Marcellus Business Central
Navarro & Wright Consulting looks forward to “hot areas of growth” in the downstream market
Innovation, talent, knowledge, networking, hard work and savvy salesmanship all contribute to a company’s success, but sometimes serendipity plays a pivotal role. Navarro & Wright Consulting Engineers, Inc., headquartered in New Cumberland, Pa., opened a field office in Bradford County in 2001. Four years later, the Marcellus industry took off, and they were soon in high demand for their Marcellus-related environments engineering and safety services.
“We had the luck of being in the right place at the right time, but our success in getting work from the Marcellus gas industry also came from attending industry networking events, sending out mass mailings and email blasts and making phone calls. It took a lot of ‘old school’ knocking on doors to get our name out there,” said Dillon Marino, northern Pennsylvania regional manager and project manager, Navarro & Wright’s Bradford County field office.
With the firm’s experience in routing sewage, water and gas lines and boundary surveys, it was well prepared to provide those environmental services the growing Marcellus industry needed.
Marino briefly summarized their services and shared that they are always conscious of not harming the surrounding environment.
“We basically take the project from a line on the map to a pipeline in the ground…We will take a map where you have two or three well sites whose gathering lines pass each other, and we’ve got to connect them by finding the most environmentally-friendly route that’s agreeable to both the pipeline company and the landowners.”
Partnering with Big Names
Marino has worked on the design ad permitting of more than 300 miles of natural gas pipelines, with many more to come. Thanks to the ever-expanding industry, so much natural gas has been produced, current pipelines are filled to capacity and the need for larger transmission lines offered Marino and the Bradford County field office the opportunity to work with natural gas processing and transportation powerhouse Williams Companies, Inc.
“The gathering lines we helped get built are so full [of] gas that operators can’t put any more gas in them, so now they’re waiting for the completion of the larger transmission lines that are going to take the gas out of state to high demand markets such as New York, Boston and Roanoke, Virginia.
“So, there are not a lot of 12-mile gathering pipelines going in the county, but there is a 256-mile pipeline project that’s heading south from Northeast Pennsylvania, which we’ve been fortunate enough to work on.”
Williams’ Atlantic Sunrise is a $3 billion pipeline that will run through 10 Pennsylvania counties to transport Marcellus natural gas from Northeastern Pennsylvania to the Transco pipeline in southern Lancaster County. The project design includes approximately 183 miles of new greenfield pipe, two pipeline loops totaling about 12 miles, 2.5 miles of existing pipeline replacement, two new compressor facilities in Pennsylvania and other facility additions or modifications in five states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
A Trusted Name
Pipelines are regulated by state and federal agencies and compliance with regulations is the “bread and butter” of environmental engineering firms doing the prep work for pipeline construction, and in this arena, Marino and Navarro & Wright excel.
“The state reviews all of our submissions for permits and I take great pride in the fact that when they see our Navarro & Wright logo and my name on the submission, they know that it’s been done right,” said Marino.
Meeting and maintaining government regulations is certainly important, but Marino brings something greater into his work: integrity. “We must follow the letter of the law when it comes to government regulations, but there’s also a standard of professional conduct we follow that goes beyond the regulations.”
Marino and his field office meet that standard of professional conduct with ease. Because they value the trust, goodwill and integrity they’ve built around their company, they refuse to cut corners to save a little money or allow less-than-excellent work.
“As an environmental engineering firm, our reputation is what we live or die on, which is why integrity is the primary guiding principle of our company.”
Looking Downstream
As the natural gas industry in Pennsylvania continues to grow, Marino is eagerly looking to the future.
“Right now, I’m most excited about working on end use projects,” said Marino.
“We recently did environmental work for a peak shaving plant, a propane facility and a small-scale power plant, which are three hot areas of growth in the downstream market.”
Small power plants are being built in northeastern Pennsylvania, as well as a few larger facilities. Power facilities are even popping up in central Pennsylvania, such as the Shell cracker plant being built in Beaver County.
Peak shaving plants allow natural gas utilities to minimize the impact of unpredictable consumption, for example, exceptionally cold or long winters, and other unexpected supply constraints such as natural disasters, by augmenting natural gas fuel with synthetic natural gas during times of high demand. Synthetic natural gas has nearly identical characteristics to natural gas and can be used to supplement natural gas supplies when needed.
The region also boasts a productive electrical infrastructure. To capitalize on this, new power plants are being built that will feed into PJM, which manages all the electricity transmissions to 13 states and Washington, D.C.
“Those are the projects I’m seeing now that are really exciting because they need a lot of construction workers to build them, environmental engineering firms to do the prep work, and once those facilities are completed, they will create a lot of good paying jobs in Pennsylvania.” .