00:00:03 Speaker 1
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.

00:00:27 KC Yost
Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of The Energy Pipeline podcast. Today, we're continuing our series on pipeline associations throughout the United States and are fortunate to have Larry Cumpton from The Pipeliners Club of Oklahoma City as our guest. Welcome to The Energy Pipeline podcast, Larry.

00:00:45 Larry Cumpton
Well, KC, thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity, the club does too, to have a presence on your show, so thank you.

00:00:56 KC Yost
Glad to have you. Glad you're here. Glad you're here. So before we start talking about the club, could you take a few minutes to share your background with our listeners?

00:01:05 Larry Cumpton
Sure. My history, my dad was a pipeliner. He worked for the old Cherokee Pipeline years ago in Southern Oklahoma, so I was raised around the pipeline business. It's kind the story of a guy spent half his life trying to get away from home and the other half getting back. So I came back to Oklahoma in 2000 and got back involved in the business. I currently work for Tenaris, which we're a manufacturer of down hole and line pipe products. And I run the supply chain division in Oklahoma, just outside of Oklahoma City, in Amber, Oklahoma. And just happy to be part of the pipeline business again and really happy to be on the show today.

00:01:59 KC Yost
Well, thanks very much. Thanks very much. And yeah, you have a long and storied career. If anyone wants to look at you up on LinkedIn, I was quite impressed and spending some time taking a look at that. So, good for you and welcome back home. I'm glad you're back in Oklahoma.

00:02:15 Larry Cumpton
Good to be here.

00:02:17 KC Yost
Yeah. So, let's talk about the club a little bit. When was The Pipeliners Club of Oklahoma City formed?

00:02:27 Larry Cumpton
You asked me, we talked about that briefly a little bit, just a little bit ago, and I believe we were formed in 2014. I think this is the 10th year of the club. Now, I could be off by year or so either way, but we've been around about 10 years now as a club.

00:02:47 KC Yost
Was it formed because everyone got tired of driving to Tulsa?

00:02:50 Larry Cumpton
Well, I did that quite a few times, KC.

00:02:58 KC Yost
No, I'm joking with you.

00:02:59 Larry Cumpton
I know you are. All the clubs have their attributes and the things that we like about them, and it was nice to have one close to home. And for years I stayed active in both, but now that I'm kind of in the position I am, I just work primarily on the Oklahoma City pipeliners.

00:03:17 KC Yost
I think that's fantastic. I have visited with the guys at Tulsa and they knew my affiliation with the Houston Pipeliners and we're quick to point out that the Tulsa Pipeliners Club is six years older than the Houston Pipeliners Club, so there you go.

00:03:38 Larry Cumpton
So they were the first to go have a few beers and play golf and form a club, huh? They were inaudible-

00:03:48 KC Yost
There you go. There you go.

00:03:49 KC Yost
They

00:03:49 KC Yost
said 1947 and we were formed in 1953, and you could very well be the youngest club that we've talked to. Well, Permian came after you guys, but good for you. 2014. So let's talk a little bit about your membership. How many members do you have and what's your membership mix?

00:04:12 Larry Cumpton
Well, we normally stay around 200 members. The most we had I think was 250 in the second year of the club. The pandemic has created a few issues there, probably not just for us, but for all the clubs. But the membership is, of course, we have some upstream and some midstream and a few downstream guys. And then of course, there's also contractors and suppliers that are involved in the club as well. We've got a good mix in the membership side of it. We're just getting ready to have our next golf tournament, which will be a quick add for that would be on May the 20th. We will have the club golf tournament at Lincoln Park in Oklahoma City where we have both courses and we're expecting to have a large group there. A lot of good fellowship, a lot of good food, so try and put that on anybody that can on their schedule.

00:05:15 KC Yost
Sure, I understand. Very good. We in Houston have, in our bylaws, that 50% of the membership has to be from either an operating company or an engineering firm. Do you have that kind of restriction in your bylaws?

00:05:30 Larry Cumpton
No, we really don't. I know that we have quite a few engineers that's involved in the company. And as far as the group that we're trying to add all the time and promoting, it's either the upstream or the midstream producers. We'd like to have more of those guys involved in what we're doing. So I think we always work for that. But yeah, I know we have quite a few engineers, for sure. I'm not an engineer. I'm just an old sales guy basically that got involved in the club early on. Matter of fact, before Tenaris, it was when it was still Garrett Trucking and Garrett Tubular Services. But no, it's a good mix, but it's not in our bylaws that it's got to be 50%.

00:06:21 KC Yost
So essentially, anyone that is in the Tulsa area can join the club. Or they don't have to be in the Tulsa, anyone can join the club and then just attend the meetings and come to the different events, so no restriction there.

00:06:36 Larry Cumpton
Absolutely, and we certainly promote even the youth. We've run into people at different trade shows, young students that are getting ready to come out of college, and we invite them and kind of work with them so they understand networking a little bit. Maybe a lot of them do already, but a little bit more on what can be accomplished by networking in an organization like The Pipeliners Club.

00:07:01 KC Yost
Sure. Gotcha, gotcha. Organization. What is the purpose of The Pipeliners Club of Oklahoma City? What is your mainstay? What are you guys driving to do?

00:07:17 Larry Cumpton
Well, if we looked at the way we do our presentations at the beginning of one of our meetings, we talked about that we're trying to mash the upstream, downstream, midstream groups all together, and form one group where everyone can go network and have fellowship with each other, and share ideas and projects and things that they may have coming up. But the real advantage of the club is if you're a member of the club and you've been active in the club, then you, your wife, your children, your grandchildren are all able to apply for scholarships, to go on to, for our club, even a trade school is potential. If you want to go and become a plumber, we'll give you scholarships, money to go that way. My granddaughter used a scholarship this semester. She's going to be a veterinarian, so we're not necessarily promoting that you have to come and use a scholarship back in towards the industry. It's just to help educate the next generation. That's what the club is trying to do, offer scholarships to the membership.

00:08:36 KC Yost
Okay. So, you've got networking, information exchange, let the upstream guys get to know the downstream guys and the midstream guys. And as an added bonus, there is an opportunity for scholarships. And you say the member, him or herself can actually apply for a scholarship. Did I understand that correctly?

00:09:02 Larry Cumpton
That's right. Matter of fact, we've had members that have finished their degrees through the club.

00:09:06 KC Yost
Is that right?

00:09:07 Larry Cumpton
And to think that your wife could go back to school and become a teacher or some other profession, whatever the profession may be, just through attending our meetings. And we do have guidelines for attendance so that you need to help us with our events, like the golf tournament coming up. We do two golf tournaments a year and we do two clay shoots a year, and then we have a Christmas party. We decided a few years back, Christmas parties sometimes can seem kind of boring, so we do the traditional things you do for Christmas, we bring in a casino and we gamble. We're inaudible Christmas. So we like to have a good time too, KC. It's not just about business, it's also about being able to entertain your guests out on the golf course or at a clay shoot or at a Christmas party. Or even in one of our dinners, we have some wonderful speakers that come in and talk to us at the dinners, and that's fantastic as well.

00:10:10 KC Yost
That's great. That's great. Let's talk about the scholarship just for a second here, Larry. So, tell us how many scholarships do you normally pass out a year? Do you know what the average is?

00:10:27 Larry Cumpton
Well, the peak, because the pandemic has slowed us down just a little bit, the peak that we did, I believe was 47. We offered 47 scholarships. This year, we're going to do 24. Last year, I think we did 19. The year before that was maybe a smaller amount, but then the year before that was, I believe, 47. So we've offered out a lot of money. The way the structure is set up is the applicants will send in their application in for scholarship. And we picked a great day for the deadline, same as the day you got to have your taxes in, the scholarships' applications have to inaudible April 15th, so it's easier to remember. But then freshmen are eligible for, I believe it's up to $1,250 scholarship on a freshman year, and that would be sent to the bursar's office of the university that they're going to attend to and then divided into two semesters. After that, the full scholarship amount can range up to $5,000. And same thing happens, you tell us what university you goes to, and we send out the funds with our letter explaining who you're and who we are. And so $5,000 will be used towards scholarships or $2,500 in each semester. And we also do offer some scholarships for graduate students as well.

00:12:04 KC Yost
Oh, very nice. Very nice. So you take care of freshmen, you take care of graduate students. And you said something about trade school as well, so that's an opportunity.

00:12:15 Larry Cumpton
We've helped people into different trades, which is fantastic. There's a ton of trades we need in building a line pipe project. And we've also had one that went through firefighting, became a firefighter. So yeah, it's all about, I tease on the golf course and say, "Just remember we're playing for the children," but the truth is we are playing for the next generation. We're out raising money and helping those guys get an education. Guys and girls, I should say.

00:12:51 KC Yost
Well, that's very commendable of you guys. I think that's fantastic. I assume that the sponsor, the member is adjudicated as much as the scholarship recipient? Or have you gone through the chairs in the organization? Are you a chairman of one of the committees? Have you volunteered, that type of thing?

00:13:12 Larry Cumpton
Absolutely, that's right. And if you'll just volunteer for the events, we'll find a place for you. We'll find the right committee that you'd like to be a part of and take care of the activities that would best fit you. But the student is required for certain things for the applicant, but the member that is sponsoring the student has a group of responsibilities themselves.

00:13:48 KC Yost
Good, good. It's good to make sure that the person doing the nominating has some skin in the game, so that's a good way to approach that. Is the club doing any kind of community service, Toys for Tots or anything like that?

00:14:07 Larry Cumpton
No, we have tabled that a few times, but we have not. Some of the reasoning is that we look at from a tax standpoint, we're a 501(c)(6), which has little different implications than maybe some of the other clubs do. I know some of them are 501(c)(3)s, but a 501(c)(6), you have to use your money in a certain fashion. I'll put it that way.

00:14:38 KC Yost
Right. Right. We spent a lot of money on attorneys here in Houston, and we actually have the 501(c)(3) and the 501(c)(6) together. Well, with separate boards and all of that. So the(c)(3) has fun, the(c)( 6) is the one that passes out all of the money.

00:15:01 Larry Cumpton
Yep. The (c)(6) says, "Hey, we're taking this money and we're going to provide it in scholarships in our group back to our members."

00:15:11 KC Yost
Yep, yep. Good, good. What about your meetings, locations? Times? Do you take the summer off? What do you guys do?

00:15:21 Larry Cumpton
Yeah, we do the summer off. It's kind of hard to get everybody together. And you struggle, I say struggle, you work all the time to come up with great speakers to come in and talk to the club. And so in the summertime, it's with smaller groups and only 50 or 60 people showing up at a dinner. That's not really fair to your speakers that you bring in, a lot of time from out of state, that are coming in to talk to them. So we take the summers off. We'll do eight dinners a year. And for the most part, we'll move them around a little bit, but for the most part, they're at the Quail Creek Country Club in Oklahoma City on north side of Oklahoma City. And we've thought about shuffling a few times, but you know what? We've found a place that has really good food, so that's kind of kept us right in place where we're at, our meals are fantastic. Shout out to Quail Creek on the great food that they serve us each time.

00:16:24 KC Yost
The worst thing that can happen to you is that you have a great speaker coming in and you end up eating rubber chicken. So, good on you for finding a great place to have the meals. Good for you.

00:16:38 Larry Cumpton
Yeah, the food needs to be good and the speakers need to be entertaining. Of course, we're in a political year, so we'll probably have a couple political speakers come in at some point in time. We brought in some TV celebrities here locally in Oklahoma, with Todd Lamb, former Lieutenant Governor, and oh, I'm not going think of Mike's last, Turpen, Mike Turpen. They do a TV show on Sundays, it's called Flashpoints, where one's a Democrat and one's a Republican, and they just talk about the events of the current day on TV and debate them. And so we even brought those guys in to do a Flashpoint episode for us for the club. It was great, great entertainment. And the governor has come in and spoken to us a few times on different things, corporation, commissioners, presidents of a lot of the oil and gas companies have come in, and we've had some fantastic speakers. We've been fortunate in that category.

00:17:36 KC Yost
Good, good. So, you say you have the dinners at the country club. Is it the first Monday of the month or when do you typically hold these eight meetings?

00:17:48 Larry Cumpton
Well, Tulsa does theirs on Monday, and we found out there's so many people that commute into the Tulsa area for theirs, that we do ours on Tuesday the next day. And that gives the folks that have come in from Houston and bought a plane ticket to come up here, an opportunity to hit two meetings in the same week. And so whenever Tulsa does theirs, we're doing it the next day is the way it works out.

00:18:22 KC Yost
So if you want to know when your next dinner meeting is, what you need to do is go to the Tulsa website and check out when there dinner is? Is that what you're saying?

00:18:33 Larry Cumpton
You don't quite have to do that. If you type in OKC Pipeliners on the internet, you'll find our website and you can join. It tells you the date and the time of all the dinners, all the events and everything that's coming up. But I thought it was funny, and our president, Pat Gavula, was the one that caught on that. He goes, "I go to Tulsa, not every month, but every couple three months I go to Tulsa to the meetings and the dinners and stuff," and he said, "And what's funny is, I look around the room and I need to see those guys at ours, so we just do it the next night. Works out good for everybody."

00:19:12 KC Yost
I think that's great. That's great. It's a pretty short drive from Tulsa down to OKC, isn't it?

00:19:19 Larry Cumpton
It's about 90 miles, but in Oklahoma with the turnpike systems nowadays, you get to drive 85 miles an hour on the way back, so it's about an hour and 10 minutes apart anymore. Growing up as a kid, it used to be a full day's journey to go from Oklahoma City to Tulsa, but that's not the case anymore, KC.

00:19:43 KC Yost
No, I understand. I understand. Let's talk about your events now. You had mentioned the golf tournament. Now, I apologize to you and to the listeners because this podcast is going to air after your May golf tournament, but let's talk about what's happening after this and what's your fall. And you mentioned that you had two golf tournaments and two sporting clay tournaments. Do you have general ideas? You do a golf tournament in the spring and in the fall, and same with the sporting clays?

00:20:20 Larry Cumpton
That's right. That's right. I've pulled up our website, and so we already talked about the spring golf tournament. The next event will be August the 13th, that will be the monthly meeting. Don't have the speaker listed on here currently, but we have a speaker for that. The next golf event is August the 19th. It's a smaller tournament. It's on a 18 hole course and it's at Rose Creek. It's at a private club in Oklahoma City, so it's a little tougher to be involved in that. The next event will be September the 17th, will be a club meeting, and we do have the speaker identified for that meeting. Actually, I know this guy. He's the president of Tenaris in the US. His name is Luca Zanotti, will be our speaker then. October the 11th, which is the Friday, will be our fall clay shoot. It's at Silverleaf up in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Very nice.

00:21:24 KC Yost
You typically have pretty good crowds for your sporting clays?

00:21:27 Larry Cumpton
Good crowds, and we give away a lot of guns. Kind of a side note, for the first four or the last four or five years, I've been involved in going and buying the guns. And so I had to register all those guns to myself, and then we had to pass on the ownership at the event after it was over with. I've been waiting for somebody at the federal government to wonder why I own 50 guns over the last few years, but so far nobody's questioned me and we've done a good job of taking care of that. The next meeting will be on October the 22nd, back at Quail Creek Country Club. I'm missing one event that we don't have in here. We also do an event with the OKIE811, the dig service. And we do an event where we put together, they have some single, I'm not much of a beer drinker, KC, but they make their own beer and they'll make a flavor just for the club. And so we celebrate our veterans on Veterans Day, and we have a special beer that we've had made for them that we do that as well at the same time.

00:22:57 KC Yost
Well, that is really cool. That is really cool. What do those festivities look like?

00:23:06 Larry Cumpton
Well, usually we're at a brewery, so we're right there, we're mixed it up. And it's pretty unique. We're trying to get more involved in the youth in the club, and that seems to be a good mechanism to get those young guys and girls to come out and have couple of free beers on them. And if they like it, then they can actually buy a six-pack of our beer and take it home with them when it's over.

00:23:38 KC Yost
Shoot, does the can say Pipeliners Club of Oklahoma City on it?

00:23:45 Larry Cumpton
No, we haven't gotten that good at it just yet, KC. The ones last time, since OKIE811 sponsors it, the cans were OKIE811.

00:23:58 KC Yost
Well, fair enough. Fair enough. 811 is extremely important and it's good that you guys are working together on that.

00:24:06 Larry Cumpton
Oh, Susan Bohl and the folks over at OKIE811 have been a great partner with us on all of the pipeliner events. We really appreciate it.

00:24:15 KC Yost
Well, that's true, and you probably know as well as I do, or better than I do, that a good 30% of all pipeline accidents and ruptures are caused by third parties. So this 811 is extremely important throughout the United States, throughout the world, but particularly here in the United States it's very important that we all promote the 811 and make the calls whenever you're doing any kind of work outside, any kind of digging at all.

00:24:49 Larry Cumpton
Well, you and I both have been around a couple of days, and in those years we've been around, there has been a lot of pipelines buried in the ground that are primary transportation for gas and oil from point A to point B. And I've been on some projects where we stood over the edge of a hole and looked where 12 different lines were crossing in different directions. And without these services like OKIE811, it would be nearly impossible to find all those lines anymore. They've been in the ground, some of them too long.

00:25:28 KC Yost
Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, so I took you off on the tangent there, but let's talk about your Christmas event. That sounds like something I might want to go to, up December time?

00:25:40 Larry Cumpton
We'll send you a personal invitation to get you down. We have it just north of the state capitol in Oklahoma City. We have a rooftop access to a place to go up where the guys can go have a drink or a beer and smoke a cigar or have a cigarette and then come back down inside the venue. We'll usually bring in some really good barbecue from Bedlam BBQ just across the street. And then we'll have a casino crowd that comes in and sets up tables. We'll have Texas Hold'em and blackjack and roulette and craps and all the events. And the club will buy a series, usually about 20 or 30 items, that at the end you'll cash in your chips and trade your chips for tickets. And then you put a ticket that's associated with the price, you put your ticket in that bucket that's associated with it, and then we draw them out and give away all the prizes. It's a lot of fun. We have a great time, a great time. There's about 70 people usually shows up, 70. We've had the largest crowd, we had about 120, but it's a really good time. I joke with it, doing the proper thing at Christmas is go gamble, but that's not... The proper thing to do is have fellowship with friends and family and so on at Christmastime, and that's what we're trying to do.

00:27:04 KC Yost
Sure. And I think that's a wonderful thing. It is. The industry is based off of relationships. And it's extremely important that clubs like yours do what you can to make sure that there are venues where individuals can do some networking and get to know other people and get to be known in the industry. Because at the end of the day, you've been around the block as many times as I have. It's a small world, small industry. And I bet if we spent a bit of time, we could probably come up with two dozen people that you and I know, even though I'm down here in Katy, Texas, and you're up in OKC. It's just the way the industry is. And the networking, the knowledge transfer, the encouragement for the young kids, I think is all really great. And then scholarships, of course, are just icing on the cake. I think that's fantastic, Larry. Good job.

00:28:12 Larry Cumpton
It is. It's very rewarding to know that we're helping with the next generation, I think. The next generation of college students, or it could be an engineer, it could be someone that ends up in a midstream or the upstream, or it doesn't make any difference. It could be a nurse, it could be a doctor, it could be a lawyer. It's important that we offer the opportunities for these folks to be a part of that.

00:28:41 KC Yost
And to get a degree without having a huge debt on your shoulders-

00:28:48 Larry Cumpton
Oh my goodness.

00:28:49 KC Yost
...from going to college.

00:28:50 Larry Cumpton
I got a good friend of mine, and of course he became a little bit of a professional student, it only took him seven years to get his degree. But when he went to work for me, and we worked together for, I don't know, six years or so. And during that time, he had been out of school probably 10 years already. And I remember we went, pulled up to his mailbox one day, KC, and he pulled out this envelope and he looked over at me and almost a little tear come to his eye and he goes, "This is my last payment on my student loan." And I thought, "That was 16 years ago," but that's how long it took him to pay off those student loans. So, it's good to have funds out there. All the guys have to do is come be a member of the club, stay active in the club, and we'll help them go to school.

00:29:37 KC Yost
I think that's fantastic. Good for you, Larry. Good for you. Great, great. Contact information? If anyone is listening, is going to be in the OKC area or during your meetings or wants to know more about it, how can people find out more about The Pipeliners Club of Oklahoma City?

00:29:58 Larry Cumpton
Oklahomacitypipelinerclub.com, and you can just type in OKC Pipeliners and it will come to the website that way as well. That's one of the primary ways. Wee have LinkedIn, we have page on LinkedIn. We have a young lady that does a great job of putting the events up for us on the calendar, keeping the calendar square, as well as the website and stuff, too. And she also keeps everything posted on LinkedIn as well. And I believe now we have a page on Facebook for Oklahoma City Pipeliners as well. So, those are the primary ways, and once you're a member, you can get access to the membership directory and you can go in and get the phone number of somebody if you need to call them, of a member and find out. But the primary way, I would say, is okcpipeliners. com is the quickest and easiest way. I'm on it right now and have been while we've been talking. It's the easy way to find out what the events are, the timeframe, and contact information.

00:31:09 KC Yost
Excellent, excellent, excellent. Okay. Well, I've run out of questions, sir. Is there anything you want to add? Anything that we may have skipped or missed?

00:31:20 Larry Cumpton
No, I can't really think of anything. I really appreciate you giving us this opportunity to be on the show, and I'm actually proud to be the guy from the club that got to be the one to get interviewed. So, if there's anything that we can do to support you guys anymore, KC, we would love to help. And anybody listening to this broadcast, I hope we see you at the next pipeliners dinner or pipeliners event in Oklahoma City.

00:31:56 KC Yost
Super deal. Okay. Well thanks, Larry. I really appreciate you taking the time to visit with us today. That was great conversation. I really enjoyed it.

00:32:04 Larry Cumpton
It did too. Thank you, KC.

00:32:07 KC Yost
Yeah. So if anyone wants to learn more about The Pipeliners Club of Oklahoma City, you can, again, as Larry said, find them on the web at okcpipeliners.com, that's okcpipeliners.com. So thanks to all of you for tuning into 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, that's 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.

00:33:02 Speaker 1
Come back next week for another episode of The Energy Pipeline, a production of the Oil and Gas Global Network. To learn more, go to oggn.com.