In this month’s episode of the Pipeline Technology Podcast, sponsored by Pipeline & Gas Journal, host Russel Treat is joined by INGAA Foundation Chairman Paul Amato.

Listen to the episode now to learn more about Paul’s role as chairman of the INGAA (Interstate Natural Gas Association of America) Foundation, as well as the goals and objectives of the organization.

INGAA Foundation Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms:

• Paul R. Amato is the Vice President Engineering, Operations, Environmental, Health & Safety at Iroquois Gas Transmission, as well as the current chairman for INGAA Foundation. Connect with Paul on LinkedIn.
  • Iroquois Gas Transmission System, L.P., a limited partnership of four U.S. and Canadian energy companies, owns and operates a 414-mile interstate natural gas pipeline extending from the U.S.-Canadian border at Waddington, NY, through New York State and western Connecticut to its terminus in Commack, NY, and from Huntington to the Bronx, NY. 
  • The INGAA Foundation is the trade organization for the full value chain of the North American interstate natural gas industry.  It facilitates the safe, efficient, reliable and environmentally responsible design, construction, operation and maintenance of the North American natural gas transmission system to advance the delivery of natural gas for the benefit of the consuming public, the economy and the environment.
• 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.
• INGAA (Interstate Natural Gas Association of America) is a trade organization of interstate Operators, that advocates regulatory and legislative positions of importance to the natural gas pipeline industry in North America. INGAA is comprised of 26 members, representing the vast majority of the interstate natural gas transmission pipeline companies in the U.S. and Canada. INGAA members operate almost 200,000 miles of pipeline.
• A lay barge is a floating factory where the pipe joints are welded on to the pipeline as it is installed.
• Pipeline Right-of-Way is a strip of land encompassing buried pipelines and other natural gas equipment allowing them to be permanently located on public and/or private land to provide natural gas service.
• ASGMT (American School of Gas Measurement Technology) is the largest gas measurement school in the United States that is devoted to natural gas measurement, pressure regulation, flow control, and other measurement related arenas. It is divided into seven main subject groups: Fundamental Measurement, Gas Quality, Distribution, General and Advanced Measurement, Transmission, Office Procedures and Accounting, and Hands-On training.
• ​The Young Pipeline Professionals (YPP) is a group of highly motivated young professionals working within the pipeline industry with the aim of knowledge sharing to ensure the longevity of the industry, addressing the industry’s skill shortage and foster relationships.
• The Inflation Reduction Act The Inflation Reduction Act contains $500 billion in new spending and tax breaks that aim to boost clean energy, reduce healthcare costs, and increase tax revenues.
• PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) ensures the safe transportation of energy and hazardous materials.
• O&M (Operations & Maintenance) is a comprehensive approach to performing pipeline tasks related to the operation and maintenance of gas and liquid pipeline systems. A robust O&M program provides personnel with the knowledge and understanding of each situation to enable them to correctly assess the situation and take corrective action.
• Upstream is the operation stage in the oil and gas industry that involves exploration and production. 
• Midstream is the processing, storing, transporting and marketing of oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids.
• 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 (American Petroleum Institute) is a national trade association that represents all aspects of America’s oil and natural gas industry.

INGAA Foundation 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 35. On this episode, our guest is Paul Amato with Iroquois Gas Transmission and the current chair of the INGAA Foundation. We’re going to talk to Paul about his role as chairman of the foundation and some of the goals and objectives. Paul, welcome to the Pipeline Technology Podcast.

Paul Amato: Thank you for having me.

Russel: As I often do, I think it’s helpful just to dive in with an introduction. If you don’t mind, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background and how you got involved with the INGAA Foundation.

Paul: Sure. Thanks. I’ve been in the industry for a little over 35 years. Starting back around 2000, I was involved with INGAA. INGAA is the group of operators. It’s the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. That’s the operating community.

Then, a few years later, I started getting involved with the INGAA Foundation. The INGAA Foundation is the full value chain of the natural gas transmission industry in North America. That includes service providers, construction contractors, consultants, as well as operators.

I’ve been engaged with the Executive Committee of the INGAA Foundation starting in 2016. Then just a few years ago, they asked me to join the leadership team. This year, I’m currently the INGAA Foundation chairman.

Russel: Tell us a little bit about your background in pipelining, if you don’t mind.

Paul: I grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, which is not the hub of the natural gas industry, ironically. I started my career right out of college as an inspector for the state of Connecticut, and I currently work for Iroquois Pipeline.

Ironically, I was inspecting the Iroquois pipeline being constructed in Connecticut back in the early ’90s, late ’80s. I was fortunate enough to actually get on a lay barge back then, which not many people in Connecticut have even seen a lay barge or know what it is.

I then left the state of Connecticut after about five years and went to work for Algonquin Gas, started as a field engineer, really cutting my teeth, learning a lot from the technicians and other people at Algonquin.

Worked there for five years and then I moved over to Iroquois and progressed my way up. Started in engineering, moved over to operations, along the way, picked up right away environmental health and safety and procurement.

Russel: This is a little bit off in the weeds, but I feel obligated to make this comment. Last week, I was up in Rhode Island with Boy Scouts. I ended up spending part of the week at Buck Hill Scout Reservation. I had the ranger walk us around.

He walked us to one part and he was talking about Algonquin’s pipeline right-of-way being close to that. I’m like, “I was not expecting that to come up unprompted in the conversation walking around with a ranger.”

Paul: Very interesting. I know the area well. I was over the pipelines in Connecticut, but my counterpart out of Westwood, Massachusetts at the time had that area. One of my daughters went to Roger Williams, so I’ve made many trips from Connecticut out to the bay in Rhode Island.

Russel: It’s very beautiful country.

Paul: Beautiful.

Russel: Beautiful country. Anyway, sorry, I can talk about that all day, but that’s not why I asked you on the podcast. You recently took the position as chair of the INGAA Foundation, how does one find themself in that role? What was your career path to get you there?

Let me build a little context, if I could, Paul, about the question. I think it’s important for people in our industry to understand that it’s important to be involved in an organization and such and what that can mean to your career over the life of your service to the pipeline industry.

Paul: It’s a great question. I feel like as I got more experience, I’ll say, I wanted to get more involved in a variety of organizations. It may sound a little corny to give back, but it’s as much to help your career as it is to help the industry that you’re involved in.

When I first started getting involved with the foundation, it started simply as attending some meetings, seeing the value of the foundation, meeting some people. Then it grew to getting on some committees and doing some work with the foundation.

That then grew to the opportunity where they asked me to be on the Executive Committee, where you’re overseeing, with the foundation’s staff, the operation and the focus of what the foundation should be.

Then when I was on the Executive Committee, I got involved with a few of the Executive Committee subcommittees, we’ll say. For example, I was part of the team that hired our current Executive Director, Tony Straquadine. I was on that search committee. We did a bylaw review, I was on that committee.

As I got involved, I tended to get more involved. Then as I got more involved, that opened up other opportunities within the foundation, as well as just some great personal learning, getting to work with construction contractors and consultants on some bigger issues rather than a certain company specific project, if you will.

That was helpful to me to broaden my experience and develop some good relationships with people on how to help progress our industry forward.

Russel: That’s very well said, Paul. That’s certainly been the experience that I’ve had as I’ve followed my path. Mine, very different. I’ve spent a lot of time with the American School of Gas Measurement Technology. I have to say, I’ve spent a lot of extra hours doing work for those guys, but it’s paid huge dividends because of the learning and the relationships. One of the things that happens when you do that sort of thing – I’m sure as you well know – is that you actually end up building relationships and learning about people and how they work.

You end up with some important things on your phone, like a list of people you can call and ask questions. I’ve found myself bound up in a technical issue many times. Because of that involvement, I know who to call to get unbound.

Paul: I could not agree more. Whether it’s a technical issue, like you say, we’ve had a couple of those. Iroquois, the company I work for now, we’re a small company, less than 100 people. We don’t have a cadre of environmental experts or integrity management experts. We have one measurement engineer. We have one of each.

The ability to make those relationships, when there’s a complex issue that comes up or even if there’s some integrity issue that you’re pretty comfortable with, but you want to touch base with see what other people are doing, great to have those contacts and just level yourself against others.

In our case, we’ve tried to exceed and make sure we’re, I wouldn’t say leading edge, but make sure we’re being as conservative as possible.

The foundation, as I said, getting exposed to the entire value chain, I’m not able to just call an operator, I can call a consulting firm that we don’t have a contract with, just a person that I’ve got a relationship with or a tool vendor, even one that we’re not using, and say, “Hey, have you seen this kind of odd indication,” and have a conversation as well as the non technical.

A perfect example is my involvement with YPP, the Young Pipeline Professionals. Through the foundation, I’ve been able to get more involved with that and started to get involved in their mentoring program.

Now, I’ve probably gotten more out of the mentoring than some of my mentees. You’re absolutely right. The exposure to a broader perspective of people has been helpful, both personally and professionally, I would say.

Russel: I’ve certainly made lifelong friends in the stuff I’ve done. We end up getting into this business and doing the kind of work we do because we have certain interests. Then when we network within that, we find other people that are like minded and have similar interests. There’s a lot to be said for that too.

You made another interesting point too. This is going to be helpful as we talk about your goals as the chair of the INGAA Foundation. You mentioned that working for a small company, you have one of each skill set versus a department.

Very important, when you’re the integrity engineer at a pipeline company, to network with other pipeline integrity engineers because that’s how you learn. Very hard to have a lot of those analytical conversations solely in your own head. You need to have them out loud with somebody else.

Paul: Absolutely. Another thing that the INGAA Foundation provides is, as I develop those relationships, I’m able to bring staff, or my director of engineering comes to quite a few of the foundation meetings.

They end up meeting people from their counterparts, who then have their own relationships so that when you do have those technical issues, whether it be a methane rule or an integrity concern, as you said, you’re able to bounce some ideas off of someone else who is in this space.

They may have seen a similar anomaly, but in a different application or the way it’s affecting steel differently from, say, the ’70s versus, our steel is kind of newer. You’re able to actually learn some things that, for a small company, we wouldn’t be exposed to.

There’s some people here just started in the business with Iroquois. They’ve never seen a 1970s pipe, but they’ve talked to some people about it, so that’s great.

Russel: Exactly. In your role as the chair of the INGAA Foundation, what is your job? What are you responsible for?

Paul: It’s to set the direction of the priorities of the foundation for that year, and then work with staff to hopefully build off the past Chairman and then also set the table for the current Vice Chairman when they’re the chair. At least, that’s how I approach it.

Because it is only one year, one year, as I get older, seems to go by much quicker, so you’re trying to set that direction, but not do a drastic change of course every year. You want to have some fluidity or continuity. A perfect example of that with the foundation is the past chair, Marty Jorgensen from Barnard Pipeline, they started a mental health and awareness project.

He and I spoke. We also spoke with Sean Nicholson, who’s the current vice chair. We set up a three year program as opposed to just one year or even one presentation at a meeting. We actually set out on a three year journey with a consultant.

You’re trying to lead the direction of the foundation or set a direction that works within the framework, certainly, of the mission and vision of the foundation.

Russel: What are your goals for your tenure as the chair here?

Paul: When the previous chair and the current President, Amy Andryszak, called me, being the engineer, of course, I had to sit down right after the phone call, when I accepted, and, “What is going to be my platform? What are going to be the areas of focus, so I don’t get distracted with a bunch of things?”

I came up with three significant priorities and a couple of other things as I got closer to being chair. The three priorities were looking at the strategic direction, making sure the foundation was strategic.

Also, I don’t want to say get younger, but how do we build off of what past chairs have done to engage younger people, not just in the foundation, but in our industry? How do we let people know what a lot of the benefits are?

I’m fortunate to have four children between their early 20s and 30, so I deal with that generation, I’ll say, often. I wanted to get strategic, get younger, and get engaged. I was trying to make sure the members are getting value out of the organization.

On one hand, we wanted to be strategic. We started a strategic plan review for the foundation to get an update of that strategic plan, but also make sure, are the members getting value in the foundation?

Then, I don’t want to say secondary to that, but as an offshoot of that, then there’s the industry issues, like permitting reform, how the Inflation Reduction Act or Methane Emissions Reduction Programs, how are those affecting our industry, and making sure that we’re still connected with INGAA, which is just the operators.

We’re trying to make sure there’s a strong connection between INGAA and the INGAA Foundation.

Russel: That’s one of the things that’s unique about INGAA. Certainly, for a long time, my particular career path, I haven’t done a lot with INGAA. It was a bit of a struggle for me to understand the distinctions between INGAA and the Foundation and what they do and how that’s different and how they collaborate.

Anyway, just helping the industry understand who INGAA is and what value proposition it offers and what’s the difference between INGAA and the Foundation is a significant thing.

Paul: Agree. It’s a very interesting relationship. INGAA, being the operators, there’s 20 odd operators that belong to INGAA. There’s 180, roughly, members of the INGAA Foundation. The INGAA Foundation is predominantly service providers from a number standpoint. Roughly, of those 180, maybe 85, 88 percent are service providers.

When we sit down to address an issue at the INGAA Foundation, everybody’s working towards the same goal, because it’s the industry. Then, actually, Amy Andryszak, the current President and CEO of INGAA and the INGAA Foundation, has done a lot to try to include the current chair in some of the key board meetings for the foundation to make that relationship very strong.

The INGAA Foundation board, those are senior management, senior vice presidents, presidents of the operating companies, we want to make sure that those two groups are putting their full weight behind some significant issues, whether it be methane reduction, as I mentioned, permitting reform.

We’re all members of the same industry. How can we progress the industry together, stronger combined than separate?

Russel: I’d like to ask you to talk a little bit about the methane emissions issue because that’s very topical. There’s a lot of public interest in that at present. What kind of initiatives does the foundation have around that topic in particular?

Paul: There’s a couple of studies going on right now. The foundation, we’re looking at something similar to what INGAA has had their members commit to, methane emissions, GHG. We’re trying to have some reduction there.

There’s coordination between INGAA and the INGAA Foundation on some technical things that we can do to reduce emissions, whether it be survey technology, so how are we looking for leaks, how can we utilize technology better, as well as, I would say, general practices in the day to day operating and maintenance world.

Where we used to take a certain action, we’re now looking at technologies and encouraging members to look at things like transfer compressors or small pump down compressors.

You have some equipment, some pieces of pipe that you might, in the past, just open up a valve and vent that methane to the atmosphere. Now, we’re using equipment to transfer that gas into the existing system, limit the venting, if not eliminate it altogether, and then look at how we can use best practices from each other and share those.

We have a very strong lessons learned repository as well as information sharing, I’ll say, both formal and informal. If a contractor’s doing something, because it’s not just about methane releases, a contractor may be doing something differently, how they tie in a pipeline or how they build it.

We’re trying to get that message out and discuss it with the other contractors as well as other operators, because maybe I hadn’t thought about that for a project we have, so then the next time I go out to bid, I’m actually talking to contractors about, “Hey, can you do it this way instead of that way?”

Russel: When I think about the methane emissions reduction rule making that’s working its way through PHMSA at the moment, I put it in two buckets.

One bucket is capturing gas that’s released as a part of routine O&M activities, meter tube inspections, various kinds of repairs and maintenance, where you’ve got to vent something down before you do the work, and capturing that gas and getting it back into the system in some way. That’s one domain.

That goes to the comment you were making about, you have to look at your operating procedures and your operating procedure expectations. You’ve got to get that into your bid packages for contract work, and you’ve got to get it into your O&M procedures for your internal work, distinct from everything else that leaks.

Leaks is a whole different challenging conversation because it’s leaks of what size and where they are, and what does it take to repair them and so on and so forth. I’m curious. Does the foundation have any work going on in terms of categorizing, prioritizing, and looking at ways to identify and repair the leak side of that equation?

Paul: Sure. There’s a couple of things. The foundation is collaborating with INGAA. INGAA has a Integrity Management Continuous Improvement Program 2.0 that is specifically looking at leaks. Then the INGAA Foundation has, I can talk to two examples.

There’s a greenhouse gas workshop and webinar that we’re funding this year. Again, getting the entire value chain together to talk about that, which a component of that is, as you said, the actual leaks that we’re having. I guess I should pause for a second.

On the transmission side, which is what the INGAA Foundation is focused on, the leak profile, I would say, is very different from other parts of the value chain of the industry, whether it be the upstream on the wellhead or the downstream and the distribution company.

On the transmission side, whereas upstream they may be doing flaring and different things, we don’t do that. We don’t have, I’ll say, the older vintage pipe that can have lower pressure, that can have some different grades. We grade leaks 1, 2, or 3. We don’t have the significant number of leaks, per se, as some of the other sectors.

You mentioned the O&M side, that is where we tend to release more methane. There’s been a lot of focus on the O&M side, whereas years past, you might have to blow down 20 miles of pipeline to do a tie-in, now we’re looking at things like transfer compressors, more use of hot taps and equipment.

Getting back to the leaks, our leak profile is slightly different than those. We’re looking at that greenhouse gas workshop as I mentioned. Then, maybe not on the leak side, but we’re also looking to the future with hydrogen blending. That would reduce the methane that we’re transporting, if we’re blending percentages of hydrogen in there.

I won’t get into it, but there’s obviously significant differences between hydrogen and natural gas and the molecule size and the leakage of hydrogen. Bringing back to your question, that’s the area where we’re looking at the actual leak profile of the transmission industry.

Russel: My observation would be, for those of us that are service providers or product and service providers to the operators, having a good understanding of the problems they’re trying to solve and where they are in their understanding of how to solve those problems is extremely important. We need to know where to put our resources so that we can continue to add value to our customers.

Paul: That’s a great point. I mentioned previously we’ve undertaken an update of our strategic plan. One of the things we did as part of that was, we surveyed the entire membership of the INGAA Foundation. What is of importance to you?

Obviously, we hear that back, but we also heard, I would say, a resounding the service provider side wants to hear from the regulators that oversee the operators, whether it be FERC or PHMSA. They want to know early on. I think it’s great that the service providers want to know this.

They want to know what the upcoming regulations are because we may be working on technology in a different part of the organization. A lot of the service providers do not just work on natural gas pipelines, they’ve got different branches. There may be technology within their organization that can help us.

Then, as we encourage these, I mentioned the GHG workshop, these best practices and workshops and networking opportunities, we’re sharing what we’re doing. I know of one operator who has talked at length about their launching satellites looking for leaks on their systems.

We start having these conversations, and just as you say, operators, we start getting interested in what they’re doing. Then service providers, we start building off of each other’s ideas.

I can remember, about five years ago, we started surveying our entire pipeline, which is relatively short in the grand scheme of things. It’s only a little over 400 miles, but we started surveying it aerially for leaks with a laser tuned just for methane.

As we start doing that here at Iroquois, then I go to these foundation meetings, and I start talking about that at a break or over coffee with another operator. Then a service provider may just come over and say, “Gee, I didn’t realize you were doing that.

“Maybe we can talk to them and now when you’re doing those overflights, we can attach a different camera looking for movement of the earth, so you’re trying to predict landslides and thing.” It’s a continual building off of each other from both the service provider and operator perspective.

Russel: I want to ask another question. I apologize because this conversation is leading me to this question. It’s not something we talked about before we got on the mic. It’s a conversation that’s up for me in a big way.

I’ve been doing a number of conversations, some facilitated by API about product commercialization and trying to develop a model for product commercialization, and trying to help the folks that are building new technology understand what are all the things that actually have to happen to be successful and then, likewise trying to understand what the operator’s needs are.

I’ve talked about four different types of maturity. There’s maturity in the technology, there’s regulatory maturity, there is operations maturity, and then there’s commercial maturity. The difference between operations and commercial is understanding the value proposition.

Operations is helping the operators to be able to modify their internal processes and procedures to actually get the value out of the product or out of the solution. Is INGAA doing anything looking at technology commercialization in any kind of a formal way? If not, how could I help facilitate that conversation, if that was something that made sense?

Paul: The first easy answer is join the foundation. Be a member. We’re in the process of proposing projects. Just to go down a little bit of a rabbit trail very briefly, part of our process is the membership proposes what the project should be for the following year.

The membership will come up with a variety of projects. Then the entire INGAA Foundation membership votes on those projects – we should or should not do them – based on some of those maturity points you talked about. Technology, what are the needs of the operators? What are the needs of the service providers?

There’s a lot of projects on the safety side that are brought up on the construction aspect, which directly impact a certain subset of those contractors, or regulatory changes. Then, we’ve got standing committees. Those projects get assigned to a standing committee to be flashed out, get a cost estimate, normal project management concepts.

Then they get put into the budget process. Those four areas of maturity are very important because I would say, ideally, you’re able to develop some technology, work with the operators on the operating value as well as the commercials. It has to be commercially viable. You’re able to do that in advance of regulations.

We don’t want to be in a position where we’re just responding to regulations. We want to be able to utilize technology to be able to enhance effective regulations. We want an effective regulator.

I have a saying here I’ve had for several years to try to boil down what we do. I say, “We don’t transport milk.” We’re working around something that is very different. We’ve got to be very safe. We want a strong regulator to help us with that.

Technology, as I mentioned, satellites, aerial overflights versus walking 400 or 500 miles of pipeline, we can use those technologies in our integrity programs, in line inspection technology, as well to help us with regulations, even getting back to the methane.

You talked about PHMSA’s Section 114, 115, the methane emissions. We’ve had a lot of conversations with PHMSA about that. We need to be able to use technology to help solve problems. We all have a common theme, which is we want to keep the gas, the natural gas, in the pipeline.

Russel: This is a great conversation, Paul. You’ve made a compelling argument to me about why I need to look at joining the foundation and leaning into some of the things you guys are doing on a project basis.

Thanks for taking the time. Best wishes for lots of success in your tenure as chair of the INGAA Foundation.

Paul: Thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure. I’ve enjoyed it.

Russel: I hope you enjoyed this month’s episode of the Pipeline Technology Podcast and our conversation with Paul. If you’d like to support the 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 either 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