I provide technical and administrative oversight of Gulf's Pipeline Engineering Group, with particular emphasis on horizontal directional drilling (HDD), buoyancy control and other civil aspects of pipeline design.

Conceptualized, designed and supported construction of a variety of oil, gas and slurry pipelines, while focusing on route selection, waterbody crossings, buoyancy control, erosion control, slope stability, foundations, construction support and field engineering. Work of note included:Relocating approximately 7 km of 14, 30 and 36-inch natural gas, process water and bitumen froth pipelines in Northern Alberta. Established design criteria, philosophy and installation methodology; optimized a common corridor with a 270kV power line and road; optimized tie-strategy and burial depth.A greenfield SAGD Oil concept study: provided routing analysis, material comparison and recommendations. Integrated and optimized infield pipeline routing and construction approaches with well pad and central processing plant facilities. A brownfield natural gas liquids pipeline system expansion: directed as-building, surveying, mapping, analysis, and design on 22 main line block valve sites, three (3) pumping stations and twelve (12) interconnections. Replacing ~48 miles of pre-1970 ERW pipe: investigated, analyzed, and designed 13 major HDD pipeline crossings and 12 mainline block valve sites (grading, fencing and foundations). A new oil sands mine, located ~100km from the nearest pipeline hub: performed conceptual route selection, AACE Class IV Capital Cost estimate and optimization for gas supply and product (dilbit/diluent) pipelines.An NPS 30 x 300-mile gas pipeline in Wyoming-Montana-North Dakota: completed detailed pipeline design and successfully integrated geophysical methods with the borehole program to enhance HDD data collection for four major pipeline/waterbody crossings. Construction was completed early 2011.

As a pipeline design specialist with a civil background, I provided technical support (pipeline and water crossing specifications, permit acquisition, detailed design, cost analysis, project execution, construction, and hydrostatic testing) for a wide range of projects, such as:An NPS 42 x 36 km water intake pipeline and two dilbit product delivery options for ExxonMobil’s newest oil sands mine.Corridor Resources’ McCally gas field development (first conventional gas in New Brunswick in almost a century): a gathering system, process plant and a 48.8 km long pipeline. I designed the pipeline and supported construction of the pipeline and gathering system, including H-testing.The Niglintgak Gas Field: Shell’s Mackenzie Delta gas plant, where I wrote several technical studies supporting permits and designed the 850m long Kumak Channel HDD pipeline crossing and 9 km of above-ground flow lines. One challenge was planning and executing a geotechnical/geophysical investigation strategy capable of delineating ice rich and ice lean permafrost.EnCana’s NPS 24 Ekwan Pipeline, near Ft. Nelson, BC. I employed geophysical/geotechnical methods to assess permafrost, river crossing stratigraphy and buoyancy control. Phasing the buoyancy control assessment-design-procurement-installation saved the Client $6.5M on a $50M project and brought about a technical paper presented at the 2004 ASME International Pipeline Conference. Senlac Phase C Pipeline System, PanCanadian (now EnCana), Senlac, SK, 2001: A Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) project, where I designed and constructed a 3km buried-unrestrained pipeline system for high-temperature steam and flow lines. Installed cost was ~30% less than conventional above ground piping, performed well past its 4-year design life and led to in a technical paper presented at the ASME 2002 International Pipeline Conference. The paper and its presentation were voted best of the conference by ASME’s organizing committee.