The elephant in the room and geohazards with Nic Roniger

Rhett
Welcome to today’s edition of Pipeline Things. As you listen, this is a first for us on a lot of levels. It’s the first time that we have a remote guest joining us, which means we learn about all sorts of technology things. I think we lose the camera twice during the episode, but it’s a lot of fun. Join us as we talk about Geohazards with Nick Roneger from Marathon Petroleum. And he admits openly on air that between the two of us, I am his favorite. We look– enjoy the the episode you’re gonna have a lot of fun.
 
 
Rhett
Alright welcome to today’s edition of pipeline things I am your host Rhett Dotson my co -host Christopher De Leon for those of you who are watching on YouTube. You probably noticed we’re in a slightly different setup now. That’s because, believe it or not, we’re going to have a guest on today’s episode that we’re going to bring in. And we’re trying a couple of new things first time today. This guest is joining us remotely. It’s going to be wild fun. Some unexpected things will probably happen. And we will give a Miss Producer kudos for doing an excellent job by the end of it. I am sure.
 
Chris
You know what I love about this. I feel like we’re constantly learning new things on this how to do a podcast — just a little bit of nostalgia going back to like our first one you know, I remember that we had like the little hotel mics.
 
Rhett
Eight months ago When we were sitting in the tech room,  I think it was
 
Chris
Yes talking about IDT explore right? I remember all that
 
Rhett
Oh my goodness, but today’s gonna be a fun episode, you know, so we we’re the plans to talk about geo hazards Yeah, and so when I was thinking about that for those of you who are down here in Texas, we just endured our second harsh freeze, which so for people that come from further up north, they don’t have an appreciation for a harsh freeze. That means that we got below freezing for 24 hours. And when we do, it’s like a full blown crisis down here.
 
Chris
We’re not built for that.
 
Rhett
Oh my God, no. So I’d be real with you guys. I was like full paranoia. I felt like I was more prepared than I was in 2021. But man, I mean, I was like up in the middle of the night running faucets and I was going to check Christmas lights Um, I melted my septic plumbing because two things have seen it.
 
Chris
Well, what did you do?
 
Rhett
I wrapped my septic plumbing in two things of C9 Christmas folds and then put a towel on top of that and covered it in a tarp It turns out I can’t show the audience Maybe Miss Producer afterwards can throw the photo up there what happened, but you can melt PVC with see You know, I melted it up where my, my, my, — Well, I mean, it’s no longer straight. It’s like,
 
Chris
You think that’s like Christmas trees can light up a fire?
 
Rhett
Dude, maybe so, but I didn’t think it would happen. What about you? How’d you come out of the freeze?
 
Chris
So in snow-vid,
 
Rhett
Snow vid, that was 21, right?
 
Chris
So during snow vid, I had, I had lessons learned, right? So for me, it was one of my, my pumps, the inlet for my pool cracked. So it didn’t burst, but it cracked. And I didn’t find out until my pool drain when everything was running. So I was like, that’s probably not.
 
Rhett
 I think my pool’s empty, my yard’s flooded.
 
Chris
And then our water softener. Also, we have like a little filter on it that also burst.
 
Rhett
Oh no, my whole water softener split last time. That was three grand down the drain.
 
Chris
I learned my lesson. I went to Home Depot like the week before the freeze. I bought all the stuff I needed. I got home insulation. I wrap my pool with plastic sheeting. It’s fantastic. I got all my stuff down. So I learned my lesson
 
Rhett
That’s good. You know, and actually I’m reading the news now like from Atlanta They like Pittsburgh like all these places are like going through what we went through two years ago Man, honestly, Im heartbroken for those people because that’s stuff sucks.
 
Chris
We learned that quick man
 
Rhett
I guess I don’t know by the way, if you’re there in Texas and you survive this year’s freeze. Good job But I you know what so and we’re gonna be talking about GeoHazards, we’re continuing in our discussion of RIN2 from the updated gas rule. And so for those of you who have been following us, we’re actually gonna be in section 613 today, right? So 613 is all about GeoHazards. And you guys have heard me talk a lot. You’ll heard the dirt merchant talk a lot. But we wanted to bring a special guest on, get an operator’s perspective. So I think we have to introduce, you know, our first guest.
 
Chris
Our buddy.
 
Rhett
Our buddy. And Miss Producer is going to bring him on. Our guest is Nick Roneger with Marathon Petroleum.
 
Chris
Is there anything like the prices right there?
 
Rhett
Oh, that would be great. We could have little lights that should turn around. If you’re watching on YouTube, you have no idea actually, probably what’s going on there. Somebody’s camera is going to pop on here in just a moment and their voice is going to come on. And I won’t have to stall as long as they come on.
 
Chris
You know, this is totally Nick being fashionably late. Nick was just listening and he was like… If you know Nick, he’s the boss, right? So he’s like, I’m coming on and I’m ready to come on.
 
Nick
I wanted to set the tone. Who is in charge
 
Rhett
Well, you did good. I was like waiting. I was like, is Nick hearing me? Is Miss producer having problems? We have to keep stalling.
 
Chris
That’s so good.
 
Nick
I was waiting for my music to hit.
 
Chris
Oh, that’s a great intro music, right?
 
Rhett
Nick, we will find a way to play special music for you during that during that moment where we were waiting for you to sign on.
 
Chris
So, I mean, obviously, thanks for joining us, bud. This is your first for us. This is our– we had to find a way to get you on the show. So you’re our first—what is this? We have to put “tella” on here. Is this the first telepodcast? Or how do we want to say this?
 
Rhett
Remote podcast? I don’t know. We’re breaking the ground. Nick, you’re breaking the ground for us.
 
Chris
That’s right.
 
Nick
I appreciate that. Thanks for the
invite
 
Rhett
So what’s your official title of marathon give me because I always like to identify people their official title If you don’t mind.
 
Nick
Yeah, so I’m the mainline integrity supervisor. My team basically creates the strategies for managing all the mainline integrity threats So we manage geohazards waterway crossings depth of cover cracks dents, We do all a reassessment interval determination technology selection assessment selection, pipe data, hydro tests, and then the big thing is our depth of cover program as well. I forgot about that.
 
Chris
Oh, depth of cover, that’s a good one.
 
Rhett
That’s a whole other episode of depth of cover.
 
Nick
It is a monster. And then we also manage all the integrity data across the department. So we have a couple of platforms that we work with. We have an engineer that kind of works between our IT department as well as our integrity group. And it really kind of creates some unique solutions that we have that helps us manage everything.
 
Rhett
Cool. Well, fantastic. Thanks for joining us. So as an operator at one of our objectives here now, I want to set the stage here with a bit of a disclaimer too. So let’s start with the disclaimer. It’s just an easy thing. So if you’re listening to this podcast episode. Any opinions that Nick expresses are his own opinions. They are not the opinion of Marathon Petroleum and he’s not speaking on behalf of Marathon Petroleum and nothing he says should be construed as being on behalf of Marathon Petroleum.
 
Chris
So why do we do it? We do it because of this. We like to bring on hosts that have sufficient experience to have really strong opinions and to be able to communicate those opinions. And so that’s why we bring these guys to you for. So Nick, again, by all means, we’re positioning this to where this is your opinion and definitely not necessarily representing Marathon in any capacity. Obviously, it’s nice for people to know how to contact you and what you do.
 
Rhett
But really, I mean, it’s the reason the reason we went with Nick, you know, so that the audience understands out there is I’ve worked with a lot of people on the Geo -Hazard front. I consider Marathon’s program with regards to Geo -Hazards to be somewhat advanced. I think when You talk about geo -hazard programs on scale in the United States. You guys are definitely in the upper echelon, I would say, in the work that you have done. And there are a lot of operators in the United States now who are starting from scratch, I mean, ground zero. Right now, again, I think the introduction to the Inga JIP on landslides, Dave Johnson wrote it. He did a fantastic job setting the stage for that. And he basically said that geo -hazards are following the same trend as SCC where it goes from being like, Hey, I’ve heard of that threat. Oh, to those people have that threat. And we’re in the stage where most people now I think other people have that threat. It’s not a threat on my system. It’s somebody else’s threat that they’re dealing with. And so I think a lot of operators are becoming aware of the fact that, Oh, no, this is a threat that affects everybody holistically. And I think people like you and other operators that are kind of blazing the trail have a lot to offer to those operators. And I’m hoping to get some of that out of you today?
 
Nick
I think the big thing with geohazards is it doesn’t, it happens where you least expect it. It can be, you know, you think, you know, the highest risk locations are the Appalachian Hills or, you know, mountainous regions. It’s not just that. It can be simple, you know, fields in Illinois that otherwise wouldn’t draw your attention or, you know, we have a lot of work right away in the Midwest and, you know, you complete a survey, whether it’s a bending strain or, you know, a lidar and you’re like, really? That’s there? That, that? Okay. And maybe there’s only one, but that’s all it takes.
 
Rhett
Yeah, and that’s a great point of view, I’m thinking I got one in the middle of Waco, Texas right now. And most people don’t think geohazards if you’ve ever in the Waco, Texas, ’cause that’s about as flat as it gets. So before we get into 613, Nick, I wanted to actually just give you the floor a little bit. So, ’cause I think it sets the stage pretty nicely. If an operator is starting from scratch with the Geo Hazards program. I mean, like, they literally, they have nothing in place ’cause they’re looking at this rule and maybe they’re thinking maybe they get something in place. Like, what advice would you give them? Where would you tell them to start? What would you offer to them?
 
Nick
I think the– –
 
Rhett
 And that’s a broad question.
 
Nick
Yeah, I think you have to break it down into specific areas, you know, what do you consider to be a geohazard type threat? And I think that the primary one that you could think of is, you know, waterway crossings. Waterway crossings are something that, you know, have there’s been a PHMSA bulletin, there’s been plenty of industry events that folks can go and read about. And, you know, that’s something that as an operator, you have to stay on top of. So I would say that, you know, that’s one key area. Another key area would be traditional landslip type geohazards, you know. When you think of a geohazard, you think, okay, I got a hillside landslip, the soil’s moving and then the pipe is moving and then the last one which is probably I would say less of a mainstream threat but one that you know folks need to think about is depth of cover you know depth of cover is such a huge part of an integrity management program when you look at the work that goes on in our right -of -way. We share a lot of right -of -way in tillable fields. And that is a huge focus because farmers don’t have to do one -calls depending on their till depth. And it takes erosion. And a lot of our asset base was 50 to 70 years ago was when it was built. Three feet of soil, you know, 70 years ago, may not be three feet now. And so that’s something that, you know, when you get mechanical equipment crossing your pipeline and a frequent interval, you got to pay attention to that. So that’s, that’s another factor. So I’d say those, those three things are the big starting points. And, you know, you say, Okay, if you don’t have a geo hazard program, how do you build one? How do you eat the elephant one bite at a time. And so, you know, I would, I would break it up into those sections and then focus on, okay, what does an extreme event look like for each of those scenarios?
 
Chris
Yeah. I, Nick, you, you really set the stage for us to be able to go like on so many different discussions. So I really appreciate you doing that. Our focus right now in this arc is a lot around RIN2 of the mega rule, right? So we all know the mega rule, three parts, they weren’t necessarily issued in that order. We call this RIN2, which is primarily focused on repair criteria, data integration. In this case right here, which we’re talking a little bit more about, which is responding to extreme events, not just GeoHazard. We kind of want to build that into the GeoHazards. I want to zoom out a little bit ’cause I think you touched on something here. A lot of your background is liquid. And liquid pipelines, right? And you guys, your integrity plans are just built different than gas guys, right? But you have exposure to a lot of the gas, integrity management practices. So I’ll kind of segue it a little bit by saying, that’s where I started, right? 2008 gas line integrity, IMP 1.0. And there was a significant component of pigging and digging. That’s your integrity plan. And it’s focused on your big three, dents, internal corrosion ,and potentially into external corrosion or SCC or whatever it was that you knew was badon your pipeline. And it’s pig and dig. Right. And so the reason why we’rehere, we had significant incidents that drew new new regulation. But it kind of seems like the way you’re posturing this is you guys are on this clear momentum of continuous improvement and expanding your plan. Keeping that kind of that mindset, do you have any observations or reactions to, you’re seeing some of these requirements in the mega for the gas guys as a traditional liquid guy, what are some of your initial reactions to, you know, this more prescriptive based approach and some of things being very explicit in the regs that are new to gas operators.
 
Nick
So I think, you know, the biggest thing is, one of my favorite quotes is we learn from history that we don’t learn from history.
 
Chris
can you give us a second to think about that? You gotta give us a chance to think about
 
Rhett
We learn from history that we don’t learn from history. That’s like, that’s like a Murphy’s Law version of history repeats itself.
 
Nick
 Yeah, that’s basically what it is. And why I say that is, one of the most valuable things that we can do is learn from each other. We as an operator group, it’s target zero. You know, we can’t afford to make mistakes. We can’t, you know, we don’t tolerate releases. And, you know, that’s how it should be. And when I have a release or some other company, other operator has a release, we all have one. And it’s important for us to look at those events and say, okay, what went wrong? What went right? And how do I have procedures or stop gaps in place to prevent something similar from happening. And with that and how it ties to the mega rule, the mega rule has things in it that liquids doesn’t and vice versa. And so you have to look and you say, okay, well, is that threat mechanism unique to a gas operator or a gas line? Or do I share that same threat? And I just haven’t come across it yet. And I think that that’s a really important lesson learned where, hey, you know, gas operators, maybe they don’t have the fatigue component that I would have as a predominant liquids, but I also don’t have the SEC risks that a gas operator would in the same conjunction. That doesn’t say that I don’t have, you know, SEC to manage, or they don’t have fatigue to manage. But we can learn from each other where, hey, we’ve invented that wheel. There’s ways to manage those threats that have proven to be effective that we can all manage and use.
 
Rhett
And I think that that’s a good segue because I think that this portion that we’re gonna talk about today appears in the gas code. But geo hazards don’t care what’s inside of the pipeline. Like I would say it’s arguably maybe an external corrosion, maybe even beyond external corrosion, the most product independent threat out there. I would argue. So it doesn’t care what’s in the right of way. It doesn’t give you an electrical conduit for all it cares. They’re going to be equally affected by it. So I want to jump into it, Nick. Thanks. I think that was a good segue into it. Appreciate your observations there. I want to jump into, again, for our audience, we’re going to be in section 192 .613 that the of the updated rule that again is not technically a part of regulation yet but has been released and so I’m I’m gonna
 
Chris
what’s the title
 
Rhet
it is called continuing surveillance which is interesting so it fits between the current edition of you go look at 613 right now it’s like razor thin basically says that operators have to do some things and I think we just lost our camera.  So what we’re going to do is we are actually going to take a break. We’re going to hear a bit from ADV marketing while we figure out our camera issues. We’ll be right back.  We’re doing this producing – this podcast immediately got better. We are doing this live.
 
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Kara
Hi I am Kara Turner, I am the managing director and co -founder of ADV marketing. We get the honor of working with Rhett and Christopher to produce this crazy podcast and also work with them on any other initiatives that they have when it comes to marketing and if you know them or listening to this podcast you know that it gets pretty crazy around here so we have a lot of fun with them. ADV marketing is a full -service business to business marketing agency. We specialize in service companies and technology companies. So, if you are enjoying listening to this podcast and the fun that they’re having, reach out to us and see how we can make your marketing fun.
 
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Rhett
Hi, welcome back to Pipeline Things. We have a camera back. So, a little technical difficulties. Thank you for those of you in the audience who are working through us. We, yeah, it was a wild moment there. We decided I’ll call an audible, throw a pass and take a break. So we’re back, where we left off as I was just about to get into 192 .613. I thought we did a, Nick did a great job of helping us intro that as we get into it now. So I’m just going to give you my observations. So I read through it. I kind of already gave you a bit of prep on where I want to go.
When I read 613, I have a few immediate reactions that come to it, right? And I’m trying to take it on from a perspective of maybe perspective of maybe somebody who has little to no geohazards background. So I think you’re going to have a lot of gas operators who fall under this new regulation, and they have not done one thing related to geohazards, or maybe they’ve gabbled in at once, but very little experience. And so when I start in 192 .613C, I’m going to read portions and then ask my question. It says following an extreme weather event or natural disaster that has the likelihood of damage to pipeline facilities by the scouring or movement of the soil surrounding the pipeline or movement of the pipeline. So basically you have an extreme weather event that happens to the pipeline with a likelihood of damage.
And then it gives you several types of events. It says such as a named tropical storm or hurricane. You all don’t have those, but we have them. A flood that exceeds the river, a shore line or creek high water banks in the area of the pipeline a landslide in the area of the pipeline or an earthquake an operator must inspect allpotentially affected on shore transmission pipeline facilities. So my first reaction to that Nick was it said the likelihood of damage to the pipeline. So an event happens that has likelihood of damage to the pipeline.
 
Chris
I don’t like how you pointed him out of all of that. What was your reaction, Nick?
 
Nick
I mean, he was animated.
 
Rhett
Are you meaning? Yeah, no, just what’s your reaction? Nick, I gotta discern which host you want to follow.
 
Chris
Yeah, what’s your reaction? Out of all of that, that’s new. What’s your reaction, bro?
 
Nick
I like the challenge and I feel like I can think on my feet quick enough to take care of your counterpart there. So I’m good with it. Yeah. But I like him better.
 
Rhett
I don’t know which one he’s referring to, so now I’m confused.
 
Nick
Not you. Not you.
 
Rhett
So, but no, seriously, so for me, that’s vague language, right? How does an operator know if they had the likelihood of damage? A hurricane came through. How do I know if I had the likelihood of damage? A high riverbank happened. How do I know if I have the likelihood of damage?
 
Nick
It’s very open -ended. It’s very ambiguous. And I think that that’s really the starting point for an operator. You know, you said, Hey, where do you start? Okay, you got to have a baseline. You have to know and establish your thresholds. FIMSA didn’t establish what the thresholds are. They just said, Hey, likelihood ofdamage. They gave some examples. You know, there are some examples in there that you can utilize to help put framework around. One of them is, hey, a flood that exceeds the banks. So, you know, you can start with some of the easier, and I say easier, I would say, you know, more easily managed because you can say, okay, what flood event is gonna exceed the banks? and you could either work with a geotechnical consultant or a geofluvial morphologist that says, okay, during a flood event of 5, 10, 40, 50 years, it will exceed the flood event. And so then you can say, okay, well, now I know what that means. How do I track that? Well, okay, there’s,you know, the NOAA gauges, you can track and track, hey, what’s the river at? And so there are ways that you can set up data alerts to say, hey, if there’s a rain event, you’ve identified your highest risk areas, which are your waterway crossings. And you can say, well, under these types of rain events, these flow events, that would be where you exceed the banks. And so, you can establish alerts through those programs that you can then say,well, I received the alert, it’s all automated. And now I can use that informationto go and do my 72 hour check, which you haven’t really talked about the 72 hour check, but you’re going to do that.
 
Rhett
You’re jumping ahead of me, Nick.
 
Nick
But yeah so that’s one example. So I gave you kind of the three primary areas you know that I would start with waterways being one and I think that waterways are the ones with thmost publicly available data to start establishing your baselines and your action levels.
 
Rhett
It’s interesting that you put it that way because what you’re telling me if you describe the program that’s not reactionary, that’s a lot of upfront information that’s potentially watching flood gauges that’s setting up monitoring programs, that’s being aware when a flood crosses a river bank. I’d say that that’s not, A, that’s not a little step potentially, if you’ve got a decent number of pipeline systems, you cross a decent number of waterways. So that’s number one, what I’m hoping people hear is that there’s a data collection and a threat awareness campaign that is an integral part to starting like this isn’t something you could be like Hey, we had a hurricane yesterday. Oh my god. Let’s go find out if it affected our pipelines, you know.
 
Chris
I mean, so there’s two philosophies here, right? Which I think gets really interesting as a as a operator who doesn’t have a program in place, right? Like they’re kind of trapped in this chasm of I Can have a time independent event that I don’t know what’s gonna happen that I’m gonna have to respond to, right? So if you know you have snow vid in Houston again, you probably need to do some kind of O and M activity. But on the other end, these are integrity threats that you’re expected to have a plan for. And so you know me, I’m the procedures guy, you look at A to me, B thorns at 8s. And if you go to the back and appendix A’s or the A section, they have sample framework integrity plans for different threats. And one of those is geo hazards, and all of them carry the same little loop, right? And the first one starts with what I think you just said, gather data and integrate it. And after you do that, you then either do some forward of threat identification or risk assessment, and then you go into some kind of inspection and integrity assessment. So really what you honed in on kind of inherently, which is great as a mature, seasoned supervisor of integrity, is You’ve got to start with data gathering so you can start integrating it, right?
 
Nick
I think that you have to start with data gathering, but with that you also need to document what you’re doing. So the biggest thing that as an operator you need to do is have a program and you need to have a program on paper that says, Hey, this is how I’m managing, you know, 192 .613, you know, because, you know,if FIMSA comes and asks you, hey, how are you managing that? And you say, well, you know, we wait for a tropical storm and, you know, if it happens, then we fly to the right away and we do X, Y, Z. Hey, okay, you have a program, but is it written? Is it documented? And Then do you follow that? I think that’s the first step.
 
Chris
Is it fair to say that’s the difference between your O &M manual and your plan for addressing a specific section of code or an integrity threat?
 
Nick
I think that’s fair. Yeah. I think that’s a fair comment. And I think with that too is, you know, once you have it on paper and then as PHMSA performs their audits andyou go through the process of your own internal audits and your own internal checks and adjusts, you can say, well, hey, this is what we do. And then you can look at other operators or other failures that happen in the industry and say, okay, where did my procedure address this type of failure? Oh, it’s right here, Okay. So, you know, the failure was attributed to a geohazard after a big event. 192 .613 was referenced as, you know, hey, a violation where the operator maybe didn’t meet the requirements of it. Okay. Do we have something in our standards that addresses 613? Yes. Okay. That’s the first step. Second step is, are our procedures adequate, you know, would we have stopped that failure from happening with our procedures? If the answer is no, then you need to revise your procedures potentially and improve that aspect of your program.
 
Rhett
Yeah, potentially. I would say that there’s some things that can happen where you may not be able to prevent, you know, an episodic event and a previously unknown location, you know, an episodic event. What’s that?
 
Nick
That you said at the end there, a very important unexpected or, you know, unforeseen location unknown location that. So, so that’s a great, a great comment where, you know, where do you start, you know, I gave you an example of where to start from a waterway program perspective. But, you know, what’s more challenging is a geohazard, you know, a landslide type event, where am I going to have a landslide?
 
Rhett
Yeah, that’s not public mix against they mentioned very public things like tropical storms. That’s easy pipeline a little right away as a landslideevent. How do you know that you had the likelihood of affecting the pipeline? That’s where I get kind of curious.
 
Chris
The program maturity, that’s where you begin to separate the program’s maturity, right? One was publicly available information That is low cost and you can activate and then others where you really need to allocate resources and invest Right like you either have to run lidar or you have to run some kind of ili
 
Nick
Yes, and and that’s exactly right. So when you think about it and you say, okay, you know landslips Where do you have kind of the traditional Mountainous type terrain hilly terrain, you know and you can kind of check that box. And as you go through your program and you continue to mature it and you build it out, you extend it and you say, okay, where can I get and pay for some of these more additional services? LIDAR is a fantastic resource that says, hey, where do you have a right -of -way where you have a potential for having a landslip? And just ’cause you have a landslip doesn’t mean you’re impacting your pipeline You know, it’s a series of data gathering to your point earlier of data integration. You can’t just collect a lidar data set and call it a day. You say, okay, I collect the lidar data set. And then maybe you collect an IMU data set that turns into a bending strain. Maybe you then do a site assessment, you know, and there’s all these little things and you say, is this location stable? Is it unstable? Does it have the potential to be unstable and now you’ve kind of built this out where you’ve identified your high -risk locations across all of your right -of -way and that’s what the ultimate goal is as an operator is hey identify your locations of risk you know where are you susceptible to these threats how do you become comfortable with that level of susceptibility and you build that out and you constantly have to build that out. There’s LIDAR, there’s INSAR, that’s an emerging technology, there’s bending strain, and it’s really just how detailed do you want to get, how mature do you want to get with your program? And then you say, “Okay, what is an extreme weather event that could lead to a more pronounced or an instability look like So, okay, frequent rain events, there’s precipitation alarms that you can use and there’s different weather apps and then there’s local resources that you can try to leverage. All of that to say, hey, these are things that you can document as ways to manage and prove, hey, you’re doing your effort and what you should to meet, not only the requirements of code, but to manage the integrity of the asset. Because a lot of times—
 
—
Rhett
I was gonna say, one of the things you said that I really like, Nick, is you’re, and I don’t know how much the audience is catching it, because I think we have people that are on various stages, right, is you mentioned several approaches, which actually gets into the second, third point of the code, right? Like you mentioned using LIDAR, INSAR, some of what I’m going to call assessing the surface conditions. And there’s technologies that can do that. Those give you one level of understanding of the threat on the pipeline. Then there’s bending strain and IMU, which actually tells you what’s going on in the pipeline. And I think a lot of operators will grab one or they’ll grab the other. And I’ve seen you guys do a really good job of starting to marry the two of them, right? Because when you marry the two, you have a lot of surface -based things that don’t impact the pipeline, that you can actually, they’re good from meeting the purposes of this code and being aware. But what operators find is if you take a purely surface -based approach, I’m gonna waste a lot of resources addressing things that aren’t impacting my pipeline. The same time, if you take only a bending strain approach, you’re often missing the information to tell you whether or not that threat is either really active or construction -related. The two of those together do afantastic job of helping you meet the requirements of this code. Where do I have threats? What are thresholds that I can use to know whether I need to respond to them then come from the type of information you’re talking about bringing on. So I guess what I want to do is just pause for a moment. I’m gonna have to dive into it but I want the audience to hear that. That as you start to develop a program there’s surface -based assessments and there’s pipeline -based assessments and the two of them it’s not one or the other. They’re like two different legs that you need in order for the chair to work properly.
 
Chris
Yeah. And I guess one way I’m rendering it is it’s, it’s this whole idea of again, you can look at be thrown 8S the appendix and see the typical framework, right? But if you break it down and you can, you can really like mirror all of your integrity for us through the same practices, right? But if we were to use it a little bit differently, I kind of one of the ways I feel like we could simplify it is it’s define and defend, right? I think Brian, I mean, is it a good job of saying that on the last episode, right? It’s like, Hey, you have to define what you’re going to do. And then you have to be able to defend it and defend it doesn’t necessarily mean cup half full, right? Or empty. It’s more, we need, like you’re saying that you have to look at what’s happening and defend why is my program good enough, right? Or how do I need to improve it? That’s the first part. So that’s the programmatic part of it, right? Define what you’re going to do and be able to defend it. And and that allows you to then move into the other stages, which is closer to like one of the requirements we haven’t talked about yet is like the timing of how you need to respond and when, right? So that begins to give you that basis of what activities am I gonna then do to ensure the integrity of my pie, right?
 
Rhett
Let’s jump into that, ’cause that’s a great segue, Chris. So parts, the next two questions I had, I’m just gonna lump ’em together.
 
Nick
Solid segue.
 
Rhett
Solid solid seven.
 
Chris
Send it.
 
Rhett
He’s a solid six.
 
Nick
Um, so good lighting
 
Chris
Chin up, right?
 
Rhett
I’m still not sure which one of us he likes more. I think it’s actually you I’m He’s shaking my confidence to the core. I’m gonna have to go back and listen to this episode Yeah, I don’t know what he’s talking about. Um So the the next two points in 613, Nick. Number one is it says that an operator must assess the site. So after this happens, you have to assess the site and determine an appropriate method for performing an initial inspection. And what’s interesting is that the code’s silent after that. It doesn’t even give you such as such as it doesn’t say, hey, perform an appropriate inspection, which may consist of the following. It just says appropriate inspection, which I thought was interesting. There’s a lot of other places just like the previous section, Where it gives you some non exhaustive list of things and here it doesn’t and then in part 2 It says you have to commence the inspection and I think the word commences both important and fair But it says you have to commence the inspection within 72 hours unless you determine it’s not safe to do so at the site I want to hear your reaction set number one What’s your reaction to having 72 hours to respond and what types of things are you doing within 72 hours.
 
Nick
Yeah, it’s it’s challenging.
 
Rhett
Um, I know if you call me and you need me out there within 24 hours, which that happens a lot. That’s not fun. You’re gonna do it. I have, but I’m telling you that’s because it’s Nick. I mean, look, if Nick called me, he told me he needed me out there in Christmas Eve.
 
Chris
 You didn’t go over there. He come over here and I know what that looks like.
 
Nick
I’d come grab you.
 
Rhett
The reality is that You have to have a pretty established relationship or the internal resources. I mean, I got lots of things going on. I’m sorry, I interrupted you. Go for it.
 
Nick
No, I think the big thing is, I look at the 72 hour mark as the initial eyes on the site. That’s not the final, you know, that’s just, hey, you need to get out there and assess the situation. and determine from that assessment what your next
steps are.
 
Rhett
So let me interupt there, Nick. ‘Cause I’m gonna ask you a question on that. I wanna challenge a bit, but I wanna ask, do you have the correct people internally to have the expertise to assess a given situation?
 
Chris
A way to say that is, what does that look like? Not just for you and your situation, but like begin to help us understand eyes on sight. So do your corrosion techs know what they’re looking for?—
 
Rhett
Is that someone calling saying Hey, John, I need you to go take a look at the pipeline. Let me know if it’s okay. Click
 
Nick
Yeah, I think that the first thing is and I’ll speak to waterways, you know, because that’s I think The most automated that you know, I’m familiar with so let’s say you have An alert come in and say okay the alert came in where the flooding exceeded the banks, okay? So at that point, you know, the hope would be that you understand what that means, you know, you understand what your depth of cover is in the channel, you’ve run a scour model to say, you know, hey, you know, this is the scour that’s predicted in various flood events. And so let’s say you’re having a 50 year flood event, and your 50 year flood event, you understand, hey, from the models, how close am I to having exposure, a exposure, a span. What’s that span length? Is it of a concern that vortex -induced vibration could be an issue? You’re not going to be able to get to that within 72 hours, but you can send folks on site and, “Hey, what should we be looking for? Is there debris in the channel at the crossing?” Because if you The debris buildup, that can increase the scour at a given location. If you have debris buildup on the pipeline, depending on what that looks like, that’s additional load that you have on the pipeline. What do your banks look like? Can you look at the banks and if you can, is there sloughing? Is there cracking? Are there signs of instability in the banks? And so, Those are things that you can do visually to then say, oh, we need to do a more detailed inspection assessment. Or in some events, you may say, hey, look, we need to shut down. We don’t have a good way of looking at this. There’s enough going on here that we need to shut down. And it’s really hardto frame up what that looks like. You can’t really put that on paper. That’s where you have to have a relationship with your field operations. They’re your eyes and ears. They need to get you the information back to the SMEs that can make that determination. Okay.
 
Chris
And that’s the gray space, Nick, right?
 
Nick
Yep, that’s the gray space.
 
Chris
Because that’s outside of your, your define and defend. Because you don’t, it’s time independent, right? You don’t know what you’re going to find.
 
Nick
Well, I’ve defined that my response within 72 hours is to do a visual assessment of the location, or 72 hours within it’s safe. And with that information, then I can determine, hey, what’s next? – You can even determine a response like, hey, do I need to shut down? Do I schedule an assessment, et cetera?
 
Rhett
So what Nick is doing is basically saying that his appropriate method for performing an initial inspection is Is to do what he just said exactly visual. I don’t want it. Yeah, and what I’m what I’m bringing up is that I think that but again See Nick says it like it’s so easy And I think that’s where I don’t want operators to miss that Nick because you mentioned a whole lot You mentioned being aware of the threat looking for you actually said you’re telling them what to look for yeah That’s not hey. We had a hurricane go check the pipeline crossing in the nature’s reverence. Make sure it’s okay that’s — it’s that’s totally different but
 
Chris
hey it looks okay to me
 
Rhett
yeah no from people starting from zero
 
Chris
and I know exactly what Nick would say afterward, you’re an idiot
 
Rhett
Alex talked a lot about this if you’re not familiar with the threat you don’t know where to start that’s what a lot of people might might do and so there’s a lot of information that went into your just go put eyes on it
 
Chris
But I think what we’re sensing here right is it’s that’s the confidence and the the efficacy of having a mature program right and I think that’s kind of why you know what we’re doing here is important is so that the users are the here the people that listen to the podcast is like for some of you this is new and and it’s important for you guys to understand that there’s people that you can reach out to and get help from
 
Rhett
So this is great We have another first, I don’t know what the viewers are seeing, but I’m curious if they’re seeing what I see, which is in reverse change or Charge battery in reverse. I think this is the Technologies way through this producer of telling us that we are we are we are done with this episode — No, I’m gonna switch to the FaceTime HD camera here. Let’s see what happens Oh, no, it’s it’s not gonna work
 
All right, Nick, we actually got through most of what I wanted to get through today.
 
Chris
Give him a chance to wrap up.
 
Rhett
I think the big, yeah, I’d give Nick a final word. The big thing I’m hearing about is there’s a lot of data integration that goes into having a mature program. It’s not as simple as saying, hey, I don’t have that threat. And operators, if they’re gonna have a hope of meeting the 72 hours, like you make it sound so easy to do, they’ve gotta have done some homework before and so
 
Nick
I think you know to try to keep it as simple as possible you know we talked about hey here are things that you can look at I think at the end of the day you know to simplify your response criteria is how what are the failure modes you know how can you have a failure in your  a pipeline at a given location based on a given event. And I give a waterway as an example, because yeah, there could be one offs, but in general, you can say, well, it’s going to be scour, it’s going to be maximum allowable span length, too much loading on the pipe, it, you know, vortex induced vibration, bank instability, et cetera. How is that going to fail. And you can think through how are those going to fail? And that’s how you can frame up. How are you going to do your assessment? Because your assessment is going to be addressing, you know, those failure modes. So I think that that’s an important way to try to simplify your approach. And I think the other important thing is, is, you know, there’s two aspects to anything written in code. There’s the literal interpretation of what code and the requirements are. You know, in this case, hey, go do this 72 hour. It doesn’t say what that inspection is. You can define that and then defend it to your point earlier. But that’s the one side. That’s the regulatory side. But the integrity side is the efficacy of that inspection of that assessment and You can’t just stop That visual you do the visual and then you can build out and say okay What else do I need to do based on that? Maybe it’s nothing but that’s where you have to integrate all your data and look at your different failure modes as part of that final assessment
 
Chris
Yeah, that that that was great And I think that’s a good spot for us to leave that with our that with our listeners and our users here. We would just say, again, Nick, this is awesome. Thanks for sharing y ‘all’s experience and just that confidence in where operators can get to as they start building their program out. You know, one step at a time, eat the elephant, one bite at a time. And man, this is great. I think we need to do it again.
 
Rhett
Yeah, I definitely think, Nick, we need to have you on again if you’re willing.
 
Nick
Absolutely. I appreciate it.
 
Rhett
Well, hey.
 
Nick
I appreciate the dialogue.
 
Rhett
To our audience, we’re gonna keep bringing on guests. We wanna say thanks for joining us, Nick. Thank you so much for being with us.
 
Nick
Next time we do it, we should just do it this way. It’s just me on camera. It might get better views, right?
 
Rhett
All right, can we silence Nick? Because I am your host, Rhett Dotson, my co -host, Christopher De Leon, and the only person you see on camera, Nick Roneger. Thank you guys so much and we’ll see you again in two weeks.