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“I want you to take this course—Centrifugal Pump Assembly and Repair,” our publisher Wally Evans said in September 2006 at the Mid-Atlantic Pump & Process Equipment Symposium in Aston, Penn.  At the time, I was a somewhat shy English graduate student.  I was barely a month into my job as Assistant Editor of Pumps & Systems, and I already had to disassemble and reassemble a centrifugal pump. Needless to say, I was concerned.

When I started in August 2006, I could not properly pronounce the word centrifugal, but during that course in September, I hammered that pump with the best of them. (Luckily, I had two extremely patient engineers at my table who told me which side of the hammer to use.) P&S Editorial Advisory Board member and Geiger Smith-Koch President Henry Peck invited me to return to the Symposium in September 2008 to take the course again and get my “Master’s” in Centrifugal Pump Assembly and Repair. While thankfully no one has ever had to depend on my ability to assemble or disassemble a centrifugal pump, both experiences were invaluable while working with our authors on the practical, hands-on articles that we strive to include in each issue of Pumps & Systems.

The Centrifugal Pump Assembly and Repair course is just one of the many memorable experiences I have had while working as Assistant Editor and then Managing Editor of Pumps & Systems. Most recently, I have also had the privilege of working as Editor of our new publication Upstream Pumping Solutions. On both magazines, I have had the opportunity to speak with countless people in the industry about what issues they encounter daily and what matters most in the field. I hope this feedback shows in both P&S and Upstream Pumping Solutions and that both magazines have proven useful to our readers.

I have now made the difficult decision to leave Pumps & Systems and Upstream Pumping Solutions to take on the next challenge in my career. I am immensely grateful for the opportunities I have had, the knowledge I have gained and the people with whom I have worked. Most especially, I am grateful that for the past four years, I have been able to serve our loyal readership. I wish everyone the best of luck in the future.  

Best regards,

Alexandra Ferretti

Upstream Pumping Solutions will debut in April 2010. In the meantime, click here to sign up for periodic email updates on upstream oil and gas pumping. Click here to read more about Upstream Pumping Solutions.

As you know, Pumps & Systems will produce Upstream Pumping Solutions next Spring. In the meantime, if you are looking for troubleshooting and practical tips on upstream oil and gas pumping, please go to the Upstream Pumping Solutions website. We have provided links to articles that we have run in past issues of Pumps & Systems that cover various topics in upstream oil and gas, including electric submersible pumps, screw pumps, seals and pumping in the oil sands. Check back periodically as this section continues to grow and includes articles exclusive to Upstream Pumping Solutions.

Next year, Pumps & Systems will introduce Upstream Pumping Solutions, a special supplement specifically directed toward upstream oil and gas professionals. Click here for more details and a subscription form.

If you are in the upstream oil and gas market, what are some of the problems you face in field? What are the issues you would like to see us cover? We would love to hear from you!

Our team just returned from this year’s Offshore Technology Conference, where attendance numbers showed a slight drop from last year’s. The official attendance number came to 66,820–a strong showing, but not as impressive as the more than 73,000 people who attended the show in 2008. Despite the drop in numbers (largely due to the decline in oil prices, of course, but also related to swine flu fears), the exhibit area was the second largest ever, covering more than 557,000 sq ft with 2,500 companies from 38 countries.

Do you have any questions about NPSH? Make sure to check out our new monthly column Understanding NPSH by Terry Henshaw, P.E. Here is the first installment from the February 2009 issue:

NPSH Article  February 2009

Let us know what you think!

A barrel of crude is at a little less than $38 today. At that kind of price, investing in more offshore drilling and oil sands is not really practical. When oil was at a record $147 a barrel last July, it made sense to heavily invest in r&d for additional oil sources.

In related news, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement yesterday about the Obama administration’s drilling plan:

“The new Administration is stopping [the Bush administration's] headlong rush to open new offshore areas of drilling, calling for a thorough review, with much greater public participation. And Secretary Salazar is wisely initiating a review of the potential for offshore renewable energy, and moving forward with long-stalled rules to ensure that offshore renewable energy projects can proceed in an environmentally-responsible manner.

“We cannot drill our way to energy independence. But by harnessing all of our domestic energy resources, and aggressively pursuing new technology to unleash them, we move a giant step closer toward energy independence.”

Let’s just hope that people don’t go back to their old habits when it comes to oil usage–otherwise we’ll be right back in the same boat if a barrel of oil should surge in price again and gas prices rise dramatically. Because the price of oil doesn’t really lend itself to heavy oil drilling (and the Obama administration wants to move away from that plan), we don’t want to end up with shortages if people should overuse gas while the prices are low.

In a recent conversation with an automation company’s Senior VP of Human Resources, she mentioned how we might see a smaller number of engineers retiring because of the decreased value of retirement savings. She suggested that engineers who planned to retire in the next five years may actually not retire for another eight years or so.

In other words, the country’s economic woes might end up helping the engineering workforce, as it will keep older engineers available to share their knowledge with younger engineers who are just starting in their jobs. We still may not be prepared to fill the jobs that will eventually be vacated by the aging engineering workforce, but at least the economy has given us a little reprieve.

Of course, we can’t neglect this engineering workforce who must work a little longer. They need to be challenged, so they don’t grow weary with their jobs and become less productive. When it comes to the engineering talent shortage, it’s all a delicate balance.

We all know there’s an engineering talent shortage. In the United States and the world, there are not enough engineers to meet future demand (especially with the large numbers of engineers planning to retire). 

I heard something recently from a pump recruiting manager that was equally worrisome. Engineers just graduating from college are jumping from job to job after only three to six months of work. Motivated by a higher paycheck, these young engineers sometimes accumulate a resume of five to eight jobs in two years.  

This is a rather troubling result of the talent shortage. Knowing that their skills are in high demand, some young engineers are naming their price and taking advantage of the needs of the companies. This economy may do something to curb this phenomenon, but it’s a trend worth watching over the next few years.

Here is a preview of two major statistics from our State of the Industry 2009 issue.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Summary of Shipments of Pumps (2007), industrial pumps increased in value 8.1 percent, finishing 2007 with $4,847.6 million in sales. Compare this with the numbers from 2006, which reported a 1.7 precent gain in sales of industrial pumps between 2005 and 2006.

Centrifugal pumps, the biggest market within industrial pumps, increased by 11.4 percent in sales over the previous year, ending the year with $2,401.4 million. In 2006, the increase in sales for centrifugal pumps between 2005 and 2006 was only 0.2 percent.

Take it all with a grain of salt, of course. These are the numbers for 2007, not 2008, so we do not have a measure of the current sales in pumps. It should make our State of the Industry 2010 a very interesting issue. For more of these statistics, keep an eye out for our January 2009 issue.