This week’s Pipeliners Podcast episode features Shawn Lyon, president of Marathon Pipe Line, and Carl Weimer, the Special Projects Advisor of the Pipeline Safety Trust, discussing the formation of a new API Recommended Practice covering Pipeline Public Engagement.

In this episode, you will learn about the key driver of API 1185 for Pipeline Public Engagement, the goal of the new RP, which entities are involved in the formation of the RP, how this RP fits into the Pipeline SMS framework, the current progress and timeline to introduce a draft of the RP for review, and how the RP can help change the conversation between pipeliners, the public, and concerned entities to find solutions.

API 1185: Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Shawn Lyon is the president of Marathon Pipe Line. Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn.
  • Marathon Pipe Line (MPL) is a subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum Corporation that owns, operates, and develops midstream energy infrastructure assets.
• Carl Weimer is the special projects advisor of the Pipeline Safety Trust. Connect with Carl on LinkedIn. Find out how to contact Carl directly on the Pipeline Safety Trust website.
  • The Pipeline Safety Trust is a public charity promoting pipeline safety through education and advocacy by increasing access to information, and by building partnerships with residents, safety advocates, government, and industry.
    • Access the most-recent editions of the Pipeline Safety Trust annual conferences.
• API (American Petroleum Institute) represents all segments of America’s oil and natural gas industry. Its nearly 600 members produce, process, and distribute most of the nation’s energy. API was formed in 1919 as a standards-setting organization. In its first 100 years, API has developed more than 700 standards to enhance operational and environmental safety, efficiency, and sustainability.
• Bellingham Incident (Olympic Pipeline explosion) occurred on June 10, 1999, when a gasoline pipeline ruptured near Whatcom Creek in Bellingham, Wash., causing deaths and injuries.
  • Listen to Larry Shelton discuss his first-hand account of the incident in episode 79 of the Pipeliners Podcast.
• 811 (Call Before You Dig) is the federally designated call-before-you-dig phone number, designed to make the notification step of the safe excavation process as easy as possible. A person is required to call the 811 number 48-to-72 hours before beginning any excavation or digging projects to allow time for locators to mark the approximate location of any buried infrastructure before excavation begins. Prior to the implementation of 811, people who dug had to know one call center’s 800 numbers, or notify utilities individually.
• PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) ensures the safe transportation of energy and hazardous materials.
• Pipeline SMS (Pipeline Safety Management Systems) or PSMS is an industry-wide focus to improve pipeline safety, driving toward zero incidents.
  • API 1173 established the framework for operators to implement Pipeline Safety Management Systems (SMS).
• FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) regulates, monitors, and investigates electricity, natural gas, hydropower, oil matters, natural gas pipelines, LNG terminals, hydroelectric dams, electric transmission, energy markets, and pricing.

API 1185: Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat:  Welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast, episode 171, 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 700 standards to enhance industry operations worldwide. Find out more about API at api.org.

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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. Now your host, Russel Treat.

Russel:  Thanks for listening to the Pipeliners Podcast. I appreciate you taking the time. To show the appreciation, we give away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener each episode. This week, our winner is Gregg Story with Eastman Chemical. Congratulations, Greg. Your YETI is on its way. To learn how you can win this signature prize, stick around till the end of the episode.

This week on the podcast, I’m very glad to be joined by Shawn Lyon with Marathon Pipe Line and Carl Weimer with the Pipeline Safety Trust to talk about the new API Recommended Practice 1185 Pipeline Public Engagement. Carl, Shawn, welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.

Shawn Lyon:  Thanks for having us, Russel.

Carl Weimer:  Thanks for having me on, Russel. I appreciate it.

Russel:  In both of your cases, I’m really honored to have you on. I’m looking forward to this conversation. I think you guys both have a unique perspective. I’ve asked you to come on to talk about the new recommended practice from API 1185 Public Engagement.

Before we dive in, though, maybe I could ask you guys to do some introductions. Carl, if you don’t mind, would you go first? Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into pipeline and were interested in public engagement.

Carl:  Sure. I didn’t intend to get into pipelines. I live in a community that had a major pipeline tragedy about 20 years ago, the Olympic Pipeline failure in Bellingham, Washington. I lived there at the time and ran a business right on Whatcom Creek. The pipeline burst and dumped a quarter million gallons of unleaded gasoline into the creek that flowed right down past the business.

As we looked over the top of the creek and saw that plume, I think my life changed. All of a sudden, I started getting involved with pipelines and pipeline safety. A few years later, I became the executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust and did that for a number of years.

Now I’m kind of moving into retirement. I’m just doing special projects for the Pipeline Safety Trust. Certainly, over the 20 years I’ve been involved with pipelines, I see multiple times when the industry, the public, and the regulators are talking past each other or using different language.

The need for greater engagement to make sure we’re all talking the same language and to take care of a lot of the frustration that different sides get became apparent. It’s become apparent at all sides in the conversations that often, we need better ways to engage with each other.

Russel:  Carl, that’s absolutely right. I will tell you I knew who you were through some of the work you’ve done before I even started the podcast. When I wrote a list of the people I wanted to get on the podcast, you were right up towards the top. I was very glad to finally have you here. Thank you very much for joining us.

Carl:  Appreciate that.

Russel:  Shawn, same question. What’s your background and how did you get interested in public engagement?

Shawn:  Russel, I’m an engineer from Purdue University, started off with just normal project engineering. Right now, I get the opportunity to be President of Marathon Pipe Line.

I would say dipping into public engagement took off for me when Carl and I first got to know each other and became friends. I’ve learned more from him about public perception and how the public understands pipelines. His organization, Pipeline Safety Trust, has been key not only in my life, but also for Marathon Pipe Line and the industry.

It’s exciting to be on here with him because he’s a big part of why we’re talking about this topic today.

Russel:  That’s so very true. It’s a great segue, too. What’s the background or the driver for this new, recommended practice?

Carl:  I’ll take a crack at that, and Shawn can correct me when I’m done. There’s lots of places where the industry does a very good job of putting information in front of the public. There’s requirements in the regulations to do public awareness. Things like Call Before You Dig, how to recognize a problem along a pipeline, maps of pipelines, how to get your hands on those.

But it’s one-way communication. The industry does a good job of pushing that out. Sometimes the public pays attention, sometimes they don’t, but there’s a lot of good information coming.

Where we started seeing the problems is when the public started wanting more than that, and wanted to have discussions with the industry. Often, that starts to fail, especially around hot topics like when new pipelines are coming through communities, and you start talking about eminent domain, or after there’s been a pipeline failure, and you have to have those conversations with the communities.

All of a sudden, the engagement broke off. Sometimes, the industry didn’t want to engage. Sometimes, the public wanted to engage in probably not very helpful sorts of ways. We all found ourselves searching for ways to understand each other better and to come to better solutions for pipeline safety moving forward.

Shawn:  Russel, I’ll just add, I think for the industry, we’ve been on a journey. We really focused on public awareness, which is a one-way transaction, where we will just inform, “Hey, you’ve got a pipeline in your backyard.”

Where now, we’re seeing the value to make sure it’s an engagement, it’s a relationship, and understanding that relationship isn’t only for today and tomorrow, but it’s for generations to come. If you do that right, together, we can make sure that pipeline is safe and taken care of, and we can respect each other so that all parties win.

I think that’s what this RP is about. How do we work together for the sake of pipeline safety?

Russel:  That sounds great, and the first question that comes up for me is how do you do that? How do you get this two-way communication to happen so that it’s not just public awareness, it’s actually community engagement?

Carl:  I think there’s already good examples of that. The industry has put a lot of effort into Call Before You Dig, use the 811 system. The public has embraced that in many cases. If you look at the statistics for Call Before You Dig, the number of people using that system before they do any kind of excavation has gone up.

That was something that the industry pushed out and the public engaged with, and I think the public has helped push that system forward. There’s other things where you see where it’s failed, but everybody’s come together because they aren’t very happy with the failures, looking for solutions.

There’s people from public interest groups, from local governments, from certainly the federal regulators, and certainly from the industry, all looking for better solutions on how to talk to each other in more helpful ways.

Just getting together and having those discussions, it’s like you see the lightbulb go off with people around the table, like, “Oh, I didn’t realize, when I say this, you thought I meant this.”

Russel:  Yeah, using the same words to mean different things.

Carl:  Yeah, absolutely. It happens all the time, and it causes frustration and sometimes anger amongst the different groups, because they just don’t know what the other person’s really talking about.

Russel:  It’s certainly true.

Shawn:  You know, Russel, it’s interesting how we got to this point with this RP. I’ll tell a quick story with that. We had been working on some things at Marathon Pipe Line, how to improve our public engagement. Carl is a great sounding board, and, like I said, I’ve learned a ton from Carl on public engagement and Pipeline Safety Trust.

I called him one day and said, “Hey, I want to bounce a few things off of you.” He goes, “Hey, it’s interesting you called. We’re thinking about pulling a team together with regulators, the public, and the pipeline industry to talk about public engagement.”

In 2019, we all got together. We had had these discussions, some great discussion. We all looked at each other and said, “You know, we’ve talked about this for years. What are we going to do about it?” We worked with PHMSA to say let’s put together something in a recommended practice through the API organization that sits under Safety Management System.

Here we are today. It can start as simple as a phone call. It can start as simple as, “Hey, how do we do this better?” Now, we’re at a point where we’ve got 28 people, Carl, to get working on a team to develop RP 1185.

We just started, but it’s exciting how it came to be. It wasn’t because the government has said, “Go do this.” We’re coming together as separate entities and what we call the three-legged stool. How can we help public engagement? We all want the same thing    for our pipelines to be safe.

Carl:  I think the one thing I will add to all that is I think the leadership of all the different legs of the stool has recognized that sometimes engagements go in the wrong way. I attend a lot of industry conferences. I attend environmental group conferences.

When you talked about public engagement at an industry conference, it often sounded like engagement was on the battlefield, not engagement as coming to solutions, and the same way, when you go to environmental conferences.

“How can we win the war?” was more of the discussion at some of those conferences than how can we all come together to find solutions that drive pipeline safety. A number of leaders, like myself, Shawn, and people at PHMSA really are trying to find a way to up the discussion so engagement is really a solution-based thing, not trying to win a war.

Russel:  Again, I think that’s extremely well said. Certainly, it’s been thematic in a number of these episodes I’ve been doing about some of the newer standards in particular and around SMS that these things, they’re more about just improving the company. It’s about just improving the entire business. Everybody working together to improve the business. I think that’s important. That’s the only way this is really going to work. There’s substantial challenges, for sure, but there always are when you’re trying to do something meaningful, right?

Let me ask this question. What’s the content of the recommended practice? What’s actually in there? What’s it saying we ought to be doing?

Shawn:  We’re right in the middle of that, Russel. It’s actually, we’re literally starting from a blank page, and again, trying to follow a standard or a recommended practice.

One of the things that’s really interesting about this recommended practice, a lot of it has to do with values like mutual respect, clear and timely communication, and starting the public engagement before you have a problem. Very simplistic things that honestly we learned when you were in kindergarten and growing up, that it goes back just to basic fundamentals of respecting each other as human beings and that, hey, we’re all in this together.

That’s the exciting part. That’s the beginning of it. Then you get into some of the life cycle, the pipeline from where maybe a pipeline doesn’t exist, or a pipeline that does exist, the whole life cycle of a pipeline, we’ve called it.

What’s really interesting to me, a lot of it is back to values that all of us, that transcends all three legs of the stool.

Carl:  I think that’s totally right. It’s amazing that we have all these highfalutin people sitting around a table, and we’re really talking about the golden rule you learned in kindergarten. Trying to return to that, and put some words around, so it’s really meaningful.

The public will look at some of this and say, “Oh, the industry’s just saying that, but are they really doing it?” It’s the whole life cycle from the moment that the pipeline was dreamed up to when it’s abandoned that we’re talking about, and the issues that come up during that time.

Russel:  One of the things that always comes up for me in these conversations is oftentimes the engagement occurs at the end of the spear, if you will. It’s the dudes in the trucks, and I mean that with all affection.

It’s the boots on the ground that are interacting most often with the public. They’re talking to the landowners, to the fire chiefs, to the mayors, to communities. They’re also the guys that are seeing these people at the Friday night football games, at church, and all that kind of stuff. How do you think this practice will help equip them to be more effective?

Shawn:  I’ll go ahead and start. To your point, Russel, what we found the best people to do the public engagement is our frontline workers. We’ve seen the importance of that through this pandemic, but, honestly, the landowners want to talk to our technician who’s taking care of the pipe more than Shawn Lyon.

They want to talk to the people who they can relate to, who live in their communities, who support their communities. We’ve just found tremendous value where we actually do training for our frontline employees to help prepare them as they talk with all kinds of landowners.

I can tell you who enjoys it the most is those frontline workers. I’ve seen that in action when we’ve had different events. To sit back and watch one of our technicians talk with one of the landowners, it’s priceless. It gives me goosebumps even talking about right now.

Carl:  I think it’s true that the industry has so many really good stories to tell, and the people that are in the field doing that work love to tell those stories. That’s who people want to hear from.

On the other side, on our side, we’ve run a conference for 15 years now. A lot of the industry folks come to our conference. What we always hear back from the industry people is, “That session you had with the real landowners that were impacted by a pipeline, either because it cut their farm in half or because there was a failure on the pipeline, hearing from those direct people that were impacted really was the key to your conference.”

We’ve tried to include people like that in the creation of this new recommended practice so there’s really people that have that firsthand knowledge involved.

Russel:  I think it’s interesting, too, the whole conversation about kindergarten, fundamentals, and all of this. Some of the training that I got right out of engineering school that I really hated was all the so-called soft skills.

Somewhere between 35 and 45, I had an epiphany, and I realized that stuff was really important. I think I’m always amazed when I’ve had the opportunity to be out with the boots on the ground and see them interact with the public.

I’m always amazed at the level of competency, the level of professionalism, the level of care, and the relationships. Those guys hold those relationships with those landowners they’re working with, they hold those things close.

Shawn:  To that point, Russel, they protect them. Those technicians have ownership with those landowners. It is like they’re ambassadors for those landowners. Honestly, from my perspective, I couldn’t ask for any more.

That’s what this RP’s about. How do we foster that type of environment, just not for pockets, but across the entire industry, which is gas and liquids? For most people, we’re like other industries, like the airline industry. Hey, it’s an airplane. All people know, I’ve got a pipeline in my backyard. They may know what’s carried in it, but that’s why we’ve got to do this collectively through this RP, because it’s about public safety. It’s about being guardians of public safety.

Those frontline workers, they will gladly do that for any of those landowners or first responders.

Russel:  What do you think the safety impact of this is as it gets developed and rolled out? What do you guys anticipate the safety impact will be?

Carl:  I think one of the key things, at least from my viewpoint is we often see that, especially new pipelines going in or after an incident, that the trust of the pipeline company goes down the drain, just because of mistakes that were made early on.

One of the hopes is, this being a life cycle RP, that we can deal with some of the issues before the pipeline’s even in the ground. Sometimes landowners really get annoyed with the way they’ve been approached about purchase of their right-of-way agreements and those types of things, and fix some of those early discussions and those ongoing discussions so that frustration doesn’t occur.

Those landowners along that right-of-way, thousands of miles all over the country, ought to be the first line of defense for pipeline safety, ought to be the eyes and ears in the field looking for problems.

Studies have even shown that people that live along pipeline right-of-ways, if they’re engaged with correctly and they get their discussions, those people trust the pipelines way more than people that live farther away from the pipelines that don’t get that engagement. This engagement ought to build a great foundation of pipeline safety.

Russel:  Trust is so critical in those kinds of relationships because if you are having these situations where you’re using the same words and meaning different things, if there’s trust there, there’s the opportunity to reconcile that and reconcile it without damaging the relationship. It’s just, “Oh, we missed one another. Let’s get synched up.”

Where is the recommended practice in the process? You talked about you’re formulating it, and you’ve got some people involved. Where is it in the process, and when do you guys hope to try and get something out for review?

Carl:  I think the timeline that we’re working on — and it might be ambitious — was to try to finish up the draft RP this coming summer, by the end of the summer, so it can go off for review and maybe even for a vote end of the year, early the following year. That’s the timeline we’re on.

We’re just getting going. We’re just starting to dig into some of the stickier issues. Whether we can keep to that timeline is still up in the air, but I think everybody agrees that’s what we’re shooting for. I don’t see anybody is trying to slow this down.

Russel:  Are you involving academics or any other outside the industry experts that are experts in these so-called soft skills?

Shawn:  What’s interesting, Russel, we are doing some research into maybe other examples around pipeline or public engagement, whether it’s international sources or other industries and reaching out to those as we form this model. One thing to keep in mind is that this RP is a model already to fit under our SMS, our safety management system.

It’s got a good framework. We don’t have to re-create the wheel. Is there something we can leverage? We are right here. You probably listened to our last meeting that we just had online, where we were looking for other sources to help us so that we can leverage what other people have already put together.

Carl:  The other thing that’s pretty unique about the way API is approaching this RP is we’ve really come up with a balanced team with the three legs of the stool. There’s equal members of the public, of regulators, and of the industry.

If you look at the expertise around the table, we have tribal members. We have people that deal with environmental justice. We have people that are strong landowners’ rights people, different segments of the industry, and state, federal, and local government all around the table. We have a lot of expertise working on this.

Russel:  How about first responders and people like mayors and such as that?

Carl:  There’s a first responder from Virginia. He’s one of the members helping to develop this. We have the mayor of Green, Ohio, who was a recipient of a big new natural gas pipeline that came through their community a few years ago. He’s got some firsthand ideas on how we could improve some things.

Russel:  Direct experience will always do that for you, always do that for you. One of the other questions I want to ask is, as you begin to formalize this and get some clarity, and you have recommendations for the other stakeholders like local governments and that sort of thing, how do you anticipate that playing out?

Shawn:  One of the things that is interesting, we talk through those ideas, and we all have maybe some bad experiences in our meetings. We try to share those. One of the things we’re trying to do with this RP to make sure it’s flexible and scalable because there’s no one exact situation that may repeat itself.

There might be similarities, but you want a system or an RP that can help guide you in principle. Then you look at the situation, and you’ve got a toolbox, or you’ve got values to help you make sure that your public engagement is successful from all perspectives.

From the first responder, as you mentioned, from the landowner, how can I make sure I can give them something? If they don’t understand what I’m giving them, that’s not public engagement. That is just public awareness. Engagement is they’re asking me a question back or confirming. That makes perfect sense.

Russel:  Engagement is about getting them to ask and developing listening skills.

Shawn:  Exactly.

Carl:  We hope having regulators as part of the committee that what we come up with is applicable to their process, too, because the public gets as frustrated with the government, maybe more so sometimes than even the industry. There’s a learning that all three legs of the stool need to do. We hope that moves forward.

I think there’s recognition within at least some of the federal agencies that they need to do a better job. I know that FERC is about to stand up an Office of Public Participation. They’ve already reached out to us to perhaps use some of the work that’s ongoing here to inform that.

Russel:  I think one of the things I take away from this conversation is there’s a lot of aspects to this. There’s engagement at the government or program level, but there’s also engagement at the boots on the ground with the landowner. It’s all part of the same thing, so it’s a very big net that you’re casting.

Shawn:  Russel, it truly is. One of the things I find interesting, and that’s why it’s so important to have all three legs of the stool work on this collaboratively together, because one of the things I’ve enjoyed in my career is going to Carl’s Pipeline Safety annual conference.

There’s landowners there that unfortunately have had some really bad experiences. I enjoy going up to them, talking to them, and asking them, “What happened?” Usually, it usually comes down to just one or two missteps on one site or another that could have avoided the whole situation altogether, and it would have gone really smooth.

It’s unfortunate because it’s really created a lot of just angst and just frustration that, again, just with some simple upfront working together, we wouldn’t even be talking about this bad story.

Russel:  Yeah, it’s a great point. It’s a great point, and there’s some artfulness involved in doing that, in being able to ask those probing questions, and really listen, and having the patience to make sure you’re not just listening, you’re actually hearing. Those are very important life skills, just beyond being a pipeliner. Those are just really important life skills.

Shawn:  Like we said, it’s things you learned in kindergarten.

Russel:  Well, yeah, some of us didn’t learn them that early. I won’t mention any names because I don’t want to call myself out.

Carl, I want to ask you a question because I think your perspective is unique and interesting. What do you see as the biggest challenge in terms of really getting the public to lean in with the pipeliners?

Carl:  I think the biggest challenge is right now, pipelines are in the news a lot. When I started this 20 years ago, we couldn’t get anybody to talk about pipelines. No one wanted to talk about pipelines unless there was a major spill. There’s not that many of them, in reality.

Now, all of a sudden, pipelines are in the news a lot, and most of the issues that you’re reading about pipelines really have little to do with keeping the product in the pipeline or pipeline safety the way most of us think about it. There are things like whether fracking is good or whether pipelines are enabling climate change.

Those issues are going to continue to be huge issues and sticklers, and trying to get people to set those aside, because we’re going to continue to have three million miles of pipeline in the ground here. How do we maintain those safely while we have these other peripheral discussions is going to be a challenge.

Russel:  I can tell you this, that I live in Houston, Texas, and we’re two weeks after the big cold snap. We haven’t had one like that since ’89. My wife and I were running natural gas in our natural gas fireplace, and we were cooking on our natural gas fireplace. We were having a little campout in the house.

I can guarantee you that I think getting a pipeline to my house to deliver that natural gas was really important on that day. I think sometimes that we forget that, that ultimately that’s what we’re trying to do is provide things that people need to support their lifestyle.

Carl:  I think there’s growing recognition of the need to transition to different types of cleaner fuels because of climate change, but the key is in what does transition mean, and how fast? I think you guys learned a valuable lesson in Texas in the last couple weeks.

Russel:  Well, we didn’t learn it. Last time we had it happen was in ’89. We didn’t learn it in ’89 because we just re-experienced it, but maybe we’ll learn it this time. That’s the difference between wisdom. Wisdom is getting the right lessons from the experience.

Listen, guys, let me ask this wrap-up question. What do you think people should be taking away from this conversation? What’s the one thing you’d like to leave them with? Then I have one other question I want to ask after to follow that up.

Carl:  I would say I’m hoping we come up with practices that allow people to have discussions in more rational sorts of ways, that allow the public to get the information they’re asking for and understanding that information, and to come together to work together for solutions instead of shouting at each other all the time.

Ultimately, I think that’s the bottom line on a lot of this. I don’t think anybody is naïve enough to think that we’re going to solve all the problems through RP, but, hopefully, as Shawn was saying, we can prevent a lot of those frustrations that happen early on that lead to bigger problems that never should have happened.

Russel:  Yeah, absolutely.

Shawn:  Russel, for me, I think from the industry perspective, I hope this RP really inspires us to learn from each other, help each other, and realize we’re all in this together, and we have an obligation to protect the public across this great nation.

We must do that 24/7, and it really starts with public engagement. It truly does, and I believe we can. Like I said, I’ve learned more about public engagement from Carl than anyone, or his organization. I’ve learned it from the regulators, local, state, federal.

All of us coming together is really, especially in today’s times, seeing people all work together for one common goal is rather unique.

Shawn:  It’s exciting, to be truthful with you, to be right on the front line of that and hopefully produce an RP that people say, “Hey, we did that together. Not this person or this, but we did that together.”

Russel:  Yeah, absolutely. I’ll ask one final question. For anyone who wants to find out more about this RP, or about the process, or wants to get engaged with public engagement, what would they do?

Carl:  That’s a good question. Certainly, any API or RP process is an open process at some point when it comes out there for comments and stuff. I think, even before that, if people want to get involved, there’s ways.

They can contact me. They can probably contact Shawn to learn more about where the process is at, or even engage. The public members of this effort now have formed a public caucus, which is interesting. We’re having meetings in between the official meetings.

The public’s a pretty diverse group, so we don’t always agree, either. We’d love to have more voices that we can float ideas past, so people are welcome to contact me if they want to plugin.

Russel:  That’s awesome. We’ll link up Carl’s contact information and the Pipeline Safety Trust information in our show notes. We’ll get all that on the website. If you want to look that up, just go to the website and connect with these guys.

Listen, this has been awesome. Thank you so very much for coming on. I look forward to talking to you again when you’ve got this thing out in the market and you’ve learned what is and isn’t working.

Shawn:  We look forward to that, too.

Carl:  Sooner than later, hopefully.

Shawn: Yes, that’s right. Carl’s got to retire sometime. He can’t retire until this is done.

Russel:  Retirement just means you have the ability to say no. It doesn’t mean you hang up your passions.

Shawn:  Very true.

Carl:  Absolutely, and that’s why I’m still here doing this.

Russel: Absolutely. All right, well, thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate it.

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

If you’d like to support the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast, Google Play, or on your smart device podcast app. You could find instructions at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com.

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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.

Transcription by CastingWords