Coming back to New Orleans is always special, but the return this year of the Gas Processors Association (GPA) Annual Convention was especially notable as it was the first time that the association has held its annual convention in the city post-Katrina.

“It’s great to be back here. We’ve always loved New Orleans. We’ve had several meetings here, but not our convention since 2004. We were a little concerned about attendance as we anticipated either flat attendance or maybe a little less than last year, but it’s exceeding our expectations,” Mark Sutton, executive director of GPA, told Midstream Monitor.

GPA anticipates that once the final calculation is in that attendance for this year’s 91st Annual Convention will be slightly higher than last year at more than 2,000 attendees. “It’s going to be better than last year, we just don’t know by how far because we were still registering people on Monday,” he said.

In fact, this year’s convention has been such a success that GPA is considering adding New Orleans as a regular destination for the convention. “I’d like to set up three or four cities that we regularly book for the show. We know that San Antonio works and we’d love to find some other locations that work as well from a registration and staff standpoint,” Sutton said. “The real evaluation will come from staff after the event, but I’d like to see us come back.”

He noted that there have been hiccups, as is to be expected with any convention, but thus far the show has been running very smoothly. “From a staff standpoint, we always say, ‘If the attendees don’t see the hiccups, then it’s successful.’ So far I haven’t had any attendees say anything negative. It’s been very successful.”

Sutton credited the resurgence of the midstream for the increase in attendance, especially since this increased activity is happening on the domestic front. He also noted that there are a lot of new faces in attendance this year, which is a sign that new people are entering the sector.

Additionally, there has been an influx of large players into and, in some cases, back to the midstream. “I’ve seen things go from where the midstream was owned by the majors to the divestment of these interests by the majors. Now we’re seeing an increase in interest by the majors in the midstream with the biggest news on this front being ExxonMobil’s acquisition of XTO Energy,” he said.

The entry by these companies into the midstream will only help GPA’s advocacy efforts, according to Sutton, as the association’s visibility continues to increase. “We know that one of our directives is to be an advocate for the midstream, but we can’t forget the technical aspect of our mission that we’ve focused on for over 90 years. We still plan on having a strong research program and maintaining the standards we oversee now,” he said.

Part of the technical mission has been to better incorporate international membership into the program. Several years ago, GPA made the decision to streamline the conference by incorporating the international papers into the general session by placing these papers into the correct topical forum, regardless of if they were international or domestic. The ratio between international to domestic has been pretty even and has been a success thus far as it has helped to bridge the gap between international and domestic membership and brought ideas to the forefront.

Another success has been the inclusion of young professionals into the annual convention for the fifth straight year. While there was a slight dip in the Sunday attendance by young professionals, Sutton attributed this to the longer registration lines.

“The corporate backing for the young professionals has been very strong and I think it makes a big difference that the program committee gives the young professionals leeway to set up their own program. This session is doing a great job of bringing younger people here because for a long time GPA was a meeting for upper-level engineers, managers and higher, and the folks that were new to their companies didn’t really have an opportunity to attend. But that has now changed,” Sutton said.

Contact the author, Frank Nieto, at fnieto@hartenergy.com.

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