In this month’s episode of the Oil & Gas Measurement Podcast, host Weldon Wright is joined by Eric Estrada, Measurement Manager at Targa Resources, to discuss challenges and standards around liquid sampling. 

Liquid Sampling Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms:

• Eric Estrada is the Measurement Manager at Targa Resources. Connect with Eric on LinkedIn.
  • Targa Resources is a leading provider of midstream services and is one of the largest independent midstream infrastructure companies in North America. They own, operate, acquire and develop a diversified portfolio of complementary midstream infrastructure assets.
• Segments of the Hydrocarbon Industry
  • The UPSTREAM segment – companies involved in the exploration and production of oil and gas resources. Producers in the upstream segment focus on drilling and operating the wells that bring hydrocarbons to the surface.
  • The MIDSTREAM segment – constructs, operates and maintains the vast infrastructure needed to gather produced oil and gas from the wellhead, treat and process the raw products, then transport, store and distribute natural gas and crude oil.  
  • The DOWNSTREAM segment –  Refineries producing products such as gasoline, kerosene, jet fuel, heating oil, lubricants, liquefied natural gas, and hundreds of petrochemicals, as well as the delivery infrastructure for delivering these products to the end user. 
• GPA or GPA Midstream Association is a voluntary industry organization composed of member companies that operate in the midstream sector of our industry.  GPA Midstream sets standards for natural gas liquids; develops simple and reproducible test methods to define the industry’s raw materials and products; manages a worldwide cooperative research program; provides a voice for our industry on Capitol Hill; and is the go-to resource for technical reports and publications.
• GPA Standard 2177 – “ Analysis of Natural Gas Liquids by Gas Chromatography”  (current edition released in 2020)
• This industry standard provides the method for gas chromatography analysis of NGL mixtures which may contain nitrogen/air and carbon dioxide, as well as purity products that fall within certain compositional ranges.
• GPA Standard 2174 – “Obtaining Pressurized Liquid Hydrocarbons Samples”  (current edition released in 2020)
• This standard applies to obtaining a pressurized sample of homogeneous, single-phase, liquid hydrocarbons. GPA 2174 describes the equipment and procedures for obtaining representative samples of natural gas liquids and the subsequent preparation of those samples for laboratory analysis by gas chromatography.
•  Reproducibility Statement – Reproducibility is defined by NIST as   “The ability of different experts to produce the same results from the same data”.  In the context of analyzing hydrocarbon samples.  Within analytical standards, such as GPA 2174 & GPA 2177,  a   Reproducibility Statement sets expectations for acceptable variations in the results obtained by different commercial laboratories that are following the procedures as defined by the standard.
• Round Robin Testing is a form of laboratory proficiency testing where multiple laboratories receive identical samples for analysis using the standards method.  The results of many labs are then statistically analyzed to draw conclusions related to the standards.
• Blend Uncertainty refers to the reported statistical uncertainty between the reported analysis and the actual analysis of a calibration gas sample. This uncertainty is calculated by the laboratory blending the calibration gas sample, based on the accuracy statement of the equipment used in creating and verifying the calibration gas.
• EVP means Equilibrium Vapor Pressure for a liquid mixture.
• Vaporizing Regulator is a regulator designed to remove a sample of pressurized liquid NGL sample from the vessel and vaporize that sample for transport to an analytical device. This requires a reduction in pressure and additions of sufficient heat.
• Hexanes Plus or C6+ refers to grouping all hydrocarbons that are Hexane and larger (Hexane, Heptane, Octane, Nonane…) for reporting and calculation purposes.  

Liquid Sampling Full Episode Transcript:

Weldon Wright: Hello and welcome to episode 19 of the “Oil and Gas Measurement Podcast,” sponsored by GCI, the Gas Certification Institute, which has been providing measurement training, standard operating procedures, and consulting services to the oil and gas industry for over 20 years.

GCI proudly partners with Muddy Boots Online, offering measurement operation professionals a true unified cloud based operations option. Visit GasCertification.com to find out how Muddy Boots can streamline your field operations.

Announcer: Welcome to the Oil and Gas Measurement Podcast, where measurement professionals, Bubba geeks, and gurus share their knowledge, experience, and likely a tall tale or two on measurement topics for the oil and gas industry. Now your host, Weldon Wright.

Weldon: Hello, and welcome to episode 19 of the Oil & Gas Measurement Podcast. I’m here with Eric Estrada today from Targa Resources, and Eric is going to impart some wisdom and insight about what’s going on with the liquid sampling standards and few other things along those lines.

Before we get started, though, Eric, say hello, and tell us a little about yourself and how you got there to be at Targa.

Eric Estrada: Oh, thanks, Weldon. Again, I’m Eric Estrada. I’m the manager of liquid measurement for Targa Resources. Interesting story, talking to somebody last week about how people say in the industry, we have a job for very long, but go from company to company. I’ve actually been with Targa and its predecessors now for over 30 years.

Weldon: Wow.

Eric: I came from the Warren Petroleum side of all of the acquisitions and mergers and stuff. I started out at the US gas plant in New Mexico, working for Warren Petroleum, which was then owned by Chevron at that point, and from there was started as a plant engineer and did a lot of gas stuff actually. Gas connects, sizing, orifice meters, that sort of stuff.

I actually started from the get go and measurement just on the gas side. Stayed there till about ’95, then in ’95, went to Mont Belvieu, Texas, still working for Warren, and was what they call the terminal engineer. I did projects related to the Mont Belvieu storage complex. Figuring out how to route pipe, how to connect customers, sizing liquid meters now.

I switched the liquid side and then we were basically spun off into natural gas clearing house and met up with the Trident assets at that point. That’s where I met one of my good friends, Don Sextro. That’s where we were introduced and got a phone call one day and said, “Do you want to be the Supervisor of Measurement for Mont Belvieu?”

That’s how I started in liquid measurement or officially like I said, actually I’ve been doing measurement pretty much my whole career and went through the natural gas clearinghouse phase, which then became Dynegy when the company decided they had too many brands out there.

They had Trident, Warren Petroleum, Destec, a few others, and formed one name Dynegy, and then got sold off to Targa Resources. I’ve been with Targa ever since. I’m still here in my Mont Belvieu office, although I joke that my real office is my vehicle because I’m all over the place.

I travel pretty much all over the country, supporting all the measurement functions, liquid measurement. I also have a lot of flare measurement as well. I guess the other background is I’m currently the vice chair of the GPA Committee on Analysis, Test Methods and Product Specifications.

The former chair of the Measurement and Quantity Determination Committee, we also refer to as MAQ Daddy. I am also the COGFM vice chair for API at present.

Weldon: Wow, you get around. That’s what I was going to say. Through all our time here, I don’t think you and I have ever been on the opposite side of a phone or a meeting about any measurement discrepancies. Everywhere I’ve known you and met you at has always been at different conferences, different committee meetings.

That probably goes back to the early 2000s when we first met, probably at GPA. 

You and I can see each other here, even though we don’t record the video here. I guess this is the first time I’ve seen the inside of your office also. It’s always been a conference room somewhere, a committee meeting room or maybe a hotel bar once… or so.

Eric: Maybe drinking Diet Coke or something.

Weldon: Iced tea and Diet Coke. That’s right. Iced tea and Diet Coke. 

Let’s talk a little bit about liquid sampling and where the concerns are. You’re involved in, I guess, every committee out there, with every standards organization, thinking about sampling.

Tell us, specifically, what’s going on on the liquid side? What’s the concern? What’s the driving force behind changes to 2174?

Eric: Before we get into 2174, let’s talk about 2177, which is the chromatography standard right. We actually are making yet another revision to that. One of the things in discussion is how the reproducibility statements were derived is initially, we thought that the statements were derived by comparing a lab to the standard, so the round robin standards.

We thought that each lab was running the standards. Then they were judged on the standard. When that was our presumption, we decided that there was no need for blend uncertainty when determining reproducibility because the blend uncertainty would have been embedded in the standard itself, if that makes sense.

We later found out that we were incorrect, that the reproducibility statements came by comparing lab to lab to lab to lab, which eliminated the standards per se. When you compare lab to lab to lab, now it is important on what the uncertainty of the blend is. Like 2166, if you look at it, it has blend uncertainty statements. It has a deduction for blend uncertainty.

We have now gone and revised 2177 to take into account blend uncertainty, if provided. That’s one of the things we put in there. If provided, you can put in your one percent, let’s say. It will adjust reproducibility statements by component, by that one percent. If not provided, then you need to assume that you don’t know it. You use zero.

That is what’s forthcoming in the next revision of 2177, which is currently being worked on by GPA. They’re trying to format it and so forth.

Weldon: What I think I heard you say though is you revisited the data. Did you all do any additional round robins or any lab work as part of that, or are you just revisiting the data itself?

Eric: We just revisited the data and the methodology. Then we did the precision statements and reproduced the statement in part. There’s now a uncertainty value that’s in the equation. We added an example for the end user to see “here’s how I take into account blend uncertainty, if I know it.” Not all blenders will tell you what the blend uncertainty is.

Weldon: You know, Eric, I had an interesting conversation, where we saw each other two weeks ago I guess, in a conference in a place that people would think was way too much fun if we mentioned where it was at.

I had an interesting conversation one evening where a guy that was a VP for one of the mid-sized midstream companies, was going, “Why do these standards change all the time? They’re just making work for us.”

We ended up with quite an interesting little tabletop discussion. There was probably 60 or 70 years of expertise talking in that discussion about, “Wait a minute. It’s because we’re getting smarter. We’re learning more about physical properties. We’re learning more about statistical analysis and reporting. We’re refining these uncertainty statements.”

I’m not sure he bought into what we were saying, but it’s not that we revise these standards just because it’s been two years and we need to sell a new one, right?

Eric: That’s correct. Now to  2174, one of the reasons we’re revisiting it is there were some people that – actually, I know the gentleman  that performed measurement services and audits and put 2174 to the test. Actually, he started going through it and realized there are steps missing.

There are steps like open valve, fill cylinders. Then, all of a sudden, it says, “Put cylinder in case.” When did you say to close the valve and disconnect the tubing, for example? There were distinct steps missing that the novice person might have trouble following and may skip steps.

There was a request made by the community to say, “Hey, we need to make the standard flow better, so that a new technician can take it and use it and not miss a step.” That’s one of the things that’s going on with 2174 is we’re refining it to make it read better and flow better and not miss a step. That’s one of the important things. That’s one of the reasons we revise the standards.

The other thing I give GPA staff credit for is, as they read them, when we revise the standards, they read it from the person who has never seen the standard, that perspective. All of a sudden, we get comments back, and I’m like, “Well, everybody knows that.” I’ll take, “Well, no, not everybody knows that.” “No, you’re right. We need to clarify the statement.”

As you know, us as standard writers, we assume that they’re going to understand this paragraph when I put it here and not everyone does.

Weldon: There’s a lot of truth to that.

Eric: Yeah. That’s one of the reasons why these standards are being revised and one of the reasons for 2174.

Weldon: We sit there on these committees, and we think we have a document, and we just hold our head in her hands and go, “OK, now the lawyers and the staff have to look at it,” right?

Eric: Right.

Weldon: We say that, like that’s something bad, but in actuality, what the staff is bringing and what the lawyer is bringing to us is very valuable, I think like the example you have just given here.

The other thing is…we’ve been guilty of this. We’re revising some stuff, we’re always revising at AGA, but we’re revising the old gas management manual three, right?

They’re not going to let us use any of the images because we don’t have credits far them. We don’t know where they originated from. You can sit there and say, “Yeah, that sounds like we’re doing a revision to the standard,” but it also means, “Wait a minute, guys. These are sketches from some book back in the ’50s.” We can do better than that. Right?

Eric: Right. That’s some of the exciting things we’re doing as well is we have some research funding from GPA midstream, in particular 2174. Another standard I’ll talk about in a second to address some of the whys.

When you read 2174, one of the things is mix the sample, before I go introduce it to a chromatograph or mix it before I go pull it from a composite sampler. The thing is how many times I mix it? Do I mix it 5 times, 10 times, 15?

That’s one of the recent research items we have is we’re going to work on identifying what the minimum amount of mixes should be, whether I’m going to run a sample in the lab or I’m on a composite sampler.

We’re actually going to build blends out and mix it, say, 15 times, let it sit 24 hours, mix it 14 times, let it sit 24 hours each time run the standards to see where does the standard start to separate, and these are all NGLs and to be able to provide the guidance to say “OK, you need to mix some minimum of 13 times.”

Then in the future, when you and I are long gone, there’ll be a research paper that somebody can go read and say, “Oh, that’s where they came up to 13 times. Look at this research. Oh, yeah, I see. I see exactly what they did.” Because that’s one of the things a lot of the standards have lost or losing is the “whys”.

Why do I need to do this and not that? That’s one of the goals is to put that in writing. Why do I need to mix 15 times 13 times whatever that number is? Well, here’s why you have to do it. That will stay in a research paper, so it doesn’t get lost.

When somebody goes to revise the standard and says, “Oh, I’m going to delete this paragraph because there’s no value.”

Weldon: There’s value. Looping back to what you said just a few moments ago. The original research being done on so many things has been lost, right?

Eric: Right.

Weldon: Both on the gas side, the liquid side, by all three organizations. Back to what you were talking about, about reviewing 2177 and taking a look at saying, “Hey, we went back with some better information and some better eyes. We review the original data and realize that there were some false assumptions being made.”

When you have properly captured the research data itself, as well as the results and the conclusions drawn by that research data, then you’re able to say, “Hey, 10 years down the road, hey, we’ve learned something better. Let’s look at our data and see if our data still aligns with this or do we need to go out and do new research.”

Eric: Right. Keep that data stored. The research reports will be out there, like I said, for reference for 10 years from now when somebody else is taking the standards on.

Weldon: 10 years is not long in that industry. You probably need to store longer than that.

Eric: The other thing, too, is 2174 talks about 200 pounds of back pressure above EVP, a lot of commercial labs, they’ll pressurize the inert side  to 1,000 pounds, which is plenty of pressure above EVP, but again, it’s like, “Where do the 200 pounds come from?”

That’s the other test we’re going to do is we’re going to quantify what that number should be and be able to say, “Yes, 1,000 pounds is great, but you need at least 210 pounds above.”

Again, I want the research document to stand behind that. When somebody reads that paragraph, they’re not like, “Well, OK, 200, but where did that come from? Where did that magic number come from?”

“Oh, they did this research. Here’s the research report.” Now, I can see where that 200 number came from. I see the data. OK, that makes sense. “Oh, if I drop it below, if I drop it to 150 pounds, oh, I see where their sample got compromised. OK, great.”

That’s more information we want to provide the end user. There’s three phases of research. That’s the second phase of the research. Then the third phase is we’re actually looking…When you look at GPA 2177, 2174, 2186, I believe I got that one right, the sample introduction part, I’m taking  pressure cylinder and  I’m going to inject it into a machine of some sort, it’s copied and all the standards.

If you tweak one standard, you almost have to open up the other standard to go fix that section. We realized that we really need to consolidate this and create a sample introduction standard.

If you look at 2174 and 77, in particular, you’ll notice that that portions, it’s an appendix right now. We moved it during last revisions into an appendix, so that we could yank it out at some point and reference a brand new standard recalling sample reduction. All that’s been copied into the shell of a new standard.

Then the second thing we recognize is that we need to address online liquid chromatography. 2166-14 1 talk about online chromatography in the appendix, I believe. I may be incorrect, but 77 does not. We’re going to also put in sample systems for online chromatography into the sample reduction system, which opened up another can of worms.

Weldon: That’s always the case.

Eric: Some people use a liquid sample valve and send a little tiny droplet to the GC and vaporize the little tiny droplet. Other people vaporize at the pipe or maybe as it’s going into the GC. We realize we’re going to have to address vaporizing regulators. The other phase of the research is we’re going to build, I believe, 12 standards.

We are going to provide guidance to the end users to say, “Here’s the…” If you think about a dartboard, right? Now, I want to get a bull’s eye, but I also don’t want to hit the wall. I want to get onto the dartboard. Our goal is really to get the end user onto the dartboard and say, “Where do I think the vaporizing regulator might start to provide issues?”

We’re going to have varying degrees of C 6 plus concentrations and the standards, and so we may come up and find out that five mol percent of hexanes plus the vaporizing regulators starts to struggle.

That’s what will tell the end user, “When you reach this point, you really need to consult your manufacturer, ‘Will the regulator you’re going to sell me really work?’ Here’s my matrix.'” GPA says, “I may have trouble.

I want you to confirm that this is going to work, so help the end user to get with the manufacturers.” They get a proper regulator or they go liquid inject. That’s the guidance we’re going to do.

Weldon: As an industry, we really need to rely more heavily than we do to the manufacturers in our industry, right? The reputable manufacturers.

Eric: Yeah.

Weldon: Not the people in China making knockoffs to sell on Amazon. The manufacturers out there, the company specializes in building these systems, that is really where so much of the expertise lies. We have our standards to provide guidance, but the standards cannot cover every single application, everything that happens. You get to the folks out there like Mustang Sampling.

We had Kevin on here a couple episodes ago talking about rich low pressure, natural gas sampling. Those people have the right answers, but the problem is that too many people in those industries don’t like the dollar signs associated with the answer. They’re told what they need to do, but they want to do it cheaper. Right?

Eric: Right. We want to provide that guidance because you made a perfect statement that there’s too many permutations of all the different mixtures that we cannot test every mixture, we cannot test every regulator. This isn’t a regulator test.

We’re just going to provide guidance to say, “Here’s on the dartboard where you got to worry about. You then user, you have to go do your research. You have to go talk to your manufacturer and figure out, “Is this going to work or not?” I’m looking forward to that research. It’s going to be really exciting, I think.

Weldon: Eric, I want to loop back around to something you said earlier. We have a lot of people who listen to our podcast from a wide variety.

Probably most of our audience is probably gas measurement related, but we also get a lot of pipeline folks. We get a lot of management folks in here, folks that aren’t necessarily familiar with our day to day terminology, just as you mentioned, the staff over GPA reading something from the standpoint of I don’t know what I’m reading to begin with.

You’re talking about sample introduction into a GC for liquid samples. Could you talk for a couple of minutes to explain what the difference is between trying to get a liquid into a chromatograph as a representative sample, as opposed to what we do with gas?

Eric: As you know, gas chromatograph, at the end of the day, what’s going through the column the detector is really a gas phase. What we’re looking at is, a lot of people we do a lot of   our GCs, s. we actually use a liquid sample valve.

We actually have a liquid speed loop. On the gas side, you have a gas phase loop and you’re capturing a little bit of that gas, and that’s what’s going to go through your chromatograph.

On the liquid side, it’s a little different, I have liquid, so going through a speed loop, but now I got to figure out how I am going to get into the gaseous phase introduced to the chromatograph.

In the case of a liquid valve, I may get this little, tiny droplet that will go through. I’m going to vaporize it. I’m vaporizing a very small drop, less energy to vaporize the stream. My guys will argue it’s easier to vaporize that droplet than on a speed loop to take a liquid stream, so I have the regulator sitting on the pipe.

Now I’m vaporizing the whole stream, now I got a gas speed loop going through, and now I’m much like a gas GC would be, but I’m vaporizing that whole liquid stream, not the whole pipe, of course, but what’s going through that regulator. There’s a lot of energy that’s required to vaporize that stream.

Weldon: Not only vaporizing it, you got to keep it as a vapor when you chromatograph it.

Eric: Exactly, because it’s a liquid. What does it want to do? It’d love to liquefy it back. There’s a lot of the hexanes plus that would love to turn back to liquid. Now you have to heat trace all that tubing all the way back to the GC to make sure you stay in that vapor phase.

With a liquid sample system, I’m not worried about that. I’m not worried about heat tracing because it’s liquid, it’s staying liquid as long as I keep it sufficiently above the vapor pressure. Those are some of the nuances. I guess they’re a little different between the liquid world and the gas world.

The liquid valves tend to be a little touchy. They do get damaged. They’re prone to damage because you got a lot of particulates potentially in that liquid stream.

Weldon: No, we don’t have any of that in our product.

Eric: Filtration is often important. We do have a lot of valves that get scarred and we have to replace liquid valves. It’s a little more maintenance intensive to run a liquid inject system versus a vapor inject.

Then I could argue that the vapor regulators themselves tend to get fouled. I still got something that I got to go maintain and take care of. Also, are they vaporizing everything properly? That’s the other question. That’s why we have the research to figure that out.

Weldon: On that research, I don’t think a lot of folks have an appreciation for how long these processes are and what all takes place. From the time that as a committee, it was agreed that we needed to do some additional research, talk us through the timeline for actually getting funding for that research, planning the research, implementing it, and then analyzing the data. We’re not talking about two weeks, are we?

Eric: No. If you can imagine within a company, a company like my company, I want to go do a project, I’ve got to come up with a project idea, get management to buy off on it, get funded, and so forth. Then I can actually execute. Then I got to go get quotes. It’s a real similar process.

We came up with a concept probably well over a year ago. Probably a year and a half ago, we started thinking, “What do we need to do?” We knew we wanted to write the sample reduction standard. We knew about the vaporizing regulator question.

We started well over a year and a half ago and then started working on the “Well, what do we want to do exactly? OK. Here’s the matrix of standards we want to use,” because at the end of the day, we got to take our ideas and we got to generate a request for the research funding, and then provide that document to the research group within GPA Midstream.

Then they need to read it and they’re not necessarily measurement or analysis people. That document, of course, has to be written in a format such that they’re not going to ask like, “Well, what’s this mean? What’s this mean?” It has to be very clear and concise. That took quite a bit of an effort to get a request written properly.

Then once it was turned over, now you got to wait for the group to meet, which occurs twice a year. Now we’re into February of this year, then we get an email saying we’re approved. Now I have to start with our company working on my RFQ and working on the actual protocol.

We do have a process where we want to vet the protocol because one of the things, as we talked about earlier, that’s happened in the past is the data gets created and then it’s lost, or we don’t accomplish what we wanted to accomplish, or whoever’s handling the data for us doesn’t give us the end product we wanted or we desired.

The next steps are writing the protocol. Get the group within the analysis committee that reviews the research requests to review that and say, “Yeah, that looks like a good protocol or it doesn’t.” Then go do the RFQ process and solicit vendors, to say, “Here’s what I want to do. I need a bid for it. How much are you going to do this for?”

I’m trying to fast track this one and maybe get done by the end of the year. I’m probably dreaming, but that’s my end goal. These can last for years. I believe the sulfur research has been going on for well over a couple of years now, for example, so some of these projects take quite a while, just because of logistics.

We all have our day jobs, right? If I didn’t have a day job, yeah, I could probably have this research done by the end of May. I’ve got a day job, and I’ve got to take care of all this other stuff.

Weldon: We talked briefly about the staff at GPA, the staff at AGA. There are staff there, but staff, they’re not the experts in our industry. They’re not the measurement experts. They’re not the pipeline operations or the safety experts, right?

They’re the administrators that help keep the wheels turning, but all of this work relies on volunteers such as you, Don, and all the rest of the folks in our committees. Yeah, fast tracking, two years would definitely be fast tracked, from inception. More like two and a half, or three probably, is still fast tracked on something like this.

Eric: Yeah, it would be, because again, we…All these committees are run by volunteers. I think that’s one thing that a lot of people don’t realize. Some people think, “Oh, the government writes these standards.” No, it’s all of us. All of us that work with all the Chevrons, the ExxonMobils, the Targas, the enterprises, all these companies.

We’re all volunteers. We all have real…or not real job, we all have day jobs, and then we’re trying to do committee work at the same time, so, yeah, it takes a while to get some of the stuff done.

Weldon: That’s one of the things I talk about in some of my classes, Eric, is I have a short section I call “Governance of Measurement.” When we start talking about to these folks, that federal regulations, even state regulations, that’s not driving the way we do standards in most cases.

Perhaps if you’re BLM properties. You have some federal regulation involved in it, but it’s really the work from the standards bodies that is driving how we do our measurement. That is being applied by how the tariffs, or how the contracts, are worded, right?

Eric: That’s correct. The one thing I would say is, people listening to this podcast will say, “How can I get involved?” Get involved. Just show up to the committee meeting. Show up to AGA, API, GPA Midstream. Show up and volunteer.

We’re looking for people all the time to help out. Even if you’re not an expert in a particular topic, to lead a working group, you just got to lead. You’ll have the experts there working for you, so I encourage people to step out of their comfort zone and volunteer some more.

Weldon: My standpoint on that is one of the best ways to learn more about any specific topic in our industry is to get involved with the committees working on the standards. Like you said, they need leaders. They need people to proofread. They need people to format, so just getting involved in those meetings.

API, for one, is very open about their meetings. You can sign up and get on the call list and sit in on their calls, even if you’re not willing to dive in and contribute. You’ll absorb a lot by osmosis, and the next thing you know, you’ll be actively involved in some of these groups.

Eric: Yeah, exactly.

Weldon: Committee work is a great way to learn, folks.

Eric: It really is.

Weldon: What other wisdom do you have for us today, Eric?

Eric: I think the only other wisdom I have is in regards to GPA 2166 and API 14.1. For those that don’t know the history…I believe they were one standard. I may be wrong. They were one standard at one point in time.

Weldon: For a short period of time, yeah.

Eric: Then they diverged. The API decided, “We’re going to do the gas sampling standard 14.1.” GPA Midstream said, “We’re going to do our own thing, 2166.” A few years ago, Ron Carnahan, who was with MPLX, decided, “This is insane. Why do we have two standards?” He led the effort to merge the two back, and so those have merged back.

The combined 2166 14.1 standard is now published, so it’s one joint standard. The effort of that working group was really just to merge the standards back, and so the next task will be to go and refine it. “OK, we put everything back together. Now let’s go and start to maybe reorganize, do more to it.”

The first round is done, and so now the second round is going to happen, which is going to be to now go clean up the document some more. It is now just one document.

Weldon: I think it’s great they’ve got those two back together. If I remember correctly, part of the separation had to do about that pesky GPA separator on those fill and purges, but I’m glad to see them back together again.

There’s so much work like that. There’s so much that can be done in our industry, and the discussions happen, literally, every meeting of all of these committees… you talk about what needs to be done and what we have the people to do.

Back to what you mentioned earlier, we need folks to get involved. When I sit around and look in these committee meetings, I see some younger faces, but I also see a whole bunch of folks with no hair, or gray hair peeking out underneath their cap.

We need some new blood in these committees, folks. I’ll make sure we have in the show notes…I’ll have contact information for each of the standards groups in the measurement field out there, someone you can reach out to and find out how to get involved.

You don’t necessarily have to travel to be involved in these organizations. Most of the committees are doing at least some of their work remotely these days.

Eric: That’s great.

Weldon: Anything else you want to end with there, Eric? We shoot for 25 to 35 minutes, and we’re at 34 minutes, so we’re right in the sweet spot.

Eric: All right. No. Again, just exciting things happening in the liquid sampling world. Volunteer. Show up to the meetings. Always looking for more people, people with hair. Especially people with dark hair, still.

Weldon: Or hair. Period.

Eric: Or hair. Period. Right. I appreciate it, Weldon. This was fun.

Weldon: Thanks a lot again for doing it, Eric. You have a great one. Do you get to stay in your office for a few days, or are you back on the road?

Eric: I’m actually in my office for a week, if you can believe.

Weldon: Oh, wow.

Eric: Which is strange. Yeah, I think the security guard, I think, wanted to frisk me for a second, but I’m not sure.

Weldon: I’m not in my office. I’m actually looking out at the Gulf today from Galveston, but I’m leaving here in about an hour and driving back.

Eric: I got you.

Weldon: All right. Thanks a lot, sir. Have a good one.

Eric: All right. Thanks.

Weldon: I want to thank each of you for listening, and I hope you found this episode interesting and informative.

Weldon: If you did, please share our podcast with your coworkers, your boss, and others in our industry. 

We will have a full transcript of this episode, along with Eric’s contact information, in the show notes on our website, PipelinePodcastNetwork.com. We will also have info on how you can become involved in the industry measurement and standards committees.

Now for a little begging. 

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Transcription by CastingWords