day.

Russel: You know? Now, I’ve got another opportunity for you guys for another video podcast. You could do Stump the Chump. That’s like, “Bring me the pipeline defect I can’t repair.”

Josh: There you go. That’s right, that’d be great.

Russel: On a serious note, though, it’s one of the things that’s cool about PPIM.

Because of all the people that are here and all the expertise that’s on the floor, you could probably bring any kind of pipeline repair or integrity problem to this show, and there’s going to be somebody here. If they haven’t done it, they’ve done something similar, they can talk to you and offer expertise.

Josh: That’s right.

Russel: Everybody’s open. Everybody’s friendly. Everybody’s here trying to teach and to learn. We’re all trying to make the industry safer, better.

Josh: That’s right. Competition is great. We’re good friends. We’ve been around and visited with all of our competitors. Everyone is very cordial at these events, and we all have a good time. We’re all here for the same reason. 

Russel: How long has Allan Edwards been coming to PPIM?

Josh: Oh, goodness. Don’t get me lying.

Russel: I asked Tommy this question last year, and I think he did the same thing. He’s like, “I don’t know. Forever since it started.”

Josh: Probably, since it started. We’ve been in business for 77 years. There’s probably not a show in the world that we haven’t been to, at least, once, but PPIM is always a staple for us. If we don’t go to any shows, we will always go to PPIM. It’s a staple.

Russel: It’s the one. It’s the place where you’d be conspicuous in your absence.

Josh: That is absolutely correct.

Russel: There’s other places you go and they might not miss you, but you’d be missed here, for sure.

Josh: Yeah. You know that it’s always a great show. Because of the vendors and because of the companies that are here, you get all of your customers. You get all the operators and all the construction companies, and so you’re seeing the right people.

Russel: Absolutely. How big a team do you bring to this show from Allan Edwards?

Josh: This year, we had nine here. For us, that’s a pretty big showing.

Russel: Absolutely. As we’re sitting here, it’s getting very close to teardown–we’re within a couple of hours to teardown–and I noticed that there must be a bourbon fan somewhere at Allan Edwards. You have snuck back over here in the corner some really nice bottles of bourbon.

Josh: Yes. We like to have fun.

It’s all about having fun.

Russel: That’s for the advanced conversation.

Josh: That is correct.

Russel: For the advanced solute. That’s how Travis gets these ideas for these videos.

Josh: This is how we get the real problems out from our customers.

No, we’re all about having fun.

Russel: No, I think that’s awesome. That’s one of the things I get about you guys. Listen, I appreciate you spending a few minutes with me. I hope you had a great show this week. I look forward to talking to you guys next year.

Josh: Great, awesome. Thank you, Russel, appreciate it.

Russel: All right, bye.

Next, I’m standing here on the floor of Pipeline Pigging & Integrity Management with Jeremy Groover and Brandon Porter of Industrial Degauss. These guys have some interesting cool technology.

Jeremy was on the podcast way back at the beginning–probably, five, six years ago now–and I’ve been trying to get him back. The only way I can get him back is to come to PPIM and hijack him, so here we are.

Jeremy, welcome to the podcast.

Jeremy Groover: Thanks for having me back.

Russel: Brandon?

Brandon Porter: We appreciate it. Thank you for having us.

Russel: Good to have you. What is new? First off, tell people what you do. What is Industrial Degauss? What do you all do?

Jeremy: We’re a manufacturer of demagnetizing equipment. That’s primarily used to demagnetize pipelines in order to let the welders get a good weld in. Avoid arc blow and delays to their jobs.

Russel: I will tell the listeners that Jeremy’s podcast has been one of the better listened to or one of the most listened to. It certainly indicates to me that people have this problem in the field, and they don’t necessarily know how to solve it. Tell us a little bit about what your technology is and how it works.

Brandon: Yes, sir. Usually, we come in after the MFL smart tool run. That’s a magnetic flux leakage. It’ll supersaturate the pipe with magnetism and look for defects. Then, based on your anomaly digs that you have, you have to go in and cut out your pipe on so many months.

When the welders go in there, there’s a little bit of residual magnetism left over. That’ll cause their weld to blow to one side or the other of their seam. Then, they’ll have pores in their weld, and they won’t pass X-ray. That’s when we come in to knock it down.

Russel: As this is an audio podcast, I’ll attempt to explain the equipment. You basically have a box that’s about…

It looks like it is about 12 foot…12 inches, not 12 foot, 12 inches square. More length, it’s a little bit more rectangular than that, and then you have a…I guess that’s about a one inch copper wire that’s insulated, and it wraps around the pipe. That’s what you need to demagnetize.

Jeremy: It’s all portable. It comes in this suitcase size case, about 85 pounds. A lot of our calls are emergency calls, so we can overnight at FedEx, UPS. We can throw it on an airplane, checked luggage.

Brandon: The good thing is it also comes with a gauss meter here that you see. That’s what separates us away and apart from the older method of doing it. We can see exactly what we’re affecting and how we’re doing it. It’s a more accurate and repeatable way.

Russel: You can adjust the amount of current you’re putting through the line, so you can adjust the amount of magnetism you’re removing, and get it exactly where you need it to be.

Brandon: Yes, sir.

Russel: It’s cool tech. This is one of the things that’s cool about PPIM for people that haven’t come to this show is you get to walk around. They can actually show this pipe being magnetized and demagnetized, and it’s impressive. I’ll say that it’s impressive.

Brandon: Our neighbors don’t like us too much. It’s a little loud, but, hey, it’s good fun.

Russel:  Well, that’s all good. Look, thanks for your time. I recommend, come by and see the Industrial Degauss guys.

Brandon: Yes, sir. Thank you for your time.

Russel: All right.

Jeremy: Thanks, Russel.

Russel: Thanks, Jeremy. See, that wasn’t too bad.

Well, I continue to be at Pipeline Pigging & Integrity Management. I’m sitting here with Wilton Cardoso, and we were just visiting. Wilton’s with Pigs Unlimited.

Hey, thanks for taking a few minutes to sit down with me.

Wilton Cardoso: Of course, it’s a pleasure.

Russel: Tell me, it’s self-explanatory with the name, maybe a little too much. We’re having a sidebar. I’ll get Wilton to tell you about that in a second. Tell me what Pigs Unlimited does.

Wilton: We manufacture cleaning pigs. They are devices that will go and clean pipelines. We are one of the largest manufacturers. We manufacture in-house foam pigs, solid cast, and mandrel pigs, all in one facility.

Russel: Interesting. You were telling me that you sometimes get mistaken for a different kind of company.

Wilton: Yes, they think we sell farm animals. They want to buy vaccines and other stuff from us.

Russel: It is a pipeline-specific name, right?

Wilton: Yes.

Russel: It’s a common name, but pipeline-specific in our world.

One of the things that’s interesting to me about what you do with your cleaning pigs is there’s a lot of different shapes.

Wilton: Yes.

Russel: Why all the different shapes?

Wilton: They are most for oil and gas, like you mentioned, but we also supply pigs for food grade, food industry. We have pigs that are meant to separate products.

Imagine if you are the owner of an ice cream factory and you’re running a flavor, and you want the same pipe that you’re going to put in boxes for the ice cream. You need to change that flavor? You use one of our tools to push that product out.

Russel: Batch separation pigs.

Wilton: Correct. Some of them are for commissioning. Some of them are for drying pipelines. Some of them will separate products. Others will scrape the pipe wall. It depends on the problem you have, we have a solution.

Russel: This is one of the things, Wilton, I always think so interesting about pipelining is you think a solution, like, “I make cleaning pigs.” That seems relatively straightforward.

Wilton: Correct.

Russel: Like with everything else, as you begin to know all the different types of uses and the cases and the challenges, and all that kind of stuff, expertise matters.

Wilton: Yeah. You could be buying 100 pigs and wasting your time and energy launching 100 when you could buy 10 different ones and then do the same job. Much faster, much cheaper.

Russel: I would assume that you guys work with your customers to help figure that kind of stuff out.

Wilton: Correct, yes. If they have any questions, they will call us. I will be the one, most of the time, taking that call and helping them figure out what would work best for their needs.

Russel: Interesting. What do you all have that’s new or different here this year at PPIM?

Wilton: We are coming out with our line of pig trackers. We have transmitters. We have receivers. They’re all multifrequency. Everything app based on your phone. Instead of having a computer or something giant, you can use the phone you have in your pocket, download an app, and configure everything on the go.

We also have an electronic pig sig AGM that it’s nonintrusive, and it works on the cloud. If you’re monitoring a pig and you want to see what your guys are doing on the field, you’re an office guy, you could be watching that from behind a screen, receive a text message and email, so comfortable.

We also have a new geophone that, again, is also app-based. Instead of having to put on headphones and listen to your pig come by, you could be sitting in your truck and looking at your phone screen and see what’s going on.

Russel: For those of us that have done work out of a truck, and have done it when it’s 40 below or have done it when it’s 120 degrees outside, being able to look, listen for the pig from the truck is a handy little thing right there.

Wilton: Yes. Not only that, when it’s raining, too.

Russel: There’s that, too, or snowing, or whatever it’s doing.

Wilton: Yeah.

Russel: Working from the truck versus outside of the truck, it’s different.

Wilton: Correct. I’ve done a lot of fieldwork in the past. That’s one of the things that we try to take into consideration. What do we need? What do our clients need that make their lives easier?

Russel: I think that’s so important. The thing about tech these days is there’s so much we can do with devices that people have with them all the time, anyways, that makes all this easier. It’s a non-trivial thing to engineer all that. How long have you been having this kind of technology with the apps and the pig trackers, and all that?

Wilton: We started pushing them out at the beginning of last year. They mature this year. This year, we have things that are more well-rounded and ready to go.

Russel: Cool.

Wilton: We’re doing a lot of testing last year–the last two years, let’s say it that way–and then, now, we’re ready to roll with them.

Russel: Awesome. Listen, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Anything else you want to talk about before we wrap?

Wilton: Give us a call. Let us know if you need any cleaning solutions.

Russel: Awesome. Thanks, Wilton, appreciate you.

Wilton: Thank you. I appreciate your time.

Russel: This is Russel Treat. I’m standing here on the floor of Pipeline Pigging & Integrity Management. For anybody who works in that space, this is the place to be. What are we now? The third week of February. Every year, this is the place to be.

Jason Huff: That’s it.

Russel: I’m with Jason with TDW. I wanted to ask you, Jason, what are y’all doing at the show this year?

Jason: This is our 36th year of sponsoring this event. We’ve been a platinum level sponsor for pretty much its entirety. This is a show that we all get excited about.

All three of our business units–from pipeline integrity, isolation and intervention, as well as our pigging group–all come in and participate. It’s a great time to reconnect with customers, show them the latest, greatest, and also point out to some of the things that have made us a leader in the industry for as long as we have been.

Russel: How big is your team? Do you know?

Jason: Here, or…?

Russel: Yeah, here at the show.

Jason: I think we had 28 internal employees represented. Then, last night, we hosted our reception. We had 161 guests total there.

Russel: You shouldn’t have brought that up, because I don’t remember getting my invitation.

Jason: Next year. Next year, Russel.

Russel: All right. Here, let me give my business card real quick.

No, listen. I’m always interested. When I go to PPIM, I’m always interested in what’s new. I’m always also interested in the gear that’s on the floor. Can you talk to me about what you have here in terms of the exhibit?

Jason: Absolutely. One of our newer tools is part of our isolation and intervention group. It’s our POLYSTOPP Quick Connect.

It’s something that we’re really excited about. It’s been a game changer for us on HDPE pipe, allowing us to very quickly tap and isolate, do branch connections, things like that. We’ve done, probably, I don’t know, 100 demos for that over the last couple of days of being here. We’ve also got some of our newer pigs.

One of the things that we are really proud of, we pour all of our own polyurethane in here in Tulsa. We also rolled out last year, about halfway through it, our Quick Ship program, which, pretty much on pigs from 4 to 24 inches, you get us a PO by 2:00 PM. Monday through Thursday, that pig will ship the next day.

Russel: Wow.

Jason: A really short lead time. Something that we’ve been proud of and been able to bring that down, and help our customers out when they’re in a bind.

Russel: I noticed you got a pig trap over here. What are y’all showing with the pig trap?

Jason: A couple of different things. We’ve got our closure. Being represented is our D2000 closure. This is one that’s been, I’d say, often imitated, never duplicated. We’ve been showing this here for a long time. It’s a quick opening closure. It offers all the safety features, being able to operate with one person out of the line of fire.

We also have one of our pig signaling devices up top, which is mounted to a nipple TOR, THREAD-O-RING, that, as the pig is launched through the receiver, the launcher, it will trigger the mechanism.

It’ll flip the flag up, letting you know throughout, down your pipeline, when the pig is traversed, allowing you to open or close valves, make different changes to your system based off of what your needs are.

Russel: This is awesome. Anybody who has the ability, they can get down here. One of the things that PPIM does is they offer a day pass. For engineers or people that are learning the business, it’s a great opportunity, just walk around.

We hear about this stuff all the time. We’re working in the office. It’s nice to come out and be able to see how it operates. Then, you actually send them in the field where the real work happens.

Jason: Absolutely. For us, like I said, it’s something that we all get excited about. It’s early mornings and late nights as we’re hanging out with customers, but it’s something we look forward to all year.

Like you said, it gives a lot of people an opportunity that…Maybe they’ve been buying it, maybe they’ve been needing it for their systems, but never get to touch it or see it and feel it. We’re able to demo that.

A lot of our other vendors here have some pretty cool displays. It’s interesting to be able to get out and see other vendors in the space. See how you can partner with other vendors. At the end of the day, it’s one big family out here.

Russel: Jason, listen, this is awesome. Thanks for your time, and good luck with the show.

Jason: Russel, my pleasure. Thank you.

Russel: I hope you enjoyed this month’s episode of the Pipeline Technology Podcast and our conversation with the exhibitors at PPIM. If you would like to support this podcast, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast, Google Play, or wherever you happen to listen. You can find instructions at PipelinePodcastNetwork.com.

If there’s a Pipeline & Gas Journal article where you’d like to hear from the author, 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 month.

Transcription by CastingWords