Juanita Spence Operations Conference by the numbers

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Juanita Spence | 1 Comment


We’ve just closed the books on a spectacular week of technical committee meetings, conference sessions and exhibitions.  This AGA’s Operations Conference and Biennial Exhibition had our largest attendance since the mid-90’s.  Let’s look at the numbers – more than 1,600 in attendance (1800 with “Customer Day” attendees at the Exhibition!) including 600 operations management executives registered for the conference. That’s phenomenal!  Our 30,000 square feet of exhibition space housed 200 vendors in over 300 booths.  All of this was powered by no less than 500 gallons of coffee, 3500 sodas and 2000 candy bars, ice cream bars and potato chips!  Who said you can’t live on junk food and coffee?

On Sunday morning volunteers from our members and staff worked on community service projects from fence building, to working in food distribution vans to cleaning up areas still damaged by last year’s devastating floods.  Then our work week started in earnest with committees meeting for two full days on Monday and Tuesday culminating Tuesday evening with the conference and exhibit grand opening reception.  The hall was packed as we visited as many vendors as we could…all the while enjoying the Southern hospitality and food that seemed to be everywhere we turned!

Conference sessions started Wednesday morning with subjects ranging from gas quality to safety, to public awareness and plastic materials.  As well as presentations from AGA staff and industry experts, we heard from senior PHMSA, NARUC and NTSB reps.  Make no mistake; this is THE natural gas operations event!   There was standing room only for our first DIMP sessions on Wednesday afternoon so we quickly moved subsequent DIMP sessions into the Ballroom.  Attendance at the DIMP sessions was beaten out only by the General Session!  With 120+ presentations over the course of the week, this event really did offer something for everyone.

On Friday we closed out the conference and gave attendees a chance to unwind with a round of golf at the beautiful Gaylord Spring Golf Links.

If you followed #agaops on Twitter during the week, you’ll know there was time for work and play and attendees, exhibitors, sponsors and AGA staff had a great time!  Be sure to check out our gallery and see if you can find yourself.

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Dan Gibson Operations conference photos

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Dan Gibson | Comments Off


The Ops conference, or officially the Operations Conference & Biennial Exhibition, is always one of our best events and this year was no exception. Learning, networking, industry technology, recognition…it’s all there.

Juanita Spence from our operations team is working on a blog post for later next week with more about what happened at the event. Some of you might remember Juanita from her updates on twitter during the conference. In the meantime, we’ve had so many requests for photos I wanted to get a quick post up letting you know where you could find them.

I always ask people to take pictures when they go places I don’t get to go and I think you guys will be interested in the photos. The OPS team came through with flying colors. Debbie smiled when she handed me the jump drive and said, “we’ve got a few pictures we’d like to post.”

A few?

Try 200.

I pulled out some of my favorites below to give you a taste. Be sure to leave a comment if you were at the conference and had a good time. We enjoy reading those. You can view the entire collection on Flickr (we’re working on adding them to our Facebook page, too). We also broke them out into sets so it would be easier for you to find specific things.

Have fun, we sure did!

 

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Dan Gibson Natural Gas safety video: Orange and Rockland Utilities

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Dan Gibson | Comments Off


Safety is still the most important issue for natural gas utilities. Here’s a great safety message from Orange and Rockland Utilities. Smell gas? Act fast.



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Richard Meyer Natural Gas Market Indicators

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Richard Meyer and Chris McGill | Comments Off


Late May and June tend to be the strongest period for underground storage injections and that strength is beginning to show. Storage injections this year are rapidly
catching up with the five-year average, however, injections could be tempered by near-term natural gas demand for power generation, particularly during July and August. Toss in expectations for an active hurricane season and counts of gas-directed drilling rigs and the formula for what makes summer markets begins to take shape.

On the supply side, record daily production levels seem to have leveled off. However, what was a record last year in overall natural gas demand, according to the Energy Information Administration, is already being surpassed by about 4.5 percent year-to-date.

Visit this link to download the full Natural Gas Market Indicators. Topics covered include: Reported Prices, Weather, Working Gas in Underground Storage, Natural Gas Production, Rig Counts, Pipeline Imports and Exports, and LNG Markets.

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