Australian Pipelines and Gas Association (APGA) President Mark Dayman opened proceedings in Chief Executive Cheryl Cartwright’s place, with Ms Cartwright in Paris for the World Gas Conference.
Mr Dayman spoke with an optimistic insight into current industry conditions and how best to manage the downturn.
Leatrice Grundy of Qube Energy and Matt O’Connell of Nacap, whose companies sponsored the dinner, welcomed delegates to the event with updates from their respective current projects.
Mr O’Connell provided an exclusive update on Nacap’s construction work on the Victorian Northern Interconnector Expansion (VNIE) Project.
The 127 attendees were then treated to a speech that usually wouldn’t be associated with a pipeline industry event, with Instech Group Principal Engineer Paul Roberts talking about his experience in ocean yacht racing.
Taking the delegates through the various aspects of ocean racing that had to be considered, Mr Roberts drew some parallels between pipelines and ocean racing, particularly with organisation and aspects of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA).
Mr Roberts also showed a number of videos he took from the deck of the yacht while racing to Japan, with the view from the deck making a few of the delegates a bit queasy, despite being kilometres from the ocean!
The speech certainly warranted undivided attention, and there was no shortage of questions.
With WorleyParsons’ Bruce Andrews being the only other pipeliner in the room who had completed a Sydney to Hobart yacht race, many were keen to ask Mr Roberts more about the trial and tribulations of yacht racing.
The event was held at the Pullman Melbourne on the Park.
