00:00:00 Speaker 1
This episode of The Energy Pipeline is sponsored by Caterpillar Oil and Gas. Since the 1930s, Caterpillar has manufactured engines for drilling, production, well service and gas compression. With more than 2100 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.

00:00:50 KC Yost
Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of The Energy Pipeline podcast. Today we're fortunate to have Matt Baker, who's the secretary of the Pipe Liners Club of Tulsa, and David Sowards, who is the president of the organization as our guest. So welcome to The Energy Pipeline podcast, Matt and David.

00:01:09 Matt Baker
Yes. Thank you, sir.

00:01:11 David Sowards
Great to be here, KC. Thanks for the time.

00:01:13 KC Yost
Oh, thanks very much for coming on. So before we get started talking about the association, would each of you take a few minutes to share your background with our listeners? Matt, do you want to go first?

00:01:24 Matt Baker
Sure thing. Yeah. Thank you again for having us on. Like we talked about, this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart, I know for David as well, and we could talk for days on this, so appreciate the time. Yeah. KC, as you mentioned, I'm the current secretary for the Pipe Liners Club of Tulsa. I'm a past board member, a current officer in our club. We do a rotation, so I'll be an officer here for the next few years. Just to answer your question, I've been in the pipeline industry for 33 years. So ever since my first summer job in 1991. Past 11 years, I've been with the Williams Companies here in Tulsa. I serve as the manager of project planning in our engineering and construction group. Prior to that, 13 years at Wilbur's Engineering here in Tulsa and another three years at Universal Pegasus in Salt Lake City. So it's been a great industry for me. I'm a third generation of my family to work in the pipeline industry, so it means a great deal to me to be in the Pipe Liners Club at Tulsa and to talk about pipeline. So I'll let David introduce himself.

00:02:26 David Sowards
Yeah, thanks Matt. David Sowards, I'm the current president of the Tulsa Pipe Liners Club and my term will end in August and I've just enjoyed being a board member and being an officer and just can't say enough about what the club means to me as well as my participation in leadership to a very fine organization. Like Matt, I started in the energy industry in college and in the summers I worked on a pipeline gang in Cushing, Oklahoma and in Duncan, Oklahoma. And the stories that I could tell are not appropriate for this audience, but maybe over a beer sometime, KC. But anyway, so I got my start in the pipeline industry and got my degree from OU or University of Oklahoma in chemical engineering and have been in the energy space for about 36 years, both with operating companies and with engineering companies or EPC companies. About five years ago I started my own engineering consulting company, it's called M1D1, and I'm currently the owner and manager along with my partner, we're 50/50 and so just glad to be here and thank you for the opportunity.

00:03:45 KC Yost
Oh, great to have you guys here. By the way, David, are you third generation pipe liner as well?

00:03:51 David Sowards
Second generation. So Matt got me beat on that one.

00:03:55 KC Yost
All right, Matt, someday you and I are going to have to sit down and compare family histories. My grandfather started in the pipeline business in 1919, so we'll have a good conversation sometime about that.

00:04:08 Matt Baker
Yeah, it's in our blood for sure.

00:04:10 KC Yost
Truly, truly. Enough about you guys and my little bit of history. Let's talk about the club. When was the organization formed?

00:04:21 Matt Baker
Yeah, I'll take that one. The Pipe Liner's Club here in Tulsa was founded in 1947. We're 77 years old this year, we celebrated our 75th anniversary. Proud to say that we were the first Pipe Liner Club. We're not the only Pipe Liner club, but we were the first. We had Houston beat by a couple of years. Although I will concede everything is bigger in Texas and no doubt that the club in Houston is a great club and we're proud to be associated with them. Some of the other clubs, for people that may be listening, there's a Pipe Liner's Club in Oklahoma City and we have some members that are members of our club and that club as well. There's an Appalachian Pipe Liner's Club, there's a Rocky Mountain Pipe Liner Club, and there may be others, but we're glad to have our brethren in the industry across the US and happy to collaborate with those other clubs.

00:05:15 KC Yost
There you go. There you go. And by the way, thanks very much for the dig on the Houston pipe liners. I appreciate that. You guys know I'm a past president and board member and scholarship chairman. I've worked my way through that organization quite a bit, so that's near and dear to my heart. But we also have Permian, San Antonio, Louisiana, you mentioned Appalachia. We have Atlanta as well are the other Pipe Liner's associations that I'm aware of. So quite a few loosely connected. I suspect you have people from the other organizations come in and attend your meetings as well.

00:05:58 Matt Baker
We sure do. Yeah. Every month we typically have folks come up from Houston that are members of both clubs and we try to coordinate our events. We're very similar, I believe particularly with Houston. I know we are with Oklahoma City in terms of our fundraising and we want each club to be successful in their fundraising events. So we try to coordinate our events so that we don't step on each other's toes.

00:06:21 KC Yost
Yeah, perfect, perfect. We work hard on that. You're absolutely right. So how many members does the club have?

00:06:28 David Sowards
KC, currently we have about 260 registered members. And I will say for our listeners, especially those of you in Oklahoma and the Tulsa area, we have room for more. And one of our biggest challenges is how to engage new graduates and also recently graduated folks, folks out of school for 2, 3, 4, 5 years and we're now taking the pulse of these folks and to see what they would like in a club. What was our club, Matt and I's club, as well as our generations before us? So we want to know how they would like to participate. So we'd like to align ourselves with their needs and interests, and it's really important to grab this generation of professionals in our club. We're not going to change 100% or pivot 180, but we would like to make those appropriate and comfortable changes to get this important group of professionals into our club and their participation.

00:07:36 KC Yost
Have you guys, or are you in the process of considering having a young pipeline professionals group like some of the other associations are doing?

00:07:45 David Sowards
Yeah, we do. And Matt, you want to speak a little bit more about that?

00:07:48 Matt Baker
Within our group, Tammie Jo Keizor, who's one of our members, has organized a Young Pipeline Professionals of Tulsa. And so it's kind of a subgroup really. Everybody in the club is welcome to participate in events, but we've been trying to coordinate happy hours or other events that are specifically geared towards recruiting young professionals, those of us who maybe have something less than 33 years of experience. But yeah, to David's point, we're very conscious and intentional about wanting to make sure that our club's healthy for the next 75 years.

00:08:29 KC Yost
Yes, yes. I remember when Houston formed their PYP group, I recognized that I was too old for that in 1985, so nice to know they had the group and are coordinating their efforts, but I'm too old for that. Okay. Anyway, back to the organization. Let's talk about the membership mix, please.

00:08:56 Matt Baker
Yeah, yeah, sure. Our club bylaws, if you will, we define members as industry members, but really anybody that's interested or are passionate or recognizes the value and importance of the pipeline industry, more than welcome to join. And we enjoy a pretty good cross-section. Specifically, we consider industry members to be folks that work with engineering firms, construction firms, and certainly owner-operator companies. We also have supplier members, members who are involved with the sale of equipment, materials, services. So it covers a really wide range and we enjoy a really good cross-section across all aspects of the industry. The current club board of directors is comprised of the four club officers, president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, but we also have directors that are appointed for two years and our board meets twice annually. We talk about the events that are coming up, we talk about the health and direction of the club, we talk about what the challenges and opportunities are for us. And the bylaws require a representative mix within the board of directors, so no more than four from the suppliers. And right now we enjoy a really good balance on our board. Four of the nine current directors are from operating companies, local operating companies, Williams, Explorer, Magellan, three represent engineering construction companies and two are from supplier companies. So that's really I guess the guidelines or the rules that we live by. Our club meetings, we typically have about 100 folks show up for those, great opportunities there for networking. We have a networking hour and then we have dinner and then we have speakers at our meetings, and then we have our fundraising events as well. And so those are really well attended and everybody that I work with is always looking forward to the opportunity to go out and shoot clays or have a round of golf and just be around other members of the industry. So really great participation by owner/operator companies, really great support and that's been vital to the balance and longevity of the club. And of course like all the clubs, we rely on our supplier partners and our member organizations, if you will, to sponsor our events. And they always come through for us. Year in, year out, we have a very reliable and core group of companies that see the value in the club, that enjoy the value of the club and do a great job of supporting, so we don't have to twist arms too hard to get support for our club, it's well recognized.

00:11:40 KC Yost
Excellent, excellent. Well that sounds like a great segue into talking about the purpose of the organization.

00:11:46 David Sowards
So KC, if you look at our charter or our website, the purpose of the club is advancement of the pipeline, engineering, maintenance and operating practices for the mutual benefit of the members and our industry. I like to break it down into four tenets and that's number one, grow our industry. Number two, grow our club. Number three, which has been near and dear to me, it's kind of like real estate, real estate, real estate for buying a home or property. I would say network, network, network. And I've made a lot of contacts in our club that we're currently doing business with, we're sharing opportunities. So it's just a fantastic organization for networking and I charge everybody to take advantage of that. And lastly, or number four is scholarship. So the fun part of our affiliation with the club is in the leadership is giving away some money to some deserving folks, students in July and seeing them use this money to progress their scholastic endeavors. And how we accomplish our mission that I mentioned, and the promoting of our industry, we have, like Matt alluded to or spoke of with monthly club meetings, we have speakers come and speak on relevant topics. We have scholarship fundraising events that promote networking like I spoke of. And then we have pure networking and outreach. When I say outreach, I mean outreach for new members. And these events are like, KC, I know you're going to laugh at this, but yes, we do have a hockey team here in Tulsa. And so we have a hockey night with the Tulsa Oilers, and then we have a baseball night with the Tulsa Drillers, and then we have a-

00:13:46 KC Yost
Where do you find the ice?

00:13:47 David Sowards
Yeah, right.

00:13:51 KC Yost
We are talking Tulsa, right?

00:13:53 David Sowards
Yeah, I think it's actually manufactured. And they do that at the, if my memory serves me correctly, and Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, at the BOK Center downtown?

00:14:05 Matt Baker
Yes. Yeah, BOK Center. We're proud of that event venue. But yeah, let's just say it requires a lot of energy input in order to create ice here reliably.

00:14:17 KC Yost
I wonder where they brought the Zamboni machine from.

00:14:23 David Sowards
And surprisingly, everybody wants, just like every place else, everybody wants to drive the Zamboni for some reason. So anyway, I haven't gotten my turn yet, but maybe someday. And then lastly, how we accomplish our mission, KC, is the affiliated pipeline college that Butch Webb runs. And Butch is just iconic in our industry. He started a company, BKW Incorporated, and he holds many, many patents and is just an icon in our industry and we're very fortunate to have him put on these relevant classes. And it may be smart pigging with TD Williamson, it may be manufacturing welding practices with Gas Tech. And he does them, I believe every month or maybe bi-monthly sometimes. And it's very similar to a lunch and learn. We get it hosted by a participating company, like I mentioned like TD Williamson and Gas Tech, and it's designed to teach the class on these relevant topics in our industry.

00:15:38 KC Yost
All right, just with that, do I get a PDH credit for that?

00:15:43 David Sowards
Absolutely.

00:15:46 Matt Baker
I'll jump in there on that one. Yeah, that's one of the things that a lot of our members, it is what drives their participation in the club is getting the PDHs. So not only our monthly meetings and for our monthly meetings, it's pretty automated. If you come to our meetings and you scan in and establish your attendance, then you can go and download a PDH certificate from attending one of our monthly meetings. But also like what David was mentioning, what we're calling our pipeline college, which is a series of lunch and learns in the evening time. Yeah, folks can get PDH credits for those as well. And so yeah, very intentional about making sure that the professional engineers in our organization are getting credit for participation.

00:16:34 KC Yost
Sweet. I like that. That's great. That's great. Let's change gears a little bit and talk about charitable work that the club is participating in.

00:16:46 Matt Baker
Yeah, first off, first and foremost is our annual scholarship fundraising, and we have several events that contribute to that. But the bottom line is that every year we raise over $200,000 in scholarship money and that money is dispersed to between 50 and 100 applicants each year. Those applicants are sponsored by members, so they may be somebody that lives within the household of one of our applicants, a child or grandchild, a stepchild. And so every year folks will attend our events, establish their participation in the club, and then if they have a student, a college age student, a freshman, a senior at an accredited university, and they meet some fairly minimal but important qualifying criteria, letters of recommendation and maintaining a certain number, earning a certain number of hours and other things like that, then they're eligible to receive a scholarship award from the club. And this has been a program that has been going on and on for decades now and really, really popular and it's our way of giving back to those members of the industry that contribute so much, not just to our own industry, but as we know our industry is contributing to energy security, affordable standards and high standards of living within this country. And so it's just really at the end of the day, it's a small token of support, but it means a lot to the students. As you know, the cost of a four-year plus college education only seems to be getting higher and higher as the years roll along. So the scholarship checks that are dispersed means a great deal and we get a lot of appreciation. At the end of the year, we'll have a scholarship awards banquet. Last year's was attended very, very well. And it's just a really fun time. It's a great time for the club to come back and show our appreciation to our members and to our students.

00:18:57 KC Yost
So just to interrupt you there for a second, if you don't mind, one comment and one question. One, you're talking about $1,000 per member is what you're raising. I think that's a remarkable number. And you're to be applauded for you guys putting all of this together and coming up with the scholarship money, I think that's fantastic. The question is, are the sponsors adjudicated just like the students are? I know some clubs will give extra points if someone is a chair or has volunteered there or has worked through the chairs in the hierarchy. Do you have such a scoring card for the sponsors?

00:19:45 Matt Baker
No. For our club, we try to be a little bit more, I guess even-handed in that regard. It's really if you meet the requirements, then your student is eligible. And then we have a scholarship review committee that receives all of the applicant applications, reviews the transcripts, reviews the letters of recommendation. Those are really the three pieces of it. And the scholarship committee will go through and based on either numbers of hours, grade point average, that sort of thing, they'll weight it a little bit, but it's really not weighted based on an individual's participation in the club, other than meeting the minimum number of attendance requirements. So we enjoy great support within the club. We get volunteers for our events, and so that's not really a big issue. One thing I will add though is that we do not discriminate based on what the degree of the applicant is, so depending on what degree the student is pursuing. As we all know, some folks that go through a STEM education wind up in the industry, some don't. Some folks that go through a business or other degree program will wind up in the industry. So we try to take that approach of, hey, this is going to be a blessing to the families that participate in our club. It's going to be a blessing to those students that apply. And so we apply that a little more even-handedly.

00:21:19 KC Yost
Sometime when we have a beer that we talked about earlier, I'll tell you about the time that I was chairman of our scholarship committee and I suggested that we only pass out scholarships to STEM students and the uprising, I think I had 2% support from the entire organization.

00:21:39 Matt Baker
Yeah, and it's something that we've wrestled with in the past as well. I think at the end of the day, we want to give back to our industry. We want to give back to our members and we want people regardless of where they might end up in life, we want them to know that they are supported by the pipeline industry in a myriad number of ways. So I guess you can consider it a form of outreach.

00:22:04 KC Yost
Yeah, I think that's fantastic. Fantastic. Anything else you guys got going on regarding scholarships or education?

00:22:15 David Sowards
Yeah, just real quick, KC before we jump onto the next thing. Like Matt said, we've got about 50 to 100 applicants each year. Last July, just about every applicant came to the July meeting that was receiving a check to receive his or her check. And the only exceptions were if somebody was on a mission trip or a school assignment or a work internship assignment. So it was great to have everybody come and hand deliver their check and get a picture afterwards. It just really drew a nice connection with them, the financial award and the Tulsa Pipe Liners Club. And one thing that I will mention that we had last year, one of our board members, Chris Hurst and his wife Jamie Hurst, asked about donating some money through the club for the OSU Institute of Technology in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. And one of their programs is a pipeline integrity technology. And although it's not a four-year program, we were looking at it and the president of OSU Institute of Technology is Bob Firth. And Bob's been in the energy industry here in Oklahoma for many, many, many years, has been an advocate and supporter of the club. So yeah, we said, we'll do it. So Chris and Jamie donated some money. Bob helped us find a boy and a girl candidate that were very deserving of a hand up, and it was very well received. And to the extent it was such a success that we're expanding that this year where we're going to have some donations from Chris and Jamie Hurst and some other folks, and then the club is going to match that dollar for dollar. So a great idea that was brought from one of our board members to the club and a great opportunity for some individuals and the club to support these folks in the non-four-year degree realm, so to speak.

00:24:25 KC Yost
Man, that's really incredible. I'm really quite impressed. What you guys are doing is really fantastic. Hats off to you guys. And I won't bring up the OSU thing to you, David. I heard you say OU earlier.

00:24:45 Matt Baker
David did that for my benefit, I'm a cowboy.

00:24:49 KC Yost
Oh, well there you go. There you go.

00:24:51 Matt Baker
We bring inaudible.

00:24:53 David Sowards
I married a graduate from OSU and she's a lovely lady. And my mom went to OSU and my business partner went to OSU and one of my great friends and personal friends and business friends, Matt Baker, went there too. So we rival when we're playing each other, but arm-in-arm when we're not.

00:25:18 KC Yost
Excellent.

00:25:18 Matt Baker
It just goes to show you, KC, what can bring us together. No matter what divisions exist in our world, the love of pipe lining and the energy industry in all seriousness has brought us all together and we're all better for it.

00:25:36 KC Yost
And David said it, you're giving people a hand up and I think that's wonderful. I like your mission. I like what you're doing. That's absolutely fantastic. So we've got 5, 10 minutes to go here. Let's go ahead and talk about your meetings. So you set up specific day of the month and location and time.

00:26:02 Matt Baker
Yeah, yeah. Just real quick, I'll give you the rundown here. The calendar year for the club begins in August and goes through May. We take a couple of months off during the summertime. During the calendar year, so basically from September through May, we have a monthly meeting. It's always on the third Monday of the month. We have our meetings at the Mayo Hotel in downtown Tulsa. Mayo Hotel is a beautiful art deco hotel. We love having it there and they're great hosts for us. So we meet there third Monday of every month. Social hour begins at 5:30 until 6:00, dinner from 6:00 to 7:00. So we'll usually have a dinner buffet. Mayo always does a great job with the outstanding dinner. And then we'll have from 7:00 to 8:00, we have our club business and our featured speaker and we try to get folks out by 8:00. We know it's sometimes can be a bit of a burden to work all day on a Monday and then go to a club meeting, but they're always well attended. And so we try to match that enthusiasm from members with having really good and relevant speakers. Like David mentioned, company leaders, our US representative, Kevin Hearn is a good friend of the club, so he'll come and talk. We try to have engineering topics. Some sample topics, last month we had a midstream energy outlook. We've had construction outlook presentations from presidents of construction companies. Carbon capture and sequestration is a hot topic, so we had a speaker on that a couple of months ago. Emissions reduction. Next month we're going to have a speaker on aerial drone technology, so always something relevant there. And then upcoming events during the year, we have our spring clay shoot that's coming up on March 22nd, Friday, March 22nd at the Tulsa Gun Club. If anybody's listening wants to participate, registration is always available on our club site. That's the way to go for club meetings or registering for any of our fundraising events. We also have our spring golf tournament coming up in April on Monday, April 22nd at the club at Indian Springs, which is where we have all of our golf tournaments here, spring and fall. And then, yeah, our monthly meetings, March 18th is our next one, and then April 15th, and then May 20th will be the final one of the year. And then we'll have a scholarship award meeting July 15th. So yeah, that's what's coming up on the deck. So I encourage anybody that's listening to visit tulsapipeliners.org and check out the upcoming calendar and sign up.

00:28:44 KC Yost
Great. Don't you guys have a fishing tournament? Seems to me I have a fishing shirt from one of your tournaments.

00:28:52 David Sowards
We do. It's not as big as the fish out in Houston. They have access to a little bit different water situation than we do, but we do have our Big Bass Classic. I believe this year is our 10th anniversary and it's the first Friday in October. And then we repeat our shoot and our golf for the fall. And one of the events that's near and dear to me is our Christmas Gala, and we'll make that announcement in terms of the date in Christmas in July, so we'll make that announcement and open it up for registration in July. A lot of great events there on our calendar. And for more information, you can go to the tulsapipeliners.org website and feel free to email either Matt or myself at our website, or I'm sorry, our email addresses for the club are on the website and we'd be glad to hear from anybody.

00:29:52 KC Yost
When's the hockey night? What if I want to drive up from Houston to go to hockey night? Do you go to hockey night?

00:29:59 David Sowards
We just had that.

00:30:01 Matt Baker
You just missed it. It was in February, so a couple of weeks. So the next one will be next February, and I will make sure to give you an express invitation.

00:30:14 KC Yost
Thank you. Thank you.

00:30:15 Matt Baker
I'll hold you to it.

00:30:15 KC Yost
Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. I appreciate that, appreciate that. So contact information again, guys?

00:30:22 Matt Baker
Info@tulsapipeliners.org. That's info@tulsapipeliners.org. Or you can visit our website, tulsapipeliners.org.

00:30:36 KC Yost
Excellent. Excellent. Well, this has been great. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks very much guys, for taking the time. Anything else you want to add before we sign off?

00:30:47 Matt Baker
Well, thank you for having us. Again David and I both feel very blessed to be in this industry. It's meant a great deal to us personally and to our respective family. So anybody that's out there that's long time pipe liner, so thank you, number one for your service. And two, if you haven't been to one of our meetings or the Houston Pipe Liners, join a local pipe liners club. You'll be amazed at the people you meet and you'll be enriched for it.

00:31:17 KC Yost
And I suspect that if they reached out to you guys and they were outside of Denver, you'd be able to get them in touch with the Rocky Mountain people and all of that kind of thing. By all means, we're all loosely connected. And like was mentioned, many of our members attend multiple meetings during the year so we're all knowing what's going on. So very good. Very good. So anyway, just to make sure we have this squared away. So if anyone like to learn more about the Tulsa pipe liners, you can again find them on the web at tulsapipeliners.org or info@tulsapipeliners.org. So thanks, Matt and David, I appreciate you taking the time to visit with us today.

00:32:05 David Sowards
Thank you, KC, our pleasures.

00:32:07 KC Yost
All right, thanks to all of you for tuning into this episode of The Energy Pipeline podcast sponsored by Caterpillar Oil and Gas. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for podcasts, like other association clubs, 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.

00:32:45 Speaker 2
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.