PipeSak President addresses GAIL O&M conference

India's gas industry had its very first Operating and Maintenance (O&M) conference in Mumbai, India this past June. The conference was organized by the Gas Authority of India Ltd. (GAIL), one of India's leading Public Sector Enterprises. As an innovator in the field of soft buoyancy control, PipeSak Inc.'s president, Geoff W. Connors, was invited to speak at the conference.

Geoff Connors, the inventor of the fabric saddle weight and president of Canada based PipeSak Incorporated, presented a paper on The Use of Geotextile Fabric, Anti-Buoyancy Control for Buried Pipelines at the conference. The paper educated India's oil industry leaders on the science and benefits behind soft buoyancy control - a method of buoyancy control foreign to the Indian market. In addition to speaking at GAIL Gas Industry O&M Conference, PipeSak Inc. has traveled abroad to India several times speaking to local oil and gas companies about the benefits of PipeSak saddleweights to their pipelines.

PipeSak Inc. expects to see a sharp increase in sales to India in the near future. India's oil industry is expanding exponentially as new gas reserves are being discovered. GAIL announced at the Gas Industry O&M conference that they had struck oil and gas at an onshore block near Ahmedabad in the Cambay Basin only a week before the conference. It was the first oil find by GAIL, who had partnered up with Gujarat State Petroleum Corp. to explore the region. Ram Naik, the Indian Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister who made the announcement, stated that only one of the seven wells in Cambay oil field have been drilled so far. The find marks GAIL's major entry into the upstream oil sector. Naik also identified reserves found in a large offshore block at Myanmar, where GAIL holds oil equity in partnership with Korean companies Daewoo and Kuo Gas and ONGC's subsidiary OVL.

Since GAIL holds approximately 95% of the natural gas market in India, their success definitely indicates an upswing in the Indian pipeline industry. PipeSak Inc. hopes to solidify their presence in India by opening a local plant to manufacture their saddleweights. By having the weights manufactured locally PipeSak Inc. will be able to reduce both the costs and lead times associated with shipping the product overseas from Canada. PipeSak hopes to have a plant up and running later this year. Stay tuned for more information!

— return to main news page —