Underground Construction - December 2017 - 5

Nessen Joins Gulf Publishing As Group Publisher
For Infrastructure, Pipelines
Brian Nessen, an experienced business-to-business media and trade show executive, has joined
Gulf Publishing Company as group publisher.
Nessen will manage a group that includes
Underground Construction, Pipeline & Gas Journal, Pipeline News, Underground Construction
Technology International Conference & Exhibition
and Pipeline Opportunities Conference.
Gulf Publishing Company acquired the publications and conferences from Oildom Publishing
in April 2017.
"We are very pleased to have Brian join our management team,"
said John Royall, president and CEO of Gulf Publishing Company.
"The pipeline segment gives us a very strong and growing business in
the midstream market to complement our upstream and downstream
operations. Plus, we have now strongly diversified into the growing
underground infrastructure market. Brian is a pro, and is the right
person to build these businesses."
Nessen has more than 25 years of management, sales and marketing experience in business-to-business media and trade shows in
oil and gas, power generation, chemical processing and automotive
markets.
"Gulf Publishing Company offers very high-quality brands that are
leaders in their respective fields, and Pipeline & Gas Journal, Underground Construction and their related conferences are a natural fit for
the business," said Nessen. "My goal is to take these excellent information sources for industry professionals and vehicles for marketers, and
expand and improve our product offerings."
Nessen was most recently co-founder of Stone Fort Group, and
previously held the position of vice president/group publisher of Access Intelligence's POWER and Chemical Group. Formerly he worked
at Atlantic Communications and PennWell.
He is married with three children and resides in the Houston area.
For more than 100 years, Gulf Publishing Company has been the
leading provider of business and technical knowledge for the global
oil and gas industry. Headquartered in Houston, Gulf Publishing
Company produces seven trade journals for the underground infrastructure, and oil and gas industry: Underground Construction, World
Oil, Hydrocarbon Processing, Gas Processing, Petroleum Economist,
Pipeline & Gas Journal and Pipeline News.
essential to protecting public health
and the environment.
The more than $12 million will
be used across Iowa for water
quality projects that will improve
municipal drinking water and
wastewater infrastructure, help
protect public drinking water
systems, make projects more
sustainable by increasing water and
energy efficiency, and reduce water
December 2017 Underground Construction

pollution.
This is an annual Capitalization
Grant awarded to Iowa's Drinking Water State Revolving Fund
(DWSRF) program. Numerous
projects will be funded that are
listed on Iowa's Intended Use
Plan. The DWSRF Capitalization
Grant funds public and privately
owned community water systems'
improvement projects, nonprofit

non-community water systems,
and disadvantaged communities.
Infrastructure replacement and other projects are also funded with this
grant, ensuring safe and affordable
drinking water supplies to Iowans.

Private Players To Capitalize On
$728 Billion Municipal Water Sector
Opportunity
In the wake of tightening municipal
budgets, environmental violations
and aging infrastructure, private
players are poised to capitalize on
struggling water and wastewater
utilities. According to a new report,
U.S. Municipal Water & Wastewater:
Defining the Addressable Market
for Private Investment, Bluefield
Research estimates the total
market value of more than 78,000
community water and wastewater
systems across the U.S. to be more
than $728 billion.
"We've been talking about this
trend for several years - municipalities and smaller private system
owners' growing inability to keep
up with deteriorating utility infrastructure, so our analysis has been
developed as a tool to evaluate the
opportunities for investment," said
Reese Tisdale, president of Bluefield
Research. "There seems to be no
shortage of interest, and capital for
that matter. Rather, the challenge

for new market entrants, particularly for those looking to secure
a platform from which to grow, is
scale. Big deals are difficult to find."
Approximately 15 percent of
community water systems are
already owned by private players,
including investor-owned utilities.
In the first half of 2017, Bluefield has
tracked more than $224 million of
investor-owned utility acquisitions
across 53 deals.
At the extreme end of the
spectrum, representing almost $2.5
billion of potential deal value, per
Bluefield analysis, are highly stressed
public water systems - those with
a combination of low-interest loan
forgiveness applications, which
signal financial distress, and serious
EPA-compliance violations.
Driving private interest in public
water systems are a number of key
market shifts:
* Public water systems face environmental violations, financial
burdens. Approximately 5,300
municipal, and private drinking
and wastewater systems in the
U.S. are listed as significant regulatory violators, indicating an
immediate need for infrastructure investment.
* Climbing residential water
rates are adding pressure to
utilities. Adjusting for inflation, the combined water and

Addressable Market: Systems with serious EPA violations
(Top 15 States)

Source: Bluefield Research
ucononline.com

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