Industry Explained
Calgary and the oil patch: how a city became Canada's energy capital
From a Turner Valley gas well in 1914 to Leduc No. 1 and the oil sands: how a ranching town on the Bow River became the head office city of the oil patch.
Home / Show floor
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The show floor
Walk the aisles: plain explanations of the equipment, the processes and the work behind oil and gas, from the rig floor to the refinery gate.
Pipelines & Midstream
Pipeline integrity: corrosion, cathodic protection and inspection
What wears a buried steel pipeline down and how operators keep ahead of it: coatings, cathodic protection, smart pigs, pressure tests, direct assessment and 811.
Careers & Training
Starting a career in oil and gas: entry routes, tickets and training
Field crews, trades and office roles each have their own way in. How people start in oil and gas: the jobs, the safety tickets, apprenticeships and courses.
Health, Safety & Environment
Finding methane leaks: how LDAR surveys and gas cameras work
Where methane escapes on oil and gas sites, how crews find it with gas cameras, sniffers and aircraft, and what US and Canadian rules ask operators to record.
Drilling & Completions
Hydraulic fracturing in stages: plug-and-perf, sand and flowback
How a horizontal well is fractured one stage at a time: plug-and-perf and sliding sleeves, the frac spread, fluid and sand, pressure watching and flowback.
Industry Explained
Inside a refinery: distillation, cracking and the product slate
What happens to a barrel of crude between the tank farm and the truck rack: distillation, cracking, coking, hydrotreating, reforming, alkylation and blending.
Natural Gas & LNG
LNG explained: liquefaction trains, carriers and regasification
How natural gas is cleaned, chilled to about minus 162 C and shrunk 600 times, carried across oceans in insulated tanks and turned back into gas at the far end.
Careers & Training
How to work an oil and gas trade show floor in one day
One day, several halls, hundreds of booths. A plain plan for visitors to big energy shows: set goals, map the floor, ask vendors better questions, follow up.
Health, Safety & Environment
Hydrogen sulfide on site: what H2S awareness training covers
Why H2S is treated so seriously, where it turns up, why your nose cannot be trusted and what a course such as H2S Alive teaches before you reach a sour site.
Pipelines & Midstream
Pipeline pigging: what the pigs do and why operators run them
Cleaning pigs, batching spheres and smart pigs that read the pipe wall: how pigging works, from the launcher barrel to the receiver at the far end of the line.
Heavy Oil & Oil Sands
SAGD explained: how steam brings bitumen up from the oil sands
How steam-assisted gravity drainage works: why bitumen needs heat, how the well pairs sit, how the steam chamber grows and what the plant does with the water.
Natural Gas & LNG
Natural gas from wellhead to burner tip, one step at a time
Follow one batch of gas from the well through gathering, processing, transmission, storage and the city gate to a stove, a power plant or an LNG export dock.