THE PRESIDENT’S LETTER

By Odd Reidar Boye, IKM Testing, Norway

Godt nytt år og takk for det gamle, alle sammen!, meaning "Happy New Year and thanks for the old one, everyone!", directly translated from how we Norwegians wishes all welcome to and into a new year.

And a very good 2024 it surely has been for PPSA we think! It is now 2 months since many of us met up at the annual PPSA Seminar in Aberdeen on Operational Pigging. The 2024 gathering was one of the most attended seminars in PPSA's history – with a record-breaking amount of exhibitors that, with their range of displayed products and technology, strongly contributed to interesting and advanced discussions one would hear and observe during the intermissions of the conference presentations.

We are also proud of last year's "innovation" the day before the conference; the PPSA PEP talks. Young Pigging Emerging Professionals (PEPs) were given coaching sponsored by PPSA for presenting a free chosen technical topic from their work location or situation. Based on feedback from the participants, this initiative will surely be continued also for 2025 and we strongly encourage other up-and-coming pipeliners to participate!

As a wrap-up of the summary of the 2024 PPSA seminar, we cannot avoid mentioning that the Scottish Ceilidh dinner also set a new record of attendees, both at the tables AND on the dance floor! Intentions are also to continue this arrangement in 2025, making it 3 times in 3 consecutive years –thereby having become a tradition.

For those of you that unfortunately could not attend last year's seminar, a virtual summary can be seen at https://ppsa-online.com/video/seminar24_film.mp4

Earlier in the autumn PPSA were present at the IPCE in Calgary in September and sponsored 2-off YPP events in October; The YPPE Mini Conference Best Paper Awards in Amsterdam and the YPP Malaysia Conference in Borneo.

Looking onwards into 2025, there are a lot of exciting activities and events that await. First of all, we are excited to meet up again in connection with the PPIM conference and exhibition in Houston in week 5, where PPSA has the following venues:

Monday January 27th – The PPSA Golf Tournament, raising money for the Young Pipeline Professionals (YPP) projects and events. Registration is open and details can be found at: https://ppsa-online.com/golf

Tuesday January 28th at 3pm – The PPSA Annual General Meeting at the George R Brown, 3rd floor room 370F. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Following the PPIM conference the following days, the next major event for PPSA will be the 20th Pipeline Technology Conference (PTC) in Berlin in week 19. By then the undersigned will have resigned as President of PPSA, leaving the wheel to the always positive and encouraging Neil McKnight who surely will continue to lift and promote PPSA and the services of our members in an excellent way throughout the industry. I look back at an interesting, instructive but most of all very motivating year as PPSA President! Thanks and see you all soon!

Vice President (Neil McKnight) and the Author at PPSA Seminar 2024

PPSA Seminar in Aberdeen November 2024 - Sarah Early of The Safer Plug Company presenting Donald Ballantyne of Tracerco with the prize for correctly estimating the weight of one of the packers on the world’s first 6 inch autonomous isolation plug - 558 grammes