2023 Spring North American Picarro Community Conference
Picarro was very pleased to host its biannual Community Conference February 27th – March 1st, 2023 at the Marriott Coronado Island Resort and Spa in San Diego, CA. This event marked the third time that Picarro has convened its Community since its inception in 2022. The conference was attended by 20+ companies and 66 delegates.
The event opened on Monday evening with a reception at the hotel featuring appetizers and beverage service.
The plenary sessions kicked off Tuesday morning, with Picarro’s Director of Business Development and Community Director, Robby Vaughn, acting as MC, and were bookended by a rousing keynote from Picarro’s CEO Alex Balkanski and a well-received closing address from the General Manager of Gas and Water Networks for Jemena (Australia), Peter Harcus. Alex weaved themes around digital transformation, ESG metrics, and changing regulatory regimes to detail the path to net-zero for the natural gas distribution industry. He expresses how Picarro is much like a new language, with AMLD acting as this language’s vocabulary – he carries this analogy successfully to explain how important it is for companies to learn and use this language effectively, the language of net zero. Key to his message is the idea that measurement is the key to enabling the pathways to achieve substantial gains in emissions reductions, safety, and capital optimization. Peter focused primarily on the challenges faced in Australia, and how Jemena is adopting Picarro to meet its business and regulatory needs. He highlighted the differences between the regulatory regimes of Australia versus North America, and the path that utilities need to travel to be successful in Australia (hint: they are not so dissimilar to those that would benefit a utility most anywhere). The two addresses were very informative and entertaining for the audience.
The plenary sessions entailed a couple of informational sessions and five panels which aimed to provide the opportunity for customers and potential customers to learn more about Picarro’s solutions, as often as possible related by users of the technology. The first session was a Product roadmap session led by Picarro’s Senior Director of Product, Business Development, and Marketing, Julien Klein. He was joined on the stage by his Product Managers, Andrew Kidd and Jacob Cansler, who detailed the projects and new initiatives that they are each shepherding to market. Of particular import was the announcement of the upcoming P-Cubed Integration Platform (Operational Transfer Assistant [OTA]) and Picarro’s new emissions management and reporting platform – emissions360™. Panel One was an expert talk moderated by Dr. Renato Winkler, PhD, Picarro’s Senior Director of Business Development – EMEA, on Emissions Measurement and Reduction. On the expert panel were Dr. Thomas Fox, President of Highwood Emissions, François Rongere, Senior Director – Solution Architect for Climate and Safety at Picarro, and Dr. Sen MacMullin, PhD, Senior Director of Data Analytics at Picarro. This conversation focused on how emergent technology is playing a role in helping oil and gas companies understand their emissions and how they might pursue abating those emissions.
Panel Two was moderated by Dr. Sean MacMullin, PhD and was entitled “Nextgen, A Holistic Approach to Network Assessment. The panelist were Asif Aziz, Senior Investment Programme Manager for Cadent Gas Limited in the United Kingdom, and Jamie Herdocia, Director of Technical Field Operations for CenterPoint Energy. The panel focused on new methods and tools for assessing a natural gas network and how these technologies and workflows are being implemented today to achieve cutting-edge results at CenterPoint Energy and Cadent. Specifically discussed were Picarro’s Network Assessment Viewer (NAV) and Cadent’s AIM model. From network assessment the conference circled back to emissions with Panel Three – Emissions Management – From Measurement to Reduction, which was moderated by Stephen Ramos, Export Gas Engineer at PG&E. Panelists included François Rongere, Dave Moon, Director of Asset Investment for Cadent Gas, Stephen Holcomb, Team Leader for Environmental Permitting at NiSource, and Rachel Seabase, Manager of Leak Survey at Southern Company. This Panel dove even deeper into emissions management and how various global utilities are approaching emissions measurement, abatement, and reporting. It was very exciting to hear from this broad cross-section of the industry to gain insight into how they are building strategies to reduce their methane emissions. Day Two of the conference closed with a Q&A User Feedback Open Forum where Picarro split the plenary session into teams to answer a number of questions about the conference, the Product Roadmap, and the state of the industry. The team exercise was capped off with a response sharing to close the session.
Day Three’s plenary session opened with Peter Harcus’s Closing Address noted above and was followed by Panel Four - Operational and Technological Challenges of Gas Utilities in Latin America, which was moderated by Malvin Delgado, Picarro’s Director of Sales and Client Engagement – LATAM. Hugo Prieto, General Manager of Incasol, and Nestor Consuegra, Head of Operations and Maintenance for Gases de Occidente (GdO), sat as panelists. This panel provided a wonderful insight into the natural gas industry and regulatory regime of Latin America. Hugo and Nestor did a wonderful job expressing both the differences and similarities that Latin America’s gas industry shares with North America and the global market.
Following Panel Four, the group split into breakout sessions, which was a first for the Picarro Community Conference. Two sessions were offered, one on Customer Success Stories and a second that was a Net Zero Roundtable. The Customer Success Stories was moderated by Jason Sheehan, Picarro’s Director of Engineering and Operations, while the Net Zero Roundtable was moderated by Jacob Cansler, Picarro’s Product Manager for Emissions Solutions. The Net Zero Roundtable group was split into teams to work through a series of deep questions around emissions and abatement strategies and then presented at the end of the session on group outcomes – the groups were assisted by François Rongere, Dr. Renato Winkler, PhD, Marta Guerrero Merino, Principal Engineer at GTI Energy, and Dr Thomas Fox, PhD. In the Customer Success Stories session the audience heard from numerous operator partners and had a lively Q&A period following the sharing of each anecdote.
Finally, the conference ended with Panel Five, moderated by Eban Grasti, Southern Company’s Director of Operations Support, and entitled “Adopting and Scaling AMLD.” This panel was comprised of Britney Stroud, Senior Manager of Pipeline Integrity at Summit Utilities, Paul Sheridan, Leader of Mobile Leak Detection at NiSource, Jeffrey Goetzman, Manager of Tecas Technical Field Operations for CenterPoint Energy, and Jason Sheehan, of Picarro. This was the conference’s longest panel, afforded an hour and a half to discuss each utility’s path to adoption of Picarro and their scaling endeavors, whether current or planned. It was exciting to hear from mature implementations, like CenterPoint, as well as emerging operator-partners, Like Summit Energy. This panel seemed to capture the interest of the audience, as there was a lengthy Q&A session following the insightful questions Eban had prepared for the panelists.
Picarro would like to once again sincerely thank all of its operator-partners, prospective partners, and special guests who attend this successful event! Next year’s North American event is already being discussed and details will begin to be shared very soon. As always, the best source for the most current information is our Picarro Community website at https://community-gas.picarro.com. Video and presentations from this and all Picarro Community Conferences are available on the Community website for your review and enjoyment, particularly if you were unable to attend in person. Please register for the site, visit frequently, and engage with the forums and information.