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CANADIAN INDUSTRY ONLINE - JUNE 2013
T
HERE I S MORE
to the pipeline
construction industry than what
you see on the news in Canada today.
In recent years, the pipeline industry
has seen significant attention as major
projects are reviewed and on many
occasions, halted.
There is one company in Grand
Prairie, Alberta, whose experience in
pipeline construction has been instru-
mental to the enhancement of the in-
dustry. Stratus Pipelines, led by Randy
Galbreath, has been setting a new stan-
dard for pipeline development in Can-
ada, and CIO had the opportunity to
speak with Galbreath about his plans
for Stratus, and the industry’s future.
Galbreath has been in construc-
tion for more than 30 years. Having
left the housing business in the early
80
s following the recession, Galbreath
moved into pipelines. He started at
the bottom and worked his way up, as
many do.
CIO:
How did Stratus Pipelines
begin, and why?
Randy Galbreath:
When I started
working in the pipeline business, I was
working for another company doing
everything from safety to pipefitting.
When the owner of that company de-
cided to retire, I was already unofficial-
ly filling the role of general manager—
and I loved the mobility of the job.
In pipeline construction, you rarely
go back to the same work site, and I
pretty much roamed the northern half
of Alberta. This moving around was
always appealing to me. The flexibility
of this type of work is not necessarily
something you target when you get
into construction, but it helps you to
gain a completely new skill set.
Stratus Pipelines started in 2003, af-
ter I worked for a public company. In
a large company, you don’t have the
same control or influence over your
job or the way things are done. When
people start businesses, it’s usually
because of two things: they believe
they can do a business better than
their employer, and they want to make
money. And it’s never more altruistic
than that, and was the same for me:
after years working for someone else, I
wanted to start my own pipeline com-
pany.
CIO:
You’ve been doing this for a
long time now. How has the industry
changed?
RG:
One of the biggest changes
is the speed of projects, and how un-
balanced planning of pipeline projects
can be. It causes us the most grief.
For instance, producers used to drill
wells for one winter straight. Then, the
pipeline contractors would go and do
construction on the line—you would
go out and plan your work, the job
requirements and materials, and then
offer the best price you could in the
tender process.
Then in the early 90s, producers
would drill the well and have pipelin-
ers standing in waiting to tie the well
in, in order to recapture profit faster.
This got to be much too fast. They
wanted wells on immediately and on-
stream right away. This caused a lot
of problems for getting organized and
being able to offer competitive pricing.
So many things are hard to plan, and
in fact, it seems that the planning as-
pect of pipeline construction has com-
pletely gone out the window.
The other issue is our seasonal
constraints, which play against the
planning difficulties. We have a short
window when we can work in Canada
because of our winters and spring
thaws. Because of this seasonal timing,
and the pace of work from producers,
we are now trying to cram five months
of work into a month and a half time
period. People won’t wait anymore,
and sometimes we are doing work
during the spring thaw.
STRATUS PIPELINES
