Are there any controllers on the board I'm looking to transition from the chemical industry in operations to midstream?
Not a controller specifically but interface with them all the time. Each pipeline does some kind of operator qualification, you'll do the training and testing for that after you get hired and learn about the pipeline's compressors, subsystems, MAOPs and tariff quality requirements. Your priorities are to physically flow the nominated volumes you get from the scheduling/capacity marketing/commercial operations department, coordinate with upstream and downstream pipelines to match volumes and avoid any operational issues, enforce flow volume curtailments on shippers and partner with schedulers on minimizing or making up existing and accumulated volume imbalances (flow v scheduled). Often times you and the Operations Communications Coordinator will be relaying communications between field facilities, scheduling/marketing and executive management if there's any kind of Force Majeure accident, incident or facility freeze-offs, or if a smart pig finds anomalies and declares unplanned maintenance. Your schedule will probably be similar to a modified DuPont, with 12-hour shifts that switch back-and-forth each week between morning and nighttime shifts. Do a search and find out all of the largest interstate pipelines, then track down their electronic bulletin boards (EBBs) and try to gauge their total flow throughput volume, the field (production) area and market (utilities) area, and just look through all of their notices (Non-Critical and Critical) to understand the types of actions you're accountable for. Understanding Today's Natural Gas Business by Bob Shively and John Ferrare will give you a good survey of the gas industry.
