Ethanol Just One Item On PRCI’s Full Plate

Now in its 56th year, PRCI – Pipeline Research Council International – has led the way in the push for new technologies that have made the pipeline industry safer, more reliable and more efficient.

With energy issues playing an increasingly dominant role in our lives, PRCI is stepping up to meet that challenge in ways that might have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

PRCI’s 39 pipeline members include operating companies in the United States, Brazil, Finland, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia. There are 26 gas transmission members, 11 oil members and two transporting both. PRCI has 14 associate members that include steel manufacturers, equipment and tool makers, vendors, and service providers. Four of these are full associate members that can participate in all PRCI research activities. The remaining ten technical program associate members have access to research being conducted under one or more of PRCI’s technical committees.

The project selection process occurs between PRCI’s March and September board meetings and involves member companies from the board of directors to the technical committees. The annual research program is ultimately determined by members who “vote their dollars” at two electronic votes over the summer and culminate in a final vote at the September board meeting. (For more information visit http://ballot.prci.org).

Beyond those projects selected at its March meeting, any board member may place a project on the ballot. If supported by at least one more member and if it acquires the base amount of funding (usually 85% of estimated project cost), it will become an approved PRCI project. In addition to their subscription fees that they are committed to pay, members can contribute supplemental dollars for projects they feel are of particular importance to them.

While members provide most of PRCI’s funding - $7.2 million of the $11 million budget for 2008 – other stakeholders, particularly the U.S. DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, (PHMSA) helps to augment the budget. PHMSA has co-funded about $20 million worth of research in the five years of their collaboration. They are now collaborating on eight projects. One is a welding program for high-strength steels (X100>) that is expected to be completed in 2010. PRCI is spending 24% more for research in 2008 than in 2006.

PRCI engages research firms around the world such as Southwest Research Institute, Battelle, or in the case of ethanol, CC Technologies of Columbus, OH, which have either bid on the work or with whom PRCI has extended a prior working contract. Today, PRCI has one of the largest pipeline research asset bases in the world, containing more than 1,700 reports with access to the leading researchers and state-of-the-art equipment.

PRCI was established in 1952 as the Pipeline Research Committee of the American Gas Association. Today, the non-profit organization’s ten-member staff is led by George W. Tenley, Jr., in his 10th year as president, and Art Meyer, an Enbridge executive serving the first year of a two-year term as chairman. In an interview with P&GJ, Tenley and Meyer outlined PRCI’s challenges and goals and made it clear that their members offer more than just funding: unparalleled expertise.