The PODS Association with Monique Roberts

00:00:00 Speaker 1
This episode of the Energy Pipeline is sponsored by Caterpillar Oil & Gas. Since the 1930s, Caterpillar's 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. Today we'll be learning about the Pipeline Open Data Standard, or PODS Association with our guest, Monique Roberts, the association executive director. Welcome to the Energy Pipeline podcast, Monique.

00:01:08 Monique Roberts
Oh, Mr. KC, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me, it's so good to see your face. I'm super excited to talk to you about PODS today.

00:01:16 KC Yost
And it's wonderful seeing you. So, full disclosure to our listeners, I would normally call my guest my "newest best old friend," but in this case I can't, since Monique and I first met when you were college and applying for a Houston Pipeliners scholarship when I was scholarship chairman years ago. Right?

00:01:39 Monique Roberts
Yeah, right, right. All we have to say is that it started with a 19. So, back in the 19th century. Yeah, no, absolutely. You've been such a paramount part of my career for my entire life when I was 18 years old, who knew that when I was interviewing for that Houston Pipeliners scholarship that we would get to be friends, and you would even partially mentor me through this career in this incredible pipeline industry that we've had, and you've been a close personal friend of our family for such a long time. I'm super excited to spend time with you.

00:02:14 KC Yost
Well, your dad, God rest his soul, was quite a guy. I always thought the world of him, and so it made it very easy for me to like you and your brother, and get to know you guys much better. Yeah.

00:02:27 Monique Roberts
As he did you, you were absolutely... I know he would tell everybody that you were his favorite, but you really were his favorite, KC.

00:02:37 KC Yost
Only when I was there to listen. Yeah, when I was there to hear it I was his favorite. Yeah, I understand. Okay, okay. So anyway, you've had a really cool career. So, I want you to take some time and tell us about everything from that pipeliner scholarship back in 19, whatever it was, year, and to where you are today. And I don't want you to forget to mention about how you and your dad started the Louisiana Pipeliners, and ran it for a number of years. So go ahead, tell us about you.

00:03:12 Monique Roberts
Thanks, KC. I appreciate it. Yeah, so much like yourself, multi-generational pipeliner, which you know, so super excited. It's like the mafia, you can't not be in pipeline, right?

00:03:24 KC Yost
Oh, yeah. Especially from South Louisiana. Yeah.

00:03:27 Monique Roberts
Right, right. If you grow up in South Louisiana, my little brother's the only one that is not in pipeline and he's just upstream, so not far away at all. Right?

00:03:34 KC Yost
Right, right, right. That's right.

00:03:36 Monique Roberts
But yeah, so Dad and his family moved around a lot. Dad worked for Brown & Root, his dad worked for Brown & Root, his dad worked for Standard Oil, so many, many generations. And so, I'm very grateful that I get to be a part of this awesome industry. And so, yeah, when we were in high school, Dad was a big proponent of the Houston Pipeliners Association, and so he was like, "I want to start the Louisiana Pipeliners Association." Of course, altruistically Dad was every bit about the industry and his fellow man, but it didn't hurt that he was going to help get me and Greg get our school paid for. So yeah, so got involved then, and I actually created the first website for the Louisiana Pipeliners using GeoCities, nobody's going to know what that is because it's so old, when I was 18. And so, just really liked marketing, and technology and everything from the get when I was young, and finished school at USL and got my master's at ULaLa, because they changed the name while I was-

00:04:46 KC Yost
ULaLa, that's right.

00:04:47 Monique Roberts
...getting my masters. ULaLa, yeah.

00:04:50 KC Yost
You better tell the people from the East Coast, that's University of Louisiana Lafayette, ULaLa.

00:04:56 Monique Roberts
You got it. University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the Raging Cajuns.

00:04:59 KC Yost
That's right.

00:04:59 Monique Roberts
And we say now, if you went to school when it was USL that now you're an Aging Cajun. Yeah, so got out of there and did my best to try to stay in South Louisiana, and so started working in pipeline right out of a school and moved to Houma, Louisiana, and worked for companies there for close to 10 years. And then stayed in pipeline integrity and doing a lot of really great work there. I moved to Houston about 12 years ago now, and was able to really start digging my feet into pipeline integrity, and GIS and technology, and I've had such great mentors over my career and doing such great stuff. I really did like that I was able to get more into the pipeline integrity side. And you and Dad would always commiserate about building pipelines it's hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. Whereas pipeline integrity, it's a steady thing. And it really intrigued me in technology and GIS, because as we know, it's just as important to know what's around your pipeline is what's in your pipeline. Right?

00:06:14 KC Yost
Right, right.

00:06:15 Monique Roberts
And so, I started working with a couple of companies like G2, and TRC, and I actually got to work for Jeff Weiss, who was the former director of the Office of Pipeline Safety for PHMSA. And so, he really got my passion going for pipeline safety. You spend five minutes with that man, and you're never going to not focus on that. You know Jeff, right?

00:06:37 KC Yost
Yeah, Jeff was actually a guest on the podcast-

00:06:40 Monique Roberts
Oh, great.

00:06:40 KC Yost
...oh, I don't know, six, eight months ago. Anyway, go ahead. Go ahead.

00:06:43 Monique Roberts
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. So, I got to work for Jeff for about four years and that was great. And everybody went there separate ways and they asked me to come on at PODS, and I was super excited to do so because I had been working at companies that were members of PODS for many years. And so, I was a volunteer of the PODS Association, but I hadn't really understood the inner workings of it. And so, super excited that I got to start working for a non-profit association, because we're really lacking in trade associations in the pipeline industry. Right, KC? We're really...

00:07:23 KC Yost
There's always room for one more. Always room for one more. Yeah, yeah.

00:07:28 Monique Roberts
Right, right. So, now I'm still in Houston, I love it here, and I really enjoy being here. We bought a house three miles away from the house that Mom and Dad lived in when they brought me home from the hospital at Clear Lake Hospital in Webster. So, full circle, right?

00:07:49 KC Yost
Boy, I didn't know that, but there you go. That's good.

00:07:52 Monique Roberts
There you go.

00:07:52 KC Yost
Full circle.

00:07:53 Monique Roberts
Full circle, yeah. So, I really am enjoying it and I really do love that I get to be a part of this really cool community and get to do cool stuff like hang out with you.

00:08:03 KC Yost
Yeah. Well, it's wonderful having you here. Good to see you, and glad that you took the time to visit with us.

00:08:10 Monique Roberts
And KC, you told me not to forget to talk about Louisiana Pipeliners, and I totally did. Louisiana Pipeliners is now almost 30 years old-

00:08:19 KC Yost
30 years old.

00:08:21 Monique Roberts
Almost 30 years old, yeah.

00:08:22 KC Yost
Oh, my.

00:08:23 Monique Roberts
I know. I hope people don't do the math to figure out how old I am, but Dad started it right with a couple of guys, with Nicky Smith, who was ANR Pipeline at the time, with some of his fellows with Chevron and Shell, and all these guys, they started it. And when they started, the first two recipients of the pipeline scholarship were myself and Jeremy Smith, who's now at Energy Transfer, in Lake Charles area, and we split about 3, 000 bucks that first year that we had, but tuition was like 1, 400 bucks back then anyway. And just this last year, they've given out cumulatively almost two and a half million dollars in those amount of years. So, not as much as Houston Pipeliners, but still pretty rad for the state of Louisiana, right?

00:09:18 KC Yost
No, I think that's wonderful. I think that's wonderful. And let's not lose the sight, Houston Pipeliners is the second-oldest pipeliners organization in the United States. I think the guys who-

00:09:31 Monique Roberts
Right, behind Tulsa, right?

00:09:33 KC Yost
Tulsa, that's right.

00:09:34 Monique Roberts
Yeah.

00:09:34 KC Yost
Tulsa was formed like a year before us. So, we were formed, I want to say 1957, somewhere along in there. And the last few years they've passed, they, the Houston Association's passed out a million dollars a year in scholarships.

00:09:53 Monique Roberts
That's crazy.

00:09:53 KC Yost
But that's having a 60-year head start, so let's keep things in perspective. You've been on a long road together-

00:10:00 Monique Roberts
So, when Dad started in the mid'90s there had been a huge gap of pipeline clubs that had opened. I think Atlanta had opened or started in between y'all and Louisiana. But then after that, fast-forward into the early aughts, Dad and I actually got to help Rocky Mountain and San Antonio, and all these guys helped to write their charter and their bylaws. And now there's so many pipeline clubs out there that are doing such wonderful things, and giving out so much money to all these kiddos, it's the coolest thing ever. And I got to work with my dad for 20 years. How cool is that, right?

00:10:42 KC Yost
That is very cool.

00:10:43 Monique Roberts
I like to tell people, if you didn't know him, I am a muted version of him.

00:10:51 KC Yost
And let's be honest-

00:10:52 Monique Roberts
Oh, yeah. You know Dad, he was who he was, right?

00:10:54 KC Yost
...she speaks the truth to our... She speaks the truth. Okay, all right, so we've taken up a full third of our podcast talking about old days. That's cool. Let's talk PODS for a second, let's go back 35, 40 years ago when CAD was starting, and mapping was starting, and Civil 3D was just a gleam in someone's eye, and GIS was a thought back out there. We use the term PODS many times to talk about principles of design, or standardization of design, and standardizing attributes. Literally PODS, the acronym, to me started back when you standardized a fence line, you standardized the edge of road, you standardized the edge of water and that type of thing on your drawing, so that you would, as you electronically entered it, it was there. So, you didn't have to worry so much about the handwritten field notes. I mean, these were the dark ages of electronic survey and mapping, and that type of thing. Now, we've gone to the point PODS now, with your association, stands for Pipeline Open Data Standard, right?

00:12:21 Monique Roberts
Mm-hmm.

00:12:22 KC Yost
So, explain PODS in today's vernacular. Would you, please?

00:12:27 Monique Roberts
Yeah, absolutely. And thanks again so much for talking about this with me, KC. So, the PODS Association actually started a year before the Bellingham, Washington incident. And that's important to note, because it's important that the industry got together, that these operators got together and said, "We need to have a standardized way of organizing our data." Because as we know from the NTSB reports, that from Bellingham through every single incident since then, that one of the main crucial points of these incidents is that it was either missing data, misappropriated data, data not available at the right people at the right time, data quality concerns, data silos, not good data governance. And so, it's important to note that for me especially, and why I love the pipeline industry so much, is that everybody got together and decided to come up with a standard before PHMSA had said, "Okay, here's how you're going to be regulated. These are the data attributes that you need to populate and report every year." So, we started out of the think tank of GTI, and since then, whereas we started with 60 data tables, now it's hundreds of thousands of tables, and the nomenclature and the organization to organize your data. As you know, KC, these long linear assets, especially the large diameter assets, the transmission pipeline, they have a ton of data associated with them, right?

00:13:59 KC Yost
Right, right.

00:14:00 Monique Roberts
I mean, you look at just an ILI run, you have minimum half a million data points in a single ILI run, right?

00:14:07 KC Yost
Mm-hmm, right.

00:14:08 Monique Roberts
So, to organize all that data in a way that's standardized, for two reasons, number one for reporting, obviously with compliance, it's very important. PHMSA is a member of PODS, PHMSA uses the PODS database as its baseline for the NPMS system, the National Public Mapping System, Pipeline Mapping System. So, when you upload your file geodatabase to every year with your annual report, it's already in PODS, right?

00:14:32 KC Yost
Right.

00:14:32 Monique Roberts
So, it's easy-peasy. And then two, so that all this new technology, all the software companies, they needed a baseline with which to build all of this new innovative technology and software for the future, for the digital twin, for where we're going to move in the future with asset knowledge management. And so, we needed to have that standardized way of organizing that data for the operators to operate safely day-to-day, and for the service companies to have a good baseline with which to build and develop to support those operators in pipeline safety.

00:15:06 KC Yost
So, in my West Virginia vernacular, trying to take this down, one of the biggest problems in the oil and gas industry is the loss of data. Companies are purchased, companies are sold, you've got consolidation, you've got divestiture, you've got all of this kind of thing, and records are lost, records are destroyed because of floods, because of burning. Records are destroyed to a point where no one knows except the guy that's been operating the pipeline for the last 30 years, or the compressor station, or the pump station, or the meter station for the last 35 years knows what wall thickness is in the ground right there, because he was actually on the construction crew back in 1976 to put it in the ground, right?

00:16:04 Monique Roberts
Yeah.

00:16:04 KC Yost
So, prior to Bellingham, and I want you to... Bellingham, just suffice to say that it was a black eye in the pipeline industry.

00:16:15 Monique Roberts
Horrible incident, absolutely.

00:16:16 KC Yost
Yeah, fair enough. But the year prior to that, these companies got together and said, "Look, we recognize there is a problem with data retention. Data collection can be a problem, but data retention is a real problem. Let's standardize this data retention." And through the process, we'll talk about this a little bit, you've got over 100 pipeline companies, 38 countries or whatever the case may be. I don't know how many regulatory agencies including PHMSA, but the whole idea is that you've taken this from 1998 to 2024, what was an idea by these guys prior to the Bellingham disaster have taken it to the point where it has now grown to a point where it is the go-to spot for data filing, data collection and PHMSA when they come out for an audit. If you have this database, they know exactly where to go look for X, Y or Z. And if it's there, they move on. If it's not there, they ask you why and you go down the route. It is like you and I were talking about, I've been through a few audits, and the key is not only to have the information, but to have the information at your fingertips-

00:17:56 Monique Roberts
Available.

00:17:56 KC Yost
...and having it quickly to a point where... And have the provenance, the provenance of that information so that the PHMSA guys, or whoever the audit is, Railroad Commission, whoever the case may be, is doing the audit, can find and validate that information quickly. The quicker they can find that, the better off everyone is in the evaluation and the audit. Right?

00:18:29 Monique Roberts
You got it, KC. Absolutely. So, that data quality, that data governance is key. So, what we have done at PODS is we go through all of 192, 195 and the Texas Railroad Commission, and we make sure that every single data attribute is captured in PODS, and it's organized in a way that's logical, and that either has a one-to-one relationship, a one-to-many relationship, like this valve is in this location and it's connected to this system. And so, two things with that that I want to touch on. Number one, which is if you already have your data in PODS, when you have that PHMSA audit you know very well, KC, that they'll ask you a question. And then, if you go to give them the answer, they're like, "No, no, no. Show it to me." Right?

00:19:17 KC Yost
Right.

00:19:17 Monique Roberts
And so, now you can open up your database, you can open and you can say, "Look, here it is. And here it is already in the standardized format." Before Jeff was at PHMSA, Jeff Weiss, he was at, well, it was MMT then, it's BSEE now for offshore. He said one time he went on a rig, and as he was getting on the rig they were throwing a bunch of paper off the side of the rig, all these boxes of paper and everything. And he's like, "What are y'all doing? First of all, don't litter, but also what are you doing?" And they're like, "We just got sold. We don't need any of this paperwork anymore. We just got sold." And it's just the cringe of that, oh my goodness. So, it is important that these operators all got together, because especially nowadays, KC, they're all buying and selling each other so much, you have to have that. So, one of the pluses for our PODS members and our operator members, like Williams, and ONEOK and all these guys, is they're going to go buy pipeline companies that are already a PODS member, already have their data organized in this point. So, it's so much easier for them to consume when there is an M & A transaction, you know you have it all there, and your assets are now more valuable because you can point to the data associated with your asset. So, there's so many benefits beyond just the standardization of PODS, now there are business benefits, there are aspects to the business where you can now make business decisions because you have visibility to your data, you know why you did what you did. We have integrity modules that will tell you now, "Why did I do this dig? Was it because it was seven years and I needed to do a run? Was it because I found an anomaly?" So, now it's much more than just a data standard and having that data quality, you can run your business better because your data is organized.

00:21:07 KC Yost
So, in 192, an operating company is allowed to decide whether to do an inline inspection run or monitor for anomalies with digs, and that type of thing. It's an either or scenario. Now, the way I read 192, it is pushing really hard to ask the operators to run inline inspection tools, but they're not forcing them to do it. So, there are alternatives. So, if you have a member company who doesn't want to do that, run an inline inspection tool, and by the way, for those if you don't know what this is, it's basically an ultrasound. There are different kinds of inline inspection pigs, but they're basically run through and check the wall thickness, and look for anomalies, dents, dings, scratches, et cetera in the pipeline. Coding anomalies, coding coming off, that type of thing. Very sophisticated stuff, it's really cool. But if you have a company that doesn't want to do that, you have the PODS, I don't want to call it a spreadsheet. What do you call it, a folder?

00:22:25 Monique Roberts
It's the data tables. So, your ILA tables-

00:22:29 KC Yost
Data table that allows them to document what they're doing in lieu of running that tool. So, how they operate, how they maintain is their call-

00:22:39 Monique Roberts
It's their call.

00:22:40 KC Yost
...we're just providing the deal.

00:22:43 Monique Roberts
Think about it as a template. Actually, I got a call today, I get a call pretty regularly, and they call me and they say, "Okay, my container was supposed to be here this morning, we have to move this afternoon. Where's my container?" They think that I'm the PODS moving container company. So, similar to that is PODS. So, you know how in those moving containers you have a spot for your couch, you have a spot for your TV because it's padded, you have a larger area for your dining room, whatever. There's a method to the madness where you put all your stuff in that PODS container. Same thing with the PODS data tables and the data model, our data knows ILI needs to go here, your CP data needs to go here, your TVC data needs to... Everything has its place so that it can all work functionally, but it's not stopping the operator from operating how he wants. No one ever uses 100% of what we offer in the model, 80% at most. Then you're going to take that and you're going to calibrate it to your business. You're going to make sure that it works specifically for how you're operating. One of the cool things about ILI too, in the ILI data tables, is now you can do a run to run analysis no matter the tool vendor. So historically, you would have to stay with the same tool vendor to be able to do that run to run analysis. Now with the ILI data tables and pods, you can take data from ROSEN, data from TDW, data from whoever, and you can do a run to run analysis no matter the tool vendor. So, it really gives the operator a lot more a power to operate their business the way that they want to.

00:24:27 KC Yost
Gotcha, gotcha. Now, to be clear, this is not an infomercial.

00:24:33 Monique Roberts
No.

00:24:33 KC Yost
We're not here to sell anything. This is an association that is similar to INGAA, similar to Southern Gas Association, similar to American Gas Association. This is a membership group that we talked, you and I talk a lot, but we talked about the days back in the '70s when I started in the pipeline industry in Tennessee Gas, Trunkline, Texas Eastern all had their laboratories down around Rice Avenue, and they all were next door to each other, and they all worked together in coming up with research and development, and how to do this and how to do that. And there was a lot of collaboration in developing new techniques back in the '60s and '70s. That stuff is long gone. And then you've got INGAA and the INGAA Foundation, where you've still got the operating companies in INGAA, and then you've got the operating companies and associate members in the INGAA Foundation where someone nominates a project, "I've got this problem X," and they take a vote and they put money into the budget to solve that problem X, right?

00:25:55 Monique Roberts
Right.

00:25:55 KC Yost
And Southern Gas Association is similar and continues on. You guys aren't quite that same. So, tell us what you guys do, because I'm sure there are people out there that are thinking, "Well shoot, for," whatever it is, "three grand for a small membership or whatever, I get access to all of this stuff?" Anyway, go ahead.

00:26:21 Monique Roberts
Yeah, yeah. Thanks, KC. And I'm glad that you mentioned all those organizations, because I have been a part of all of those organizations, and we are reciprocal members of each other. I speak at SGA all the time, I was the chair of the PPNC committee at INGAA Foundation for six years. That think tank is the same thing that we do here at PODS. So, the foundation is like the think tank of INGAA, they come up with the ideas, and the projects, and the program. A little bit different with us in that we don't bid out, we don't have a lot of funds. We're a very small nonprofit. So, when someone comes to us with an idea or a project, like PRCI came to us recently and said, "Hey, we really want to have the physical locations of the SCADA assets in PODS." So, when somebody needs to go out there and calibrate some piece of telemetry or whatnot for some anode for SCADA, that they know where it is on the map. They know where it is-

00:27:22 KC Yost
By the way, and to be clear, PRCI is Pipeline Research Council International.

00:27:29 Monique Roberts
You got it.

00:27:29 KC Yost
And it is funded by INGAA. Who else funds it?

00:27:35 Monique Roberts
Well, so no, PRCI is funded by its members.

00:27:37 KC Yost
Oh, that's right. Right.

00:27:38 Monique Roberts
Yeah, much like us. So, GTI is funded by different sources, you're thinking of that.

00:27:44 KC Yost
There you go.

00:27:44 Monique Roberts
I know. Remember, there's so many pipeline trade associations. It's crazy.

00:27:48 KC Yost
There are, there are.

00:27:49 Monique Roberts
But it's okay, because everybody is absolutely critical. So, PRCI comes to us and says, "Hey, we really want to see this in the data model." So, we run it through committee, it gets approved, yes, it's in our mission to get this in. And now we do a call for volunteers, and people come together, people that are control room subject matter experts, people that are in SCADA, integrity managers, the data analysts, our nerds in PODS, the GIS specialists, they all get together and they figure out, "Okay, what's important? What data attributes are needed and where do we put it in the model?" And then they put fingers to keyboard and they build it out. So, we don't sub that out to anybody, we don't have enough funds to do that. It's all the member organizations, of which we have over 200 operators in 38 countries all over the world that are on the PODS data model, they all come together and they say, "Okay, let's build this all together." Then they donate that IP back to PODS, which is great. Makes life very easy, right?

00:28:51 KC Yost
Yeah.

00:28:51 Monique Roberts
And then that gets disseminated to the entire industry across the world. And so, now everyone is benefiting step up from all of this innovation. So, like INGAA in that we do crowdsource a lot, and figure out what we're going to work on next. And we do work with a lot of trade associations as well, and we're members of a lot of those, and they are reciprocal members of us, like Common Ground Alliance, and GTI, and API and all these guys. So, we'll work with a lot of people, but mainly it's the operators that tell us, "Hey, you know what? We need to have this additional data in the data model." Or PHMSA will come to us and PHMSA will say, "Hey, we have a new notice of proposed rulemaking for gas distribution that's going to the Office of Management and Budget right now. We think it's going to get published here pretty soon. Here are the data attributes that are going to be associated with this new rule." And then we get a heads-up on that so that PODS can then build out the data model to reflect what that new upcoming regulation is going to be.

00:29:54 KC Yost
So, I think this is fascinating. You basically have subject matter experts that are volunteering their time for the common good of the industry.

00:30:07 Monique Roberts
Yeah. Because KC, there's no such thing as competition when it comes to safety. Right?

00:30:12 KC Yost
That's right.

00:30:12 Monique Roberts
You taught me that, Dad taught me that.

00:30:13 KC Yost
Yep. Yep, that's right. That's absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. So, you've got long-distance natural gas transmission companies. You've got long-distance liquids companies, 195, and you have this for industrial gases. I noticed you have at least two industrial gas companies on there that have, at one time or another, been a client of mine. And then you've got engineering firms on there, Esri's on there, you've got GIS.

00:30:49 Monique Roberts
Yep. We have gas gathering companies, we have gas distribution companies, we have LDCs. We have an offshore committee right now that's being led by BP out of the UK, that we have members on that committee right now, it's a beast to figure out the timeline to do that call, let me tell you. But Australia, Brazil, Eastern Europe, UK and Canada are all on that working call. It's absolutely incredible, because you got imperial, you got metric, you got different languages, but the common purpose is that these guys want their data organized so that they can "walk the seabed floor," and walk that pipeline that's 10,000 feet below sea level. So, BP is a huge proponent and has donated just a ton of IP back to us for all the offshore stuff. So yeah, gas gathering, we do carbon sequestration, we have water, we have a water model. Just, yeah, any pipe.

00:31:55 KC Yost
And this is pipeline systems, right?

00:31:58 Monique Roberts
Yes, sir.

00:31:58 KC Yost
Don't you include the facilities as well?

00:32:00 Monique Roberts
Facilities, the compressor stations, the tanks, the everything. I mean, Valero is a huge member of ours. And so yeah, we have to have all of the facilities, all the tanks, all of the everything, underground, above ground, all of the systems that connect, everything.

00:32:18 KC Yost
So, basically a pipeline system soup to nuts.

00:32:22 Monique Roberts
You got it.

00:32:23 KC Yost
And you've got the big boys, you've got the small guys, you've got the engineering firms, you've got the GIS guys, you've got the regulators, you've got the Canadians, you've got PHMSA that are all working together for this common good, safe transport of liquids. Fluids, fluids, fluids.

00:32:48 Monique Roberts
Yeah, and the safe operation, optimizing the safe optimization of our infrastructure here in America and all over the world. There's a lot of issues that they deal with in South America that we don't deal with. So, they need to have data tables and data organization so that they have visibility to illegal tapping. I mean, there's just so many different issues all over the world, which is really a cool part of my job, KC. As you know, I get to travel all over the place to go hang out with all of our members.

00:33:19 KC Yost
Good for you, good for you, good for you. My traveling overseas days are gone. So, I like staying terra firma. Okay, anyway.

00:33:32 Monique Roberts
Well, I know Dana likes it when you stay put, too.

00:33:36 KC Yost
There you go, there you go. I've enjoyed this conversation, but I see we're running a little bit over. So, want to throw out there, is there anything you'd like to add before I sign off?

00:33:48 Monique Roberts
Just if you're not sure whether or not if your company's a member of PODS, you probably are. So, go check it out, pods. org, each member company, as they pay their dues, all of their employees have access to all of the free data layers. We have updates for all of the state and federal regulatory updates with all of the data that you're going to need there. We have a ton of training. Of course, the models, the modules, and it matters not what data model you're on, because now these modules that we're putting out, like ILI, and TBC, and Integrity and Regulatory can be attached to any data model now. So, you don't have to lift and shift to move your whole system over. So, we really want to be inclusive to more pipeline operators. So, if you're not a member, even if you're a service company, we're welcoming service companies. We have way more operator members than we have service companies, but we welcome service companies as well. So, go check it out, pods. org, and we'd love to have you. It's such a small amount of money to be able to have access to this incredible brain trust.

00:34:51 KC Yost
And membership is tiered, right?

00:34:54 Monique Roberts
It is, yeah. So, the larger guys like Kinder Morgan, and Williams, they pay the most, they have the most pipeline, and so they need that to operate. And Williams was actually our founding member, so that's pretty cool. But yeah, but down to we have an intro level if you're a small software company that's just starting out, you have an intro level that's only $1,500 a year. If you're a, what we call a micro operator, so you have less than 100 miles of pipeline, it's only $1,000 a year. We want to be inclusive, we want everybody in, because as you know, KC, when something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. So, we really are focused on the smaller operator and ensuring that there is a low barrier to entry to join PODS. So, for the larger operators it's much more, but for those smaller guys, we would love for everybody to come and join us. So, very low barrier to entry to join PODS.

00:35:54 KC Yost
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I'm just absolutely impressed at what you guys are doing, and working together, and looking for the common good. It does remind me in a large way of the pipeline industry back in the'70s, and everyone working together back then. So, good for you-

00:36:17 Monique Roberts
Yeah, KC, we are a great community. And hashtag ain't nothing finer than a pipeliner, right?

00:36:22 KC Yost
Yeah, that's right. That's right, that's right. Good deal. Well, anyway, thanks for taking the time to visit with us today. Enjoyed it so much-

00:36:30 Monique Roberts
Thank you so much, KC. We'll talk soon.

00:36:33 KC Yost
All right. So again, if anyone would like to learn more about the PODS Association, you can find them on the web at pods.org. That's P-O-D-S dot org, P-O-D-S dot org. Thanks to all of you for tuning in this episode of the Energy Pipeline Podcast, sponsored by Caterpillar Oil & Gas. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for podcast topics, feel free to email me at kc.yost@oggn.com. 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, and keep that energy flowing through the pipeline.

00:37:22 Speaker 5
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