THE PRESIDENT’S LETTER

By Felix Schmidt, 3P Services, Germany

Another three special months are lying behind us. The PPSA members have always played an important role to the industry, but the current pandemic is highlighting this even more. Pigging products and services are a key to operating safe and efficient pipeline networks, which are essential infrastructure for the economy. Also driving technological developments and adapting to special circumstances is a strength of many PPSA members on which they could resort to adapt to the new demands in connection to COVID-19.

International travel and possibilities to meet clients, colleagues, partners or friends around the globe personally is still significantly affected, so we as an association need to adapt as well.

In this context, the yearly PPSA Seminar in November will be held online, to enable everyone to participate and to ensure the safety of all of us. The Virtual PPSA pigging seminar will be held on 17th and 18th November via GoToWebinar. It comprises of nine technical present-ations from pigging specialists, which further explore PPSA’s chosen topic for the year 'Challenges in day-to-day Pigging'. The programme and registration are available at https://ppsa-online.com/seminar. Members and non-members can join the seminar free of charge. All papers and presentations will also be added to the PPSA website after the seminar.

Our new printed Directory of Members is now available and has been mailed worldwide. If anyone would like to subscribe for a free of charge annual copy they can do so at https://ppsa-online.com/subscriptions. The Directory also includes a number of new members, which I would like to welcome, so please have a look at it.

At this stage, the annual PPSA events prior to the PPIM conference are still planned to be held in Houston. The annual golf tournament fundraiser is scheduled for Monday 22nd February 2021. Funds raised will help young pipeline professionals. We are looking for people to make up teams and to sponsor holes. If you are interested please contact Diane for more information at diane@ppsa-online.com.

The Annual General Meeting will be held in Downtown Houston on Tuesday 23rd February at 3pm. The PPSA will soon be accepting nominations to fill vacancies for two new Directors from the Eastern Hemisphere in 2021. Please let us know if you’d like to nominate someone.

I am looking forward to seeing many of you online in November and wish good health to everybody.