By Connie Pruden, association manager, GPAC
Social Events
Our 3rd Annual Winter Gala took place December 1 at the Calgary Petroleum Club with almost 100 attendees. It was a good mix of members, non-members ……
The 5th Annual Curling Funspiel took place March 3 at the Calgary Curling Club with almost 60 people on hand to learn the game, network, and walk away with a few prizes.
Our 5th Annual Flapjack Feast, was hosted jointly with PJVA this year. It took place at Flames Central on July 12, 2017. There were almost 200 attendees at this breakfast. Sponsors included: title – Marks Commercial, bull rider – SNC-Lavalin, bronc riders – Brenntag Canada, Spartan Controls, and steer wrestlers – PECO Facet. This event is always a great way to bring companies, clients, and customers together for industry networking.
The Annual Classic Golf Tournament in it’s 56th year, kicked off September 14 with almost 120 golfers. The tournament was moved to Redwood Meadows Golf & Country Club due to Earl Grey renovations.
The GPAC tournament is a favorite within the industry. We are already in the planning stages for the September 2018 event which will be back at Earl Grey. Be sure to register early and contact us if you are interested in hole sponsorship opportunities. Although you must be a GPAC member to register a team, it is not necessary for team guests to all be members of GPAC. Tournament format is four person Texas scramble, low net competition established by team handicaps.
Sponsorship opportunities are always available if your organization is looking for a great way to increase its profile in the gas processing community.
Programs – hosted annual Joint Conference with PJVA and, unfortunately, the November 2017 event was postponed to 2018.
Gas Processing 101 Series — This course is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the gas processing industry in general and in Canada specifically. It’s for those new to the industry, those wishing to enter the field, those who are interested in transitioning to a different segment of the industry, or who are just interested in learning about more about a particular topic. The course is always presented by a collection of industry experts who provide both a theoretical and practical basis for the subject they are presenting, as well as how it fits into the industry as a whole. Each subject presenter illustrates how and where each subject fit into the industry.
Lectures were held on Wednesday afternoons throughout the year, with start times varying depending on topic and location.
Sessions were attended in person or through a web broadcast. Each of the lectures was recorded and are later available online to GPAC members, along with the presentation material. The GPSA Data Book was used as reference for the course, which is available for order from the GPAC website: www.gpacanada.com/publications.
The following subject areas were covered during the year: gas processing overview/history, production/gas gathering, separation, compression and pumps, sweetening, dehydration, HC recovery/fractionation, sulphur recovery unit, acid gas injection, fired equipment, heat exchangers, cooling towers, LNG/downstream, utilities, refrigeration/relief systems/storage, operation/safety, economics/distribution.
Anyone interested in attending GPAC’s 2018 session, additional details and schedules are at gpacanada.com. Please note that these sessions are available only to GPAC members.
Academic Report — GPAC continues to provide annual scholarship and bursaries to worthy students studying a variety of technical and engineering aspects and supports the following academic institutions: University of Alberta, NAIT, University of Calgary, and SAIT.
Membership — GPAC membership continues to remain stable despite the economic downturn. The board of directors encourages you to ‘remain in the loop’ especially now to network and keep those contacts for future opportunities.
Northern Committee — The 16th Annual GPAC Northern Committee Golf Tourney was held at the Dunes Golf and Winter Club in Grande Prairie on June 20, 2017. The tournament continued to see a reduction in the number of teams entered due to the economic down-turn but we still managed to have a great day and raised over $1,300 for local Grande Prairie charities. The donation monies this year went to sponsoring a Grande Prairie minor hockey team. This will be our 4th year sponsoring a team, and has been greatly received by the local members. This year’s date is tentative for June 19, 2018.
Safety Awards — The new program brings us more in line with the information that our members are already collecting and with what the rest of industry is doing. The new program is based on the Total Recordable Incident Frequency (TRIF). We have also updated the awards categories to include: services/supply/shop fabrication, consultants/contractors, field construction, and producers/operations.
We recognize four companies in each category: two companies with the lowest TRIF below 500,000 employee working hours and two companies with the lowest TRIF above 500,000 employee working hours. By making these updates this will help us recognize excellence in health and safety.
We also added a President’s Award. This award will be given to a company that has developed and rolled out a new safety initiative/program in the calendar year that has had a positive impact with in its organization.
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