The PVF Roundtable’s first meeting of 2016 kicked off on February 16, 2016 in Houston, Texas. The featured speaker for the evening was editor of The Pipeline Gas and Journal, Jeff Share. Accompanied by his speech was a panel discussion titled “Where is PVF Industry’s Overall Sector headed in 2016?” Joe Pro moderated the question/answer session with Joe Costanzo (Wolseley), Steve Letko (Welbend), and Raphael Bojarczuk (Exxonmobil) taking the stage as speakers. 

Share gave a very thorough and insightful talk on the current state of affairs regarding the oil and natural gas industries. He started off by noting “the truth is that no matter what the opposition wants to believe, oil and natural gas will be essential fuels for the world for years to come,” quickly followed by notes in China’s slowdown, Iran’s re-entry into the market, social media infrastructure projects, and the Keystone pipeline. 

This was followed by a list of some of the major gas utility companies and what each has planned for the 2016 year. Most notably, PG&E is “validating the maximum allowable operating pressure of the entire 6,750-mile transmission pipeline system, of which they’ve replaced over 130 miles of transmission pipeline, automated 208 valves and converted over 3.8 million pipeline records to digital formats.” 

And the Nexus Pipeline saying, "they’re looking for FERC approval in the fourth quarter with construction beginning in early next year." These point were in addition to other projects Share mentioned such as Utopa Pipeline, Rover Pipeline, Mountain Valley Pipeline, and others. 

Share concluded his remarks with notes on how the global climate change issue is “the biggest threat to the oil and gas industry.