Read the full episode transcript
00:00:00 Speaker 1
This episode of the Energy Pipeline is sponsored by Caterpillar Oil and Gas. Since the 1930s, Caterpillar has manufactured engines for drilling, production, well service, and gas compression. With more than 2, 100 dealer locations worldwide, Caterpillar offers customers a dedicated support team to assist with their premier power solutions.
00:00:27 Speaker 2
Welcome to the Energy Pipeline Podcast with your host, KC Yost. Tune in each week to learn more about industry issues, tools, and resources to streamline and modernize the future of the industry. Whether you work in oil and gas or bring a unique perspective, this podcast is your knowledge transfer hub. Welcome to the Energy Pipeline.
00:00:51 KC Yost
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of the Energy Pipeline Podcast. So many of you know, I've been in the pipeline industry for almost 50 years, and during a large portion of that time, one of my biggest challenges for my companies or clients was trying to find information. The lack of information was a real problem on facilities and equipment. Didn't matter whether we were talking about design or construction, operating maintenance. It didn't matter. The records were either very poor or nonexistent at all. So I've worked with companies where each district kept their own records, and none of the file systems were the same. Also worked for companies who've acquired other pipeline systems who may or may not have accurate records, if they have records at all. Then you add catastrophes, like fires and floods, and what records you did have are now gone. Just ask people in South Louisiana when a hurricane passes through. So don't forget O&M reports. We all know that if you don't have a copy of the latest integrity inspection report, federal government believes the inspection actually really didn't happen. You don't have a record of it. Computer systems has improved data collection and filing, but typically, from what I gather, at least when I was in the project, business left a lot to be desired five, 10 years ago. So with all of this, what I'm getting at is for the first 40 years of my career, when it came to data collection and finding information, I felt more like a forensic scientist than a real pipeline engineer. So there's a solution to the problem, and it's the guy that's nodding his head right now. So today's topic is... discusses how we can leverage technology to enhance safety and increase efficiency in the pipeline industry. So our guest is Mark Woynarowich, director of operations for Cenozon. How did I do? Woynarowich and Cenozon. Good?
00:02:50 Mark Woynarowich
Really good. You hit them both spot on, and thanks for having me.
00:02:53 KC Yost
Hey, great to have you. Thanks so much for being here. So before we get into this discussion, and it's a topic that's near and dear to my heart, at least thinking about all the times I spent going through rubbish trying to find information, tell us a little bit about yourself. Would you please, Mark?
00:03:11 Mark Woynarowich
Yeah, for sure. So my background, born and raised in the oil and gas industry. My dad was a regulator. Our town its whole purpose was supporting the industry. So whether it was small bakeries, shops, anything, it's the people in the town working outside. So I've always been around it. And then I started working in it, and then I got a little bit of education and started designing and building and pipelines. And I found that pipelines are my passion. I steered away from drilling, and I liked operating, but those guys work hard. They're out there doing their job, and I just like the build and growing my knowledge and seeing different things. But it all supported me. And then for the last 15 years of my career, I've been doing asset integrity maintenance, preventative, that engineering aspect, that thinking differently and trying to maintain your systems for their purpose inaudible-
00:04:03 KC Yost
And for people that haven't picked up on the accent yet, Mark is visiting to us from Calgary right now.
00:04:12 Mark Woynarowich
Correct.
00:04:12 KC Yost
And I think that this recording will be released right about the time that Stampede is taking place. So yeehaw, have some fun. Yeah.
00:04:21 Mark Woynarowich
Greatest outdoor show on earth. I'll be enjoying myself.
00:04:26 KC Yost
Excellent, excellent. Well, great. So let's talk about industry challenges. What are the challenges that the industry is facing right now?
00:04:36 Mark Woynarowich
A lot. We all know there's political, there's economical, but even within them, they're just struggling with the amount of information they have and the lack of people. Lack of people from a resource. But also, as we... these companies are growing there's lots, and there aren't as much talented or subject matter experts. So trying to get the most out of them with what they're doing is a huge struggle, huge struggle.
00:04:59 KC Yost
I seem to recall a few companies will actually hire back people that have tried to retire because all of the knowledge that they know about this pipeline system or the piping inside a compressor station or pump station is all in their heads, and they spend a lot of time trying to get all of that written down. So-
00:05:22 Mark Woynarowich
That's where it's... There's the history of when it was built, how it was built, but even more, I talked to a lot of people because I was in that industry. I spend a year, year and a half, two designing and getting something going. We build it really quickly within a year or so after. But then that asset sits there for 25, 50 years with daily information that's changing and being collected about it that is just as much impactful as all that construction information. And that's what our challenge is. It's growing. It's expanding. Its age is also increasing, which means the amount of information that you have, and you'll hear me use data, but you have a new pipeline. It only has 12 months of production going through it. You have a line that's 50 years old, multiply 50 by 12. That's a lot of records, right.
00:06:11 KC Yost
That is. That is. That's great deal of records. So what's the current solution that the industry throws out to take care of these problems?
00:06:21 Mark Woynarowich
Hours and people. It is. They look for consultants, or they look for engineers that can support them, but really they're looking for resources, and that's the huge challenge. They use tools and Excel or programs that they have to try and advance their own knowledge, but our industry is focused on solving their problem, and they don't look outside of their doors or their buildings to others. And we're starting to see that more because of technology and sharing of information. But you can only do so much. Excel maxes out at, what is it, a million lines of call rows.
00:06:56 KC Yost
Sure.
00:06:56 Mark Woynarowich
Well, there's a lot more information out there than that, and it just slows down. So you can only throw so many people at so many problems.
00:07:04 KC Yost
So you do have technology out there for inspection, if you will, tablets and jotting down information and that type of thing. And it will go to one server. And then you've got other reports and CapEx project stuff that may go to another server and just all the around. So you end up with these isolated systems, right?
00:07:29 Mark Woynarowich
Yep, yep. And it's hard. It's no different than isolating people and having them do their job but require some of the same information that someone else has collected or had. They'll spend, I use the 80/20 rule, 80% of their time gathering the information, organizing it, trying to put it in the format that they need it to then create an action of 20% of their time. You have multiple people doing that. Yeah, they struggle because they don't have time because of the inefficiencies of what they're doing.
00:07:55 KC Yost
Well, I know here in the States that I've had clients just in the last two years call me up and ask for help trying to gather data for a PHMSA inspection and try to be prepared to make sure that they have everything answered. Because the last thing you want to do is make an inspector ask you a question or a list of questions and tell them, " We'll get back to you." You'd rather have it right there at your fingertips and be able to answer the questions. Correct?
00:08:26 Mark Woynarowich
Exactly. And that's exactly what it is. And you say in the US that's a problem. It's everywhere. Everybody has this problem. We are better than we used to be because at least we have computed systems, SharePoint files, other systems to organize it. But we still lack accessing that in a usable fashion where it's centralized and related to the asset. It's not just in a file drive where you're going to look for it.
00:08:49 KC Yost
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Good, good, good.
00:08:52 Mark Woynarowich
Yeah.
00:08:52 KC Yost
So any solutions we want to talk about, or we want to jump right into your innovative solutions? I mean, it's just manpower and siloed sections of information that-
00:09:10 Mark Woynarowich
inaudible.
00:09:09 KC Yost
...cost us time and money and efficiency, right?
00:09:12 Mark Woynarowich
Yeah. It is. But also everybody's always looking for that silver bullet too. But what we've come to in this day and age is the tools have to be complementary. It's no different than me and you collaborating to achieve a result. There's really good tools, like we have really smart people, but when you put multiple people in a room that work well together, your results are multiplied. That's what the tools or systems you should be doing is thinking one system is not going to do everything as good as everything combined. And having... And utilizing those applications to support the greater objective and be a collaborative tool that magnifies what you're doing is what a lot of people miss. And we're just coming to this era with technology where this is possible. Over the last years, people have had applications while they were siloed to keep that information safe and secure. Now, we have better security protocols and things that tools are built on. It's that integration of data and secure methods where I can make someone else's application 10 times more powerful because of how I have it, and they can do the same for me. So it's a push and pull of information like education, and that's why I refer to systems or applications as a tool. It's only as good as whoever's using it and what purpose they're using it for.
00:10:25 KC Yost
So what do you mean by integration of digital twins?
00:10:28 Mark Woynarowich
Yeah. This is a fun thing. A digital twin is a replication, and you might have a map of a pipeline system. Well, it's just a map and a shape file. So it's an object. There's many ways to create a digital twin, and a lot of people overcomplicate it because of their understanding, thinking it's a 3D model where you see it and it manipulates, and you can see all these variables of how it might wave or even just topography, like a map. Your Google Maps. You click it, and it's a digital twin of the road systems, and then you turn on aerial imagery, and you see what's around it. We do that with pipelines. So we take your map stick version and create a very simple digital twin of it that allows you to associate and relate information. And then that allows you to contribute that library, that wealth of information that you've been talking about to this and enhance it for decision-making process.
00:11:28 KC Yost
So isn't this akin to GIS type work?
00:11:35 Mark Woynarowich
100%, but it's doing more. A map or a GIS system, yes, you can add layers. Yes, you can associate information to it. It's one aspect. Put it into a digital twin and tie it to a production system or a SCADA system, and now you can actually calculate the volumes of production at any point in your pipeline at any time, right. It's just-
00:12:00 KC Yost
Sweet.
00:12:01 Mark Woynarowich
Yeah.
00:12:01 KC Yost
Okay.
00:12:01 Mark Woynarowich
At a click of a button. But it also is dependent on how you want to manage that information. Maybe you only update it on a schedule of monthly. Maybe it's daily. You probably don't need hourly from a management system that's used for decisions. So let the guys in the field who are in the control rooms get those alarms, but know how many times they had alarms in the last month and what they were for and flagged, and use that for your business decisions of fitness for service or compliance that you have a program that monitors and you make decisions off of.
00:12:31 KC Yost
So that's what you're talking about when you talk about real-time monitoring systems. You can dial it up or dial it back or set it anywhere you want.
00:12:41 Mark Woynarowich
Exactly. And it's setting it for a purpose. And a lot of people forget, we're gaining so much information, we're collecting so much information that it's data overload. You don't know what to do with it or how. But once you find the purpose, each role has a different one. Your control rooms, they want to know it right now. That's why they're live. The foreman wants to know that something was done, or how many times they had alarms on pressure overrides, or what. The integrity guy's going to calculate a system life cycle and how that damages or that affected defects in the line. So for each group, you have to have it. And what we allow them to do is we're not that control room. We'll support that foreman or that super, that lead, as well as everybody else up the organization.
00:13:22 KC Yost
So if someone's running an ILI tool in their system, that data can then be uploaded into this and used as necessary to look at risk management and that type of thing.
00:13:35 Mark Woynarowich
Exactly. Risk management is organization of your assets and identifying knowns and unknowns. And as you close out your unknowns, how do you use them to prioritize these assets with what you do... need to do to take care of them? What controls you need in place, your mitigation, monitoring, inspection? And my favorite is the experience. Prioritizing assets give us manageable groupings to deal with, but all of them are just a different category of prioritization with information you have. And a lot of people struggle to understand the basics of their assets, even just how they're connected. They know how many they have, and they can tell you stats on, " I have 50, 000 miles of steel line and of this grade and that." But then, once you start adding, " Can you tell me business interruption or volume of production in every unique asset that you have? Or can you tell me what's near people or what has had inspections or how many miles have had inspections and how many don't?" And start adding these on. It increases your knowledge, and we make decisions based off of our knowledge, and it's hard to communicate it in an industry or an organization where it's all over the place. So bringing it together and giving it that purpose, it just drives that efficiency.
00:14:49 KC Yost
So I may be taking a step back here or two, but does machine learning and AI optimize this process?
00:15:00 Mark Woynarowich
All of them have its purpose. We've kind of gone through history where it used to be big data and going through it where we tried to organize information. Now, into machine learning, where it's taking a process and iterative process, and when it breaks, you solve that problem, put it back into the model, and it keeps going. So it resolves it. When you have your information tied together, you do an ILI. You start understanding your defects and learning the growth. Well, when you're matching those pits, you're going through an iterative process on hundreds of thousands of defects. We have a program that's doing it, and it's helping the engineer that needs to make the decision and make that call of what needs to happen faster. And that's what it is. Instead of him spending his 80% of his time organizing it, trying to figure out how it matches vendor C, who was two years ago or three years ago in a totally different format, and then trying to determine the change over those times, two to three months, depending on the size and volume of information they're looking at. And maybe not looking at all of it, but just looking at the critical parts, two, three months, things are happening in the field. You get a tool that supports you. You can align that information, standardize it into a format, quality, check it, click a button. It does pit-to-pit matching. All of that's done within minutes to hours. And then you make a decision, " Oh, this defect grew. Well, I'm actually doing a dig on this site right now to repair this defect. Oh, it's only five meters past it. Send the guys five meters down and cut out the next joint as well." Instead of two months later, that crew's gone. They're on to the next thing.
00:16:36 KC Yost
Sure.
00:16:36 Mark Woynarowich
And then we all know MOAB. In construction, in maintenance, MOAB is half your cost. Now you got to move them all the way back to that exact same place.
00:16:45 KC Yost
Right. Right.
00:16:45 Mark Woynarowich
Right.
00:16:46 KC Yost
So I would see that this is... have a great benefit. There are pipeline companies out there that have transmission lines here in the States that have decided not to follow the guidelines for ILI runs. There is a waiver that you can have, and it's a risk management-based approach.
00:17:07 Mark Woynarowich
100%. Yeah.
00:17:09 KC Yost
So I suppose-
00:17:12 Mark Woynarowich
inaudible-
00:17:12 KC Yost
...that that works just as well.
00:17:13 Mark Woynarowich
It does. And so the RBI process to get a waiver, a risk-based inspection, which is using what to make a decision on what you should be doing. If you inspect something and there's no change over five years and it's been on a three-year interval, well, you can push that out because you've had no change. You've verified it, you've validated it, you've done it in a consistent format, and you can show it. That's huge on anything from pressure equipment to pipelines to even just some of your processes. If you can show that but you also have to then maintain, and as soon as something happens, you go back, and that's where that continuous monitoring because you may swing the same valve for 15 years and it works perfect, and you go, " Oh, I don't need to do this every month. I can do it every year." Well, in year 16, you swing it, and it fails. Well, you go back to doing it every month. But tracking that information, knowing when it's happening, whether it's in a mobile device or being live tracked, you can actually, now that it's in a digital format, use it for quicker decision making because it's standardized, it's consistent, it's in one place, where if it's paper, I can't go back through 15 years of monthly paper to then go, " Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. Okay, well, is it good or not?" You can use machine learning and data science to now look at these digital records and say, " This is happening at this frequency on this type of valve. Every 10 years, it happens," and start being preventative in your organization.
00:18:39 KC Yost
So this improvement of decision-making really ties into what you guys are doing, right?
00:18:46 Mark Woynarowich
Yeah. And it's listening to the industry and solving the problems that currently challenge them. And that's the biggest thing is having two totally different industries. Technology, which I'm in, trust me, I don't know anything about it, but I'm really good at understanding the industry and hearing where their challenges are. There are solutions that can help them improve. And that's the big thing is they don't realize the value of this digital information. Collecting an inspection report that you never collected, they're like, " Well, we're doing it. We know it's good. Well, great." But now that it's collected, you can start looking at the information that's being brought to you and be like, " Oh, why are we not doing it at the right frequencies, or what's changing in between it?" And that's huge. You know who does it, but then you have all that there for when something does happen.
00:19:36 KC Yost
I'm big into trends as well.
00:19:39 Mark Woynarowich
Huge. Yeah.
00:19:40 KC Yost
And I suspect that the more data points you have in any realm, the easier it is for you to see trends, whether they be very minute or rather significant, and you can follow that and make informed decisions.
00:19:59 Mark Woynarowich
Totally.
00:20:00 KC Yost
inaudible-
00:19:59 Mark Woynarowich
And that's exactly what it is. Quick and informed decisions that are happening in a consistent pattern or consistent fashion. Yeah.
00:20:06 KC Yost
Yeah. Okay. So safety, compliance, I mean, we've talked about compliance with PHMSA people coming in and all of that, and you've got to have the data available immediately. And I mean, it wasn't that long ago that PHMSA wouldn't accept any report that wasn't on paper. Now, they've gotten away from that and made things a whole lot easier. So let's talk a little bit about safety and compliance. Okay.
00:20:35 Mark Woynarowich
inaudible. Huge. It's the biggest thing. That's why there are integrity systems. It's to ensure that your systems are safe, that they're meeting the regulatory requirements regardless of what they're setting. Sometimes, it's even your own corporate ones that you're setting that higher level of tolerance to that supersedes some regulatory requirements because you have a practice that's been proven to be better than what everybody else is doing. It's showing that. Safety's the biggest one. It's always been there. It's always part of everything. Being preventative is preventing anything from a failure to maintenance records being kept properly. It's all to ensure fitness for service, and that's what all the applications are doing. You go out to any one of these areas. Guys aren't trying to have spills. They're not trying to contaminate the ground. And a lot of these things happen because there's something they didn't understand or know that they could have prevented if they did occurs. Those unforeseen events. But you are noticing as they mature, as these companies educate themselves or are taught by other industry members, they bring in systems or products that help them, or people or regulations are set from occurrences to help it not happen again. You're seeing trends come down, and that's where, with technology, we're doing a lot more. There's a lot more infrastructure out there. We're collecting data points more frequently, more readily than anybody knows what to do with. And yet, our people that work in this industry, or any industry, aren't growing at that same pace. So there's all of this growth and influx here. One company acquires 50,000 more miles of pipe, but they don't bring in an equivalent number of people, right.
00:22:23 KC Yost
Right. Right.
00:22:24 Mark Woynarowich
So that's where they have to get smart and creative, and technology is that for us. What I used to do in Excel took me minutes. Now, I don't have to do it in Excel because the program is already pulling that information in and putting it at your fingertips, like you said.
00:22:40 KC Yost
Yeah. Yeah. And it gets you in a position where a decision-maker is not overwhelmed by the amount of information. We used to talk about paralysis through analysis. You can be inundated with data, and okay, but really what you're looking for is that component that says, "This is what we see is going to happen with this data."
00:23:07 Mark Woynarowich
Yeah. You know what? I look at the oil and gas industry very much like a neural network inside of our body, but actually more simply like the road networks that transport us around our states. I grew up with a map. That's not that long ago I was still using maps to get to many places.
00:23:24 KC Yost
Right.
00:23:25 Mark Woynarowich
Right. And I had to figure out from point A to B, which was the best way or where I wanted to go, what town I wanted to stop in. Now, technology made that decision easier for me. I still get a choice, but it gives me four or five routes. I can do that in seconds. As I'm driving, I'm doing it, whereas don't give me a map and tell me how to try to figure out where I'm going while I'm driving, right. So it takes that decision-making process, and because it goes through many iterations of which way you would've traveled or how you would've done it through all that knowledge and places the information in front of you to then make that choice which suits you. That's what tools do.
00:24:04 KC Yost
By the same token, though, there has to be a history there. I mean, I remember my first trip with GPS a number of years ago, and I followed GPS blindly and ended up twice going down the wrong way on a one-way street in St. Louis, Missouri.
00:24:28 Mark Woynarowich
Yep.
00:24:29 KC Yost
That problem's been corrected now 12, 14 years later. But you've got to have the iterations. You've got to have the history. We get back to the AI and machine learning, though, don't we? That's what we're talking about here, right?
00:24:43 Mark Woynarowich
Yes. Okay. A good way to say that the iterative and the history help. The technology is great when it's being used and has that experience. The one thing you're never removing is the people. And that's why I don't use the term solution. That's why I don't use the term as we'll stick with solution is it's not going to solve your problems. It's going to enable your people to... with a tool to make those decisions. And after time of repetitively making those decisions, maybe they've done it in a fashion where now you can make that decision or have multiple choices for them to pick from, and it's taking what you've already done and successfully proven out and allowing a system to do that for you. So now you can go to that next level and not have to make all those thoughts, but then just pick one of three routes, right.
00:25:39 KC Yost
Right. So it allows the interaction with the human being. I remember rookie engineers working on certain formulas, and they would plug it into the computer and generate an answer that I knew was absolutely incorrect. Well, they didn't know that it was wrong. You had the experienced person there to let them know what variable they had entered incorrectly and that type of thing. So we're along that same line.
00:26:08 Mark Woynarowich
Yeah.
00:26:08 KC Yost
Yeah.
00:26:09 Mark Woynarowich
When I first started moving into Cenozon where being a tech company, working with software, coming from an engineering company and operating company previously, once I started using a tool, I went from realizing I struggled at my job when I did it there to if I have the right application with the right fit for how I'm doing it and it was built in a fashion that understood what I was trying to achieve, I could have done five times, six times the size of infrastructure that I had. And now I'm realizing where I am it's not how much work I'm doing. It's the quality of the decisions that I'm making with that and the amount of effort I have to put in to get that result.
00:26:49 KC Yost
Gotcha, gotcha.
00:26:50 Mark Woynarowich
That's where that kind of digital twin, that smart model, comes from is we start every client at the same place, and every one of them says, "Thank you," after we teach them something they didn't know about their system. And it varies, but it's hard to believe that just creating their digital twin in a different fashion than a map and tying their pod system to a visual way of doing it and making them create direct parent-child relationships, they learn stuff, and they're like, "I didn't even know I had that. Well, how can you not know you had it? Or I didn't know it went this way." And you help them learn. And then, with that, they go, "Oh." And then you apply things to it like production and start calculating down the line. They have a higher level of understanding that can be repeated. And now, at any point in time, someone in that organization can go in there and make a decision because the field guy went through and help them understand it to a better knowledge across the corporation.
00:27:46 KC Yost
Excellent, excellent, excellent. We're getting close to time. I want to talk about Cenozon and the products that you guys have. Let's talk a few minutes about what you guys have out there right now.
00:28:04 Mark Woynarowich
inaudible. So when I came to Cenozon 10 years ago, I came from an engineering firm. I was doing risk assessments. I was trying to help people put in integrity management plans for maintaining their systems, like you said. And when I came here, I realized I was always working just for one person, but that was great. Now, I'm helping many people improve what they're doing with a consistent system or systems that allow them to speak together. So we're... Cenozon's an enabler. We're a software company. We started off building software with an industry partner 28 years ago, and we've evolved. We've learned where they've had challenges and helped them achieve that with our pipeline integrity risk assessment system. That's the name of it. And yes, the risk assessment is an output, but it's like hiding behind so many things that it does with data integrations. It is tied to almost 35 or 40 different GIS systems, not companies, but other systems because new and new technology. We pull SCADA data from different systems and attribute it to be able to do computational work to then push back to their own models. So when I say an enabler, we're helping them do more with the information they have because of the technology of we got a measurement manager that knows where their meters are, we know what information's there. Well, we didn't build it for industry. We built it for ourselves to understand that information. Now, I can pull that measurement SCADA information from any FTC because I know what's there and how it works and pull it into a system to give it value, add to it. And then sometimes it's there and being shown, and it's not for another two years that they go, "Oh, I have this information, and it'll help me solve this problem." So Cenozon's evolved big inaudible-
00:30:00 KC Yost
So that platform is called PIRM.
00:30:03 Mark Woynarowich
Correct. Yep.
00:30:04 KC Yost
Pipeline Integrity Risk Management, P-I-R-M.
00:30:08 Mark Woynarowich
P-I-R-M. Yeah. It's our flagship product. And it's steady. It starts and goes to the same place, but it just helps companies understand their assets. And then our FIND, Field Integration and Navigational Tool, it's a mobile device. It's a digital form collector, but it's like your pipeline system is in a Google Maps. The guy's walking by, and he sees where his pipeline is. He physically knows where it is. Security on these systems are amazing. They're in cloud platforms. People can't access them. But imagine having a drive to location that you got to send somebody, and it takes them right to your wall sider battery. But the thing is, is at that battery, they have to collect some information instead of putting it in paper, spilling their coffee on it, having six months, and then needing to go give it to an administrator.
00:30:54 KC Yost
I resemble that remark. Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:56 Mark Woynarowich
I did too. I did too. I'm sure if I went back to one of my old operating offices, I could still find one of my binders with information in it. But the thing is that information has purpose. The guys in the fieldwork so hard, and they're doing such a good job, and they don't get the credit for it. But now that information is coming out and giving that higher use to the other people, they're looking like rock stars. And then, if I can help them by giving them better timeframes or guidance on what they're doing because now that I'm getting this, I'm just escalating their knowledge or teaching them about it. And the other big thing is administrative staff. They're probably some of the hardest working people in these organizations, helping the decision makers make those decisions by keeping them organized, getting information to them like they need it-
00:31:40 KC Yost
Right.
00:31:40 Mark Woynarowich
...but it's very repetitive tasks. Well, they still have a purpose of making sure he has what he needs, and it's in the way he needs it. But now we're giving it to them in a digital fashion where now they can put it into their reports, and they aren't spending hours converting it from Joe's handwriting, which they can't read into an Excel format to save. But now I'm giving her records for 15 years or three years in a constant format. They can be so much more valuable because they're hardworking, and now they're not being left just doing mundane tasks of converting my handwriting. And it goes anywhere now. It doesn't just go to her. It goes to their work order management system. It goes to an email where something's flagged because there was... this looks good, and he said no. So getting that from all these systems is huge. And we built that to allow for this valuable operational information to be brought back into PIRM or into other risk management systems where they weren't collecting it. They were using it to make decisions inside of this or to prioritize their assets. So inaudible-
00:32:45 KC Yost
inaudible-
00:32:44 Mark Woynarowich
And the last tool we built was InSight. It's an ILI tool that actually reviews and compares multiple years. And the only reason we built it was for speed.
00:32:59 KC Yost
Ah.
00:32:59 Mark Woynarowich
Computer systems are way faster. You can look at larger data sets because you're looking at on a long line, million-plus records of defects if it's in bad condition, and as lines get older, they typically don't get better. So it's only going to get worse. It takes a group of people or some other applications months to go through these lines. Well, we can QC check this information in a click of a button, which puts it in a standardized format that, sure, if you want to put it in your trusted way, go ahead. But there's also a way inside of the defect matching where, within an hour, you can look over a million records and compare this year to last year to how many other years you have.
00:33:42 KC Yost
So let me get this straight. Typically, an ILI run will be done, and then the tool owner will take that data and determine where the anomalies are located, right?
00:33:55 Mark Woynarowich
Correct.
00:33:55 KC Yost
What you're saying is you can take that same data and do a QA/ QC, if you will, on that data based on all of the data that you have from other sources. Is that right?
00:34:09 Mark Woynarowich
Exactly.
00:34:09 KC Yost
So, if you will, it's a second set of eyes. It's a second opinion when you go to the doctor.
00:34:16 Mark Woynarowich
Exactly.
00:34:17 KC Yost
inaudible.
00:34:17 Mark Woynarowich
Because the vendor-
00:34:18 KC Yost
Ah, cool.
00:34:18 Mark Woynarowich
...they're giving you as best as they know-
00:34:20 KC Yost
Ah.
00:34:20 Mark Woynarowich
... andthey're telling you what's there, but you're comparing it to someone else who might've done it before, right.
00:34:25 KC Yost
inaudible.
00:34:25 Mark Woynarowich
And also, you're checking over theirs. The second set of eyes is huge because that's what we do to get the highest level of confidence. You know they're good at it, but now you're comparing theirs to the last one that they don't know about and going, "Hey, this is happening."
00:34:39 KC Yost
Yeah. Well, and to be honest, we get back to the machine learning and all of that kind of stuff.
00:34:46 Mark Woynarowich
inaudible.
00:34:46 KC Yost
When ILI tools originally came out, it took years to build up the database library to understand what pings should be considered anomalies and how the size and all of that kind of stuff. Took a long time to get that square away. So...
00:35:01 Mark Woynarowich
And they're getting good. They're getting good at it.
00:35:03 KC Yost
inaudible. Yeah. Well, you haven't mentioned measurement manager, and I wanted to touch base on that real quick, if you don't mind. Like I inaudible-
00:35:10 Mark Woynarowich
inaudible.
00:35:10 KC Yost
... you and Italked earlier, my dad was big into natural gas measurement back in the 50s and 60s and was on the AGA3 committee for a number of years. But anyway, measurement manager, what does that platform do?
00:35:25 Mark Woynarowich
It's a fundamental tool. There's meters out there all over your business. They're your cash register, as you'll put it-
00:35:31 KC Yost
Right.
00:35:31 Mark Woynarowich
...and they're calibrated to what's going in, what currency is passing through. So making they're accurately representing the flow, having that schedule, knowing where they are, but then also associating what we'll call the analysis to it. What it should be calibrated to. That information all has to be available for you to make sure that the ching-ching-chings that are going through that meter are properly reflective, not just for dollars and cents, but compliance, for making sure the proper volumes you're reporting are going through it. And it's really easy to have a schedule. It's really easy to make sure the guys are inspecting it. It's hard to go, "Hey, is it calibrated accurately? And am I reporting accurately for means of regulatory compliance?" And even for myself. "Am I undercutting myself, or am I over?" So having that knowledge, no different than the risk-based inspection, your deviances, and meters. If you show that it's getting changed, you don't have to inspect it that often. But as soon as that meter is changing, you have to reduce that frequency to make sure that you are effectively measuring it. And it doesn't just impact your cash flow. You want to make sure those volumes are right for your integrity program and knowing what's going through the pipe. You want to use them for your accountants for calculating things. You want to use it for your operation staff to know if there's H2S and safety concerns. So making sure these things are accurate has so much more purpose.
00:36:54 KC Yost
Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right, well, we've covered everything I wanted to talk about. Is there anything else that you wanted to throw out here in the last few minutes?
00:37:05 Mark Woynarowich
You know what? Just that I really appreciate what you're doing with this podcast and sharing your knowledge and allowing me to share with industry. There's so much that we can learn from each other, and the world's moving at a faster pace. And you know what? It takes people like yourself and organizations that are trying to help spread news, spread information to larger audiences in different ways. And we can't just go sit in our rooms and meet with our peers because that's... you're missing what's happening over here. Or I come down to Houston and drove past your place and didn't even know it. You never know what you're going to find out.
00:37:42 KC Yost
Yeah. So when Mark and I had our initial telephone call, he and an associate of his drove literally two blocks from my house as we were talking on the telephone. So just to fill people in on that. But anyway, Mark, thank you very much for all your kind words and very nice. I think it's great. So I really appreciate you taking the time to visit with us today. If anyone would like to learn more about Cenozon, PIRM, or any of the other tools that Mark's mentioned, you can find them on the web at cenozon.com, C-E-N-O-Z-O-N. com. It's not dot ca. It's a dot com. Cenozon.com. Great. Okay. So thanks to all of you for turning into this episode of the Energy Pipeline Podcast by Caterpillar Oil and Gas. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for podcast topics, feel free to email me at kc.yost@oggn.com. I also want to thank my producer, Anastasia Willison-Duff, and everyone at the Oil and Gas Global Network for making this podcast possible. Find out more about other OGGN podcasts at oggn.com. This is KC Yost saying goodbye for now. Have a great week. You keep that energy flowing through the pipeline.
00:39:06 Speaker 5
Thanks for listening to OGGN, the world's largest and most listened-to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. If you like this, show us a review and then go to oggn.com to learn about all our other shows. And don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. This show has been a production of the Oil and Gas Global Network.
