In this episode of the Oil and Gas Measurement Podcast, host Weldon Wright speaks with Dave Curtis about the long-running GPA Midstream School of Chromatography and the critical role analytical measurement plays across the oil and gas industry. The conversation explores how chromatography impacts everything from gas quality and liquid analysis to allocations, custody transfer, and commercial accuracy.
Dave also discusses the importance of hands-on training, industry committee involvement, and developing the next generation of technical experts responsible for maintaining accurate measurement systems throughout the industry.
GPA Midstream Chromatography Training Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms
- The 51st GPA Midstream School of Chromatography will be held July 20-24, 2026 at the University Texas-Arlington.
- Organized and led by members of GPA Midstream’s Analysis, Test Methods, and Product Specifications Committee, this hands-on curriculum is for chromatograph operators, measurement technicians and engineers. The lectures, demonstrations and chromatograph operation sessions emphasize machine demonstration and operation, including analysis of natural gas and natural gas liquid samples.
- GPA Midstream Association – Industry organization focused on technical standards, research, education, and advocacy for the midstream sector, including analytical and measurement standards used across the oil and gas industry.
- School of Chromatography – GPA Midstream’s annual hands-on training program covering gas chromatography fundamentals, calculations, troubleshooting, calibration, and analytical operations.
- Gas Chromatography (GC) – Analytical technique used to separate and analyze components within natural gas and hydrocarbon streams for measurement, custody transfer, and process operations.
- Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) – Analytical method combining gas chromatography and mass spectrometry for advanced compositional analysis and compound identification.
- NIST – The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which supports measurement science, thermodynamics, and physical property research referenced in GPA standards development.
- AGA – The American Gas Association, which develops natural gas measurement and operational standards used throughout the pipeline industry.
- API – The American Petroleum Institute, a major standards development organization supporting oil and gas operations, including measurement and sampling standards.
- Custody Transfer – The transfer point where ownership of hydrocarbons changes hands, requiring highly accurate measurement and analytical data.
- Heating Value – The energy content of natural gas used in calculating MMBtu values for commercial transactions.
- Specific Gravity – Measurement of gas density relative to air, used in flow calculations and gas property determination.
- Calibration Gas – Certified gas mixtures used to calibrate gas chromatographs and ensure analytical accuracy.
- Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs) – Hydrocarbon liquids such as ethane, propane, butane, and natural gasoline that require precise compositional analysis for valuation and processing.
- MMBtu – Unit of energy commonly used in natural gas transactions and calculations.
- Analytical Sampling – Process of collecting representative gas or liquid samples for laboratory or online analysis.
- Online Gas Chromatograph – Permanently installed GC systems used for continuous process monitoring and custody transfer analysis.
- Portable Gas Chromatograph – Mobile analytical equipment used in field operations for on-site compositional analysis.
- Supercompressibility – Gas behavior correction factor used in natural gas volume calculations under varying pressures and temperatures.
- GPA 2172 – GPA Midstream calculation method related to hydrocarbon physical properties and gas analysis applications referenced in the discussion.
GPA Midstream Chromatography Training Full Episode Transcript
Weldon Wright:
Welcome to episode 56 of the Oil and Gas Measurement Podcast, sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, the provider of the Muddy Boots field operations software.
Assisting oil and gas operators to implement accurate and repeatable measurement activities across their entire operation while also simplifying data collection in the field.
To find out more about Muddy Boots, go to EnerSysCorp.com/software/muddy-boots.
Hello, I’m your host, Weldon Wright with FPV Prime Measurement Consulting. And we’re lucky enough to have with us today Dave Curtis from GPA Midstream.
And by the way, over the course of the recording, folks, forgive me if I stop using the word GPA Midstream. I was involved in GPA long before they tacked the “Midstream” on the end of it.
But at any rate, Dave is the VP of Technical Services there at GPA Midstream, and he’s going to be talking with us a little bit about the GPA School of Chromatography.
Dave, welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do there at GPA.
Dave Curtis:
Thanks, Weldon. I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.
So just to give you a little background on me, I have an odd career that brings me to this place, but it’s all wrapped around chromatography. And that’s why I get excited about our School of Chromatography.
When I left our family businesses and decided it was time to go to college, I found a laboratory near me through the phone book. A lot of people listening to this don’t even know what a phone book is. But in the phone book, I found a lab that was close to me. I walked through the front door and said, “Oh, by the way, I work here now.”
And they hired me, and off I went.
That turned out to be one of the leading air laboratories in the environmental space in the country. So I got to touch a lot of different GCs, GC-MSs, LCs, and so on. I got to where I was doing all of the R&D for the company. And then toward the end, after about four and a half years, I was running all of our field analytical and analysis at the site of investigation.
A new piece of equipment came out, a field-portable GC-MS that gave laboratory quality in the field. And I went to our owner and said, “We’ve got to have this.” And he went, “Yeah, no, not spending the money.” And I went, “Okay, thank you. Bye.”
And I left and opened my own environmental consulting company, which specialized in analysis at the site of investigation using GC and GC-MS. We did soils, waters, soil gas investigations for site remediation and investigation. We did perimeter monitoring, emissions monitoring, “what’s that smell?” — anything you can think of.
Any industry you can think of, from what I like to say is nuts to parts of the space shuttle, we tested it.
So I got to really take chromatography and put it through its paces inside and out.
Well, as such, the manufacturers of the different GCs and GC-MSs we used contracted us as their instructors because we were putting their equipment through far more rigmarole than their salespeople and training people do. So we started instructing.
Well, in 1998, the oil and gas industry really started to push toward having their technicians get compositions of their gas streams while they were doing settlements of their meters.
So we went out and we were teaching all of the different oil and gas companies how to use this instrumentation in the field. I got in close with all the different oil and gas companies.
In 2009, Anadarko, who I was doing a bunch of work for, convinced me to come and join them full time. And so once I got there, I had already had a ton of portable instrumentation and laboratory instrumentation experience.
Well, now I started playing with their online GCs in all their plants, making sure those were operating right, getting to see where the pitfalls were.
I was at Anadarko for 10 and a half years, where I was running their measurement program. And as part of it, on the compositional side, we were auditing, training all of our internal people, and sending them to the School of Chromatography. I’m going to come back to that.
And then when Anadarko sold to Oxy, I decided it was time to step away and went to work for SPL. And of course, SPL is one of the leaders in hydrocarbon analysis in the country.
So again, I got to apply my chromatography bones there. We were doing the full gamut again. Of course, we had labs everywhere, but we also had portable GCs and we were helping people maintain their stationary GCs.
And then most recently, I became part of GPA Midstream.
One of the great things when I started at Anadarko, Anadarko really let me get involved in industry advocacy and helping with standard development and all of that jazz.
Some of the favorite parts of my career were helping to build standards that helped make the industry better. Spending time with legislature and regulatory bodies, helping to make sure that laws, rules, and regulations actually match what we could do in the industry.
So playing with GPA Midstream and other associations was a blast.
After I left SPL, the opportunity came up for me to join GPA Midstream. And again, love every minute of it.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with GPA Midstream, GPA Midstream is one of the leading standard development bodies for the oil and gas industry.
We do specialize in midstream, but I think what a lot of people don’t understand is when you look at our analysis and measurement standards in particular, those are used way upstream and way downstream too.
So where we are focused on our advocacy efforts and all of that jazz back in Washington for our midstream industry members, our standards are used by everybody.
So it’s a very cool place to be.
As Technical Services, that’s what I oversee. I oversee our standards, our research — we do a ton of research — both for figuring out thermodynamics and physical properties of the different gas streams that are coming in so that we can build plants better.
We do research so that we can improve measurement and analysis, that type of thing.
And then, of course, I’m over our schools, such as our Engineering Data Book training course and, of course, our School of Chromatography, which is what we’re here to talk about today.
Weldon Wright:
Yeah. Well, backing up just one second.
A lot of people in the pipeline part of the world, the refined liquids part of the world, they don’t necessarily understand the role that GPA Midstream plays in some of those standards.
I was involved in GPA Midstream standards groups on the measurement side way back, probably around the 2000s. My career shifted more toward the pipeline side of it, and I became more involved in AGA and kind of left my involvement with GPA, which I regret because I enjoy GPA more.
But the standards — the calculations for BTUs, for specific gravity, how we set up and operate our GCs — all of that stuff comes from GPA Midstream.
As I like to say, we’ve got four standards bodies out there. Each has their own specialty, and the others recognize that specialty.
Now, we’ve had some infighting in the last 10 years about sampling standards.
But look, we’re all one big happy family. Just siblings fighting, right?
Dave Curtis:
We should solve that problem by making it a co-authored document now where those two are combined between us and API. So let’s stop the fighting.
Weldon Wright:
So true. So true.
What I’d like to do is talk about what the gas chromatography school is and why it’s important.
To me — I was trying to nail down before we started this conversation — I’ve been to that school. I can only get within about a five-year period, but it was 25 years ago, give or take a couple years. I’m sure quite a bit has changed.
But things have changed in where we get our training over the years. I think we’ll talk about that a little more later.
The school is important because chromatography, where our gas and liquid analysis come from, is the key to everything going downstream.
We cannot calculate a natural gas volume. We can’t calculate CO2 volume. We can’t calculate any of those without a good analysis. And that’s true even of our liquids. We’ve got to know that liquid composition for all the corrections to be done.
So the analytical accuracy and reliability is every bit as important as that raw volume number before we start correcting, right?
Dave Curtis:
A hundred percent.
And you hit on something great there. Even when folks realize that, especially on gas, composition is 50 percent of the equation because we trade on an MMBtu, which is a combination of the heating value, which is calculated from the composition, and the volume.
But we can’t get accurate volume without an accurate composition. So it’s really more than 50 percent of the equation.
And when you’re talking hydrocarbon liquids, same thing.
You get into crude oil — it’s more about gravity and that type of thing.
Weldon Wright:
We just guess on crude anyway.
Dave Curtis:
We just guess.
NGLs and all of those types of things — without accurate compositions, that can mean millions of dollars in inaccuracies to the buyer or seller or both.
So it’s a critical part of our stream.
When people say measurement is the cash register, they’re correct. And an important piece of that cash register is the composition.
Weldon Wright:
Well, a fair amount of my audience here on the podcast are really the pipeline folks, right? Even in the distribution sector, we have quite a few listeners.
For those in the transportation pipeline and distribution sectors of the industry, and the downstream folks, one of the key things to remember is when we’re at the wellhead producing natural gas, for the most part the methane is the less valuable byproduct. It’s not where the money is, or at least not where all the money is.
So at that wellhead composition, in that gathering and processing and treating world, that composition, as you said, is probably more important than the raw volume to begin with.
Dave Curtis:
Right. Exactly correct.
Weldon Wright:
So at any rate, we have a lot of people that do a lot of training about how to measure that gas. But finding folks that provide good training about how to sample it and how to analyze it gets pretty tough.
So let’s talk a little bit about the school itself.
When is it? What is it? And what does it do?
Dave Curtis:
All right. So this is the 51st annual School of Chromatography.
And when we say annual, there’s the little caveat that there were a year or two during COVID where nobody could talk to one another in the same room. So it’s kind of hard to do hands-on GC training when you can’t stand next to the person and do it.
So we had a block there, but this is the 51st annual.
It had been held in Tulsa for the majority of its life. We did it one year in Colorado. And this is going to be our third year at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Great place to have it. Nice centrally located area in the patch of all the different basins, and easy for folks to get into with two big airports on each side.
One of the cool things about the School of Chromatography is this is 100 percent member-led. So we’ve got a great team of instructors that are out there doing this for the industry every day.
So they see the issues. They see the concerns. They’re the ones having the problems.
It’s easy for somebody to stand up there and tell you about chromatography all day long, but unless they’ve made the mistakes, unless they’ve had the errors and had to troubleshoot and figure it out, then they don’t have all the information to give you.
The best way to learn is from somebody who’s already had the problem.
And that’s what we have here.
The School of Chromatography takes you from if you’ve never even heard the word chromatography before — about the fundamentals, the basics, the ideas — and it’ll take you all the way through advanced.
So it’s not a one-and-done. “I went to chromatography school. I never need to go again.”
No. You go to chromatography school and you learn the basics. Then you go put those into application, and then you come back and now you have more questions, more ideas, more to learn from.
The school is a combination of classroom teaching — whether it’s fundamentals, calculations, that type of thing — and actual hands-on training.
So you get to put your hands on various pieces of laboratory equipment, stationary equipment, and portable equipment to learn how they work, find out how to operate them, hear about how to maintain them, which is a big part.
Why I think this school is so important — you kind of touched on it, Weldon — is there’s not a lot of places to get that information.
In the field, training is great and you’ll learn as you go, but being able to go in and have five days where you concentrate on how to run that instrument…
And I’m not speaking badly about any manufacturer, but some manufacturers are selling you the piece of equipment and they don’t talk about all the stuff that goes wrong, all the things that can happen in chromatography.
That’s very much the case.
Pretty much every control room of a plant I’ve ever walked into, I can look up at the board and go, “That composition’s wrong.” And it’s not because they have a bad GC. It’s because it’s not being maintained and operated properly because nobody’s provided the training to the analyst to keep that GC up and running.
And that’s what this school does. It helps fill that gap.
So when you go back and look up at that board in the control room or look at the composition on your computer, you go, “There’s something wrong there.”
And it helps you know where to go to fix that problem and how to fix it. And it gives you a whole bunch of contacts of people that you can call if you haven’t seen that problem yet and say, “Hey Bob, I’m getting this. What do you think the problem is?”
Weldon Wright:
Yep. That’s one of the most valuable things of that school.
Now, I want to rewind for just a minute. I want to take exception on something that you said.
Dave Curtis:
Oh, sorry.
Weldon Wright:
On one little word.
You were talking about people not having the opportunity to focus for five days on a chromatograph, like you do in the school.
Well, you’re right. Very few environments give anyone the focus time to learn, absorb, and understand that kind of equipment.
But you said focusing on an instrument or a chromatograph. I don’t remember which. That’s what I’ve got to take exception with.
When I walked into the School of Chromatography 25 years ago, I was overwhelmed by the amount of equipment sitting in that room.
It wasn’t one GC, one gas GC, or one “liquid GC,” which there’s really no such thing.
There wasn’t one GC in that room.
We had equipment from, I think, three different manufacturers. There were GCs with gas sampling systems, liquid sampling systems. The amount of equipment there was just overwhelming.
I don’t know that I’ve seen that many GCs of different manufacturers anywhere except possibly a trade show.
Definitely not where you could put your hands on them, where you could learn, where you could set them up, where you could understand what a control chart was.
So this school brings an opportunity that I honestly don’t know anywhere else in the U.S. that you can get.
Dave Curtis:
Yeah, I’m glad you caught that, Weldon, because you’re 100 percent correct.
We had it in Tulsa, but here at the University of Texas, we’ve got four different rooms, labs, college labs that are filled with instrumentation.
One room is dedicated just to gas analysis, where you’ve got multiple manufacturers and multiple instructors, depending on the track that you pick within the school. We’ll get back into that in a second.
You get to go around and handle and touch various manufacturers and very different types because, if you’re at a company that’s already settled, you don’t necessarily know what equipment they’re going to have.
You might be the one trying to determine what piece of equipment best fits your application. You get to figure it out.
Same in the liquids lab.
And thank you, by the way, because it’s one of my favorite things when somebody says, “Oh, I’ve got a liquid chromatograph.”
Well, an LC is a completely different animal than what we’re talking about. It’s all gas chromatography. You just have to convert that liquid to a gas when it’s injected, which is a whole other animal that we probably don’t have time to go into.
Then you’ve got, like you said, the benchtops for the laboratory. You’ve got the stationaries there. You’ve got portables there. And you get to touch and smell all of them.
Weldon Wright:
Yeah, it’s just an invaluable tool to the folks.
I guess when I started in this industry, I went to that school because I got in the position that I was responsible for some techs that had to install and maintain GCs.
And I knew when I walked up — I mean, I’d had some exposure. I’d installed a few GCs. I got the manufacturer manual. I must be able to do it, right?
I installed it, manufacturer came out, they set it up, sprinkled holy water on it, went away. I handed the keys to the customer and went away and never thought about it.
But then I went to work for a company where, hey, I’ve got people working for me responsible for that.
So my standpoint is I never want to ask my guys to do something I can’t do.
So I went to that school, and I’m telling you, the eye-opening was so severe I may have strained my eyelids.
But at any rate, for years, if we bought a GC, the vendor would come out and give us a half-day or a one-day school on how to operate that GC.
And that was really all the techs in the field were getting.
That is really the school. Here’s how we plumb it up. Here’s how we turn it on.
And before the days of auto cals, in air quotes, here’s how we look at the responses and tweak a few things.
But it left so much out there.
And even that has gone away now. Finding a vendor that’s willing to spend half a day or a day with your team because you bought one GC, that’s not really happening these days.
So the School of Chromatography really is the place where that complexity…
For our folks up in middle and upper management, they don’t plan on touching a GC. But a lot of what this podcast is about is informing people across the spectrum what we do in measurement.
That GC, even if we call it a portable, even if we call it an installed online GC out in the field, it’s a little laboratory in a box with a massive amount of complexity.
Installing it correctly, designing the proper sampling system, designing the proper power systems to get it there, the right calibration, selecting the right calibration gas…
And I’m not sure if that’s part of your school or not. I don’t remember that many years back.
But just selecting the calibration gases to be used — you cannot use a generic cal gas across the whole breadth of raw, rich, wet gas to pipeline gas.
So understanding all of these pieces, it’s not a trivial thing.
And when someone says, “Oh, I went to a half-day vendor training,” they were shown the box and how to read the manual, and not a whole lot more.
This school, at a week long, is kind of the introduction, right?
Dave Curtis:
Yeah.
And just to go back to what you said there, we absolutely talk about standard selection and handling and all of that jazz.
And kind of to your point there about the breadth of people listening to this audience, this school is not just for the people who are operating and maintaining the gas chromatographs.
There are a lot of people that utilize that data.
That data goes downstream, and there are some intense calculations that go on depending on what product you’re trading and where you’re sending it and balancing to.
This class goes into all of those types of things too.
So your accounting folks, your allocations folks, your commercial folks — we have tracks for each one of those folks in this program in order for them to understand.
So when you are in accounting and utilizing this analytical data, you can recognize when something looks wrong because there are some rules of thumb that help you go, “Wait a minute, that analysis doesn’t look right.”
And you can call that into question or better understand where the calculations are coming from or the physical properties that we use in those calculations.
So it’s more than just analysts that benefit from this course.
Weldon Wright:
And let’s not forget, measurement is always a cost center for every company that I’ve ever worked with.
And what do we do with cost centers? We try to reduce that cost.
GCs are not a good place to do that in general. Measurement in general is not a good place.
Dave Curtis:
Please say that again. Please. That’s something we need to get up in every podcast.
Trimming measurement — it may be a cost center, but that’s what counts the dollars.
Weldon Wright:
Well, I agree.
And I’m going to harp on it a little more because what I’ve found over the years is nobody cares about measurement until there’s a problem with measurement.
If it’s working well and we’re doing right, it must be okay. And by definition, we must be spending too much money, so we can cut down the money we’re spending.
But with measurement in general, especially with the analytical end, I have never found a better advocate for getting the measurement group the money they need for proper sampling and proper analysis…
I’ve never found a better advocate than the guys on the far end from measurement — those traders doing the deals, the accounting folks that have to balance and do the statements.
Because those are the folks that begin to see the dollar impact.
This is actually something we’ve condemned ourselves to. For some reason, we don’t put dollar signs…
We decided dollar signs were evil two decades ago in measurement. We just give the raw information. “Y’all put the dollars on it.”
And that’s really a disservice because without the dollars, you don’t understand the impact.
Some of the best advocates I’ve had over the years have been on the commercial end, not on the measurement end, once commercial understands the impact to the bottom line that improper measurement has.
Dave Curtis:
Yeah.
And to your point, back in my Anadarko days, because of exactly what you’re saying, when I would give presentations, especially to upper management, I always included the financial impact of what we fixed, what we found, that type of thing.
And what we made back from folks we delivered into from improper analyses.
The bigger dollar swings were almost always on the compositional side.
The volumetric swings — sure, we need those fixed and there’s a dollar component to that — but the biggest dollar impacts were almost always on the compositional side.
When there’s an error, it costs a ton of money.
Weldon Wright:
Yep. I’ve repeatedly seen that doing consulting projects for companies, particularly when you get into the gathering and processing world and the upstream producers.
So much money relies on even tiny inaccuracies of composition.
Now, it’s still important on the transportation side, but to a lesser extent.
The same thing on our liquid side. For crude, yeah, we need to know a few things.
But when we get into refined liquids, when we get into our NGLs, we’re back to the point where analytical is extremely important in putting dollar values at the bottom line.
Dave Curtis:
Yep. One hundred percent.
Weldon Wright:
You know, I’d like to steer this a little more about how technical and how deep some of the stuff we do really is.
There’s Eric — Eric Estrada. I’ve known Eric for years. He’s this quiet guy that is this brain trust of this end of the world.
And Eric is now leading that committee. Is that correct?
Dave Curtis:
That is correct.
So Eric is the chair of our analysis committee, and the chair of the analysis committee is also the chair of our School of Gas Chromatography.
Our School of Gas Chromatography is made up of coordinators and instructors, and Eric oversees all of that.
Weldon Wright:
Okay.
Well, Eric’s a great guy. And like I said, he’s such a quiet guy. In fact, when he talks, you ought to listen.
But Eric has been in the production world for years doing measurement day to day, training his people, beating things into his company on how to do things right.
He’s kind of the personification of who ought to be in our world for that kind of work.
But then we have the other side of this.
I met one of the neatest people I’ve ever met sitting in a GPA meeting before we had “Midstream” tacked onto the end of it.
And that is Eric Lemon.
Eric Lemon is key to our work at GPA Midstream and, to a lesser extent, over at AGA.
Eric has worked for NIST for a number of years.
And literally, when GPA Midstream says we’re doing research work, refining the GPA 2172 calculations, working on supercompressibility…
One of the guys at the helm of that ship is really a scientist that we fight for time because NASA wants most of his time doing fuel calculations to get to Mars.
So the complexity and the technical end of what goes into chromatography cannot be understated.
And we’ve got to get the right money and the right amount of training into the people.
And in addition to training, we’ve got to get more people from the industry back involved in GPA, AGA, and API.
We’ve got to get more folks in industry actively involved in these groups.
Dave Curtis:
Yeah.
We do have those great technical people like you just mentioned, and we’ve got a stable of them.
But all the companies, as things have happened, are trying to do more with less, and they’re not incentivizing folks to be part of these associations and committees.
And we need their knowledge.
It’s a couple things.
One, we need their experts.
But then two, we need the next generation of experts. We need them sending the folks that are going to be learning from these incredible people like the two Erics so that they’re next up.
Because someday those two Erics are going to want to go fishing. They’re not going to want to come to work anymore.
We consider the “R” word, retirement, to be a four-letter word at GPA Midstream, but people do retire.
And we need to train those next groups of experts to be there so we can continue the good work.
But that comes from our member companies incentivizing people to go.
Very rarely do you see in folks’ goals for the year, their KPIs, that their bonuses, raises, and promotions are based on committee involvement and being part of that.
And that’s what we need to see more of.
I know that with my team, that was part of their goals for the year. They had to be part of these committees because it’s so important.
We need more of that to get people back in there so we can utilize their knowledge and so they can learn to be that next step in.
Weldon Wright:
Well, we’re not hurting for new experts.
We’re not beating the bushes for new experts to come into these committees. We’ll welcome them always.
But what we really need is that new blood.
And there is no better way to learn about something you don’t know a lot about than to get involved with these measurement committees at GPA Midstream, AGA, and API.
They don’t need all experts.
They literally need somebody to help proofread. They need people to help do formatting of documents.
And we’ve all gotten better. We’ve got some people on staff now that do those things.
But we need people at the committee level to take the research and review the math in a spreadsheet.
You don’t have to know how the spreadsheet works.
Dave Curtis:
But that’s how they become the next expert.
Weldon Wright:
Exactly. That’s what I’m saying.
We need them in there.
Dave Curtis:
Exactly.
Weldon Wright:
All great stuff.
Dave Curtis:
And this last thing on that, Weldon.
One of the toughest things in the committees when you’re new and haven’t been there before is old curmudgeons like me never shut up.
People are afraid to speak up because there are these three people in the room that seem to love their own voice and won’t be quiet.
You’re learning from them, but you want to give your input as well.
So when you’re new in these things, you’ve got to not be afraid to speak up and hush us old folks down and get your ideas in there.
Fresh new ideas are what improve these standards.
People won’t speak up because, “What if this person challenges me?”
Even if you say something that’s not 100 percent correct, it helps steer the conversation in the right direction.
So when you join these things, don’t be afraid to give your input.
That’s my biggest recommendation for all new folks.
Weldon Wright:
I think that’s a great summary.
Before we leave, let’s wrap back around a little bit to the school itself.
Again, in that realm of how do we convince that manager or measurement director not to write a check for the cost of the school…
If you fail to register early and you’re not a GPA member, it’s $2,050 for this year’s school.
That’s not the big cost to any company.
They’ve got to get the people to and from the school. Put them up in the hotel.
But even that travel cost is not the big expense.
It’s not having that person in the field for that length of time because no one out there is operating at a staffing level where they’ve got more than enough people.
So help focus on that manager and that director about why it’s critical to make this kind of budget and time commitment.
There’s no other place I know of where you can find this amount and combination of training here in the U.S.
Dave Curtis:
Yeah.
And you hit on it earlier. We have to help management understand the benefits and what’s going to come out of this.
The amount of dollars that can be lost or not gained because of inaccuracies in our analysis is huge.
They’ve spent hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on analytical equipment.
You need to also spend the money to make sure it’s maintained and operated properly so you are getting accurate data and aren’t losing value going out through your pipe or out your tailgate.
That’s the gap we have to help fill.
I can tell you right now, I’m happy to help people have that conversation.
If they want help justifying being able to come to this class, give me a call.
I’m willing to talk to their managers or at least provide them background information they can take to their managers on why spending five days out of the field is actually going to reap benefits for the company.
Weldon Wright:
You mean we’re not going to push the fact that they get to go see the Chicago White Sox versus Rangers game?
We don’t talk about that for this school.
But back on the real point…
Even if your company uses an external contractor to maintain and operate your GCs, how do you know what they’re doing is up to speed?
You should have someone in your organization — they may not be an expert — but they should have the basics, probably at the level of training at this school.
Even if it’s a former field supervisor level, they need to be able to take a look at what that third-party service tech showing up on your site is doing.
You need quality control.
And if you have no idea what’s being done to begin with, and you don’t know what doing it right means, how are you going to know if your third-party contractors or your own folks are doing it correctly?
Dave Curtis:
That’s correct.
No way to have that oversight. No way to understand, “Does it pass the sniff test? Is that data accurate, or at least appear to be accurate?”
And the reason I caveat it that way is I’m sure you’ve seen it, Weldon.
You’ll look at an analysis and go, “There’s no way this can be right.”
But then when you dig in and do the reanalysis and recollect the sample, it’s just something weird in your stream.
So it is right.
But at least it raised a red flag that something’s different than it used to be.
Something doesn’t look right.
Weldon Wright:
Yep. It’s a complex world, and you’ve got to have a lot of knowledge and experience just to know where to sniff for the sniff test.
Anything you want to close with? It’s about time to land this plane.
Dave Curtis:
Yeah.
I think one of the things I want to close with is just a shameless plug to our team.
Again, member-led, volunteer-led.
Over the past couple years, they’ve really been taking our presentations and making sure they’re updated with the most current standards, the right dates, and all the information because our world does change.
We don’t stay static in the measurement industry. We’re always trying to improve.
They’ve done a really great job updating the class, updating the instrumentation, and making sure it’s relevant for students — what people are touching and operating today, the calculations, all of that stuff.
It’s been really fun to watch these folks do it and make sure they’re providing a great class.
And again, I know I’ve said it three times, but they’re volunteers.
They’re doing it because they’re passionate about analytical chromatography, the calculations, and all of that jazz.
When you go there, that’s what you get to experience — people who live and love this.
And there’s no better way to learn than from somebody who’s excited about what they’re doing.
Weldon Wright:
I think that’s a great summary there.
I appreciate it, Dave. It’s been a great recording.
I hope we’ve convinced a few more managers out there to pony up some bucks and some time.
And I hope all those guys at the level below making the budget decisions are thinking about, “Do I need to go to this? Do some of my people need to go to this?”
Start working on your boss so he can work on his boss to get this approved.
This is some of the best money your company can spend.
Thanks again, Dave. I appreciate your time, and have a great one, sir.
Dave Curtis:
Last thing. Sorry, Weldon.
If you want to know more about the school, go to GPAmidstream.org.
You can find the School of Chromatography tab there. You can find information about it, where to register, all of that jazz.
Weldon, this has been a blast, man. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Weldon Wright:
Blast having you here also.
And we’ll have all of that stuff in the show notes on the website also.
Dave Curtis:
Awesome. Thank you, sir.
Weldon Wright:
Thank you, Dave.
Weldon Wright:
So thanks for listening, and please spread the word about our podcast by telling your boss, your coworkers, and your industry peers.
To find more information about the GPA Midstream Chromatography School, go to GPAmidstream.org and click on Education Events in the top menu.
We’ll also have a link to their website, their Facebook page, and some contact information for Dave there also.
All of that will be in the transcript of this episode and the show notes on PipelinePodcastNetwork.com.
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If you have comments and questions about this episode, suggestions for future topics, or if you’d like to offer yourself up as a guest on the podcast, send me a message on LinkedIn or shoot me an email at weldon.wright@fpvprime.com.