Underground Infrastructure - August 2023 - 17

American Gas Association
with a readily efficient safe way to deliver
the energy that Americans need and want.
UI: Looking back at your time at
AGL, you followed an operations
career path, but all the expansion
activity you were involved in
seems to have given you a more
diverse experience.
Sitherwood: Yes, I would say that's
true. Atlanta Gas Light was the state gas
company and had been for decades upon
decades, and early in my career it decided
to start acquiring other gas companies.
We acquired Virginia Natural Gas and
then eventually acquired a New Jersey
company which came with a Miami company.
Then we acquired Nicor, which has
over 2 million customers, and that really
extended the size of the company. So
that's how I learned - by digging into the
transactions themselves, as well as the
technology and the integration.
But we also had a marketing company
and had invested in storage facilities and
built some intrastate pipelines at AGL.
So, a lot of my experience was not necessarily
by title of the work I did, which was
quite varied as well, but also from what
was happening with the company during
that period.
UI: Laclede wasn't known as a
growth company before you got
there. How did that change?
Sitherwood: Laclede Gas at that time in
2011 was the smallest of its peer set, and
the board thought we really needed to pivot
and grow the company because it was
too small to be highly invested in technologies
and benefit from scale. And of
course, within a year after I arrived, we acquired
a gas company in western Missouri.
UI: So, Laclede brought you in to
replicate that success at AGL?
Sitherwood: Yes. When the board interviewed
me, they asked very specific
questions about growth. " How do you
think about potential acquisitions? How
would you approach an acquisition?
How do you think about the analysis? If
we prevail, how do you think about the
process of integrating the business and
how it impacts people? " And then, how
much technology is deployed, because at
that point we didn't really have the information
technology that we have now.
Fortunately, not long after I landed
here, those western Missouri assets from
Joplin all the way north past Kansas City
became available. We have a great team
here, and it was just going back to my experience
at AGL: organizing teams and
people and their roles, then putting them
together in a way where they understand
the North Star, the path to get there and
ensuring they have the ability to lay out
the work and do it in an efficient, effective
way - all while understanding the
people impacts. So, the team did a great
job integrating the west side of the state.
Then, shortly after, another utility system
became available in Alabama.
UI: That was a fast start, but
the expansion went farther
than that, right?
Sitherwood: Yes, we acquired the
Alabama utilities and set up a marketing
company in Houston. Then we acquired
our midstream storage facility assets.
Next, we also built a pipeline to connect to
the REX - the Rockies Express pipeline -
from St. Louis to bring shale gas into the
region. And we started working to upgrade
our older systems in the St. Louis area.
UI: How important was that
pipeline project to Spire?
Sitherwood: By building that pipeline,
we not only brought relatively inexpensive
gas to the region, but also, we built
great resiliency and reliability into our
system. That's been extremely important.
The St. Louis region has a healthy industrial
market here, from brewing beer to
chemical plants, to automotive, to aviation.
These are very large industrial facilities
and they rely heavily on natural gas.
You want these customers to be able
to count on their natural gas service, and
you never want them to have to shut
down because they don't have the energy
they need. They're very well educated
on our system and where our natural
gas basins are. That resiliency is part of
the reason those facilities are here, and
they're very appreciative of that level
of certainty. When we went through
a massive winter storm in this area, for
example, we did not have to curtail gas
supplies to any of our customers.
UI: It must be rewarding to see
those positive impacts after
overcoming the opposition that
all pipeline projects attract now.
Sitherwood: I'm very proud of what
that pipeline has accomplished for our
customers and our region. I think it's a
symbol for how important natural gas
infrastructure is for this country and for
proper analysis, in terms of regions and
states making sure that we're building
for our future. Not just the pipeline, but
the modernization of our aging infrastructure
here in the St. Louis region.
We rebuilt the backbone of our systems
and were able to elevate the pressures
because we had new pipe. And most of
the gas came in from the east side of St.
Louis, so by adding that pipeline we were
able to push gas west and south, which is
where the growth area is in this region. I
think it's a role model for why pipeline
development is extremely important.
Of course, we've had four FERC [Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission] approvals
now on the Spire STL pipeline.
And a lot of companies and customers
and people in the industry followed
pipeline certification process when it was
challenged. I just think it's emblematic of
how strong and smart our systems are,
and it was a great way of educating a lot
of customers and regulators and legislators
about the significance of natural gas
infrastructure and what supply basins are
available for different communities.
That diversity of supply, diversity
of infrastructure and modernized systems
will ensure that we're serving our
communities well for decades to come.
Because you don't incrementally plan
and build pipelines, as you know. You
design for the future. UI
UndergroundInfrastructure.com | AUGUST 2023 17
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Underground Infrastructure - August 2023

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