{"364401":{"#nid":"364401","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Building a Gas Pipeline Halfway Across the World","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAt Georgia Tech, Decie Autin studied and trained to be an engineer, not a community relations expert. But when ExxonMobil selected her in 2008 to be the supervising project executive for the construction of a major new liquid natural gas pipeline,\u0026nbsp;Autin knew that to be successful, she\u2019d have to work closely with local families and landowners. It\u2019s one of the many skills Autin has had to learn while moving up from front-line engineering to management.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHowever, this project wasn\u2019t situated in any community close to Autin\u2019s home in Houston. The pipeline was to be built halfway around the world in Papua New Guinea.This location presented extraordinary challenges for Autin and her team\u2014and not just due to the distance.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor one, the Papua New Guinea Liquid Natural Gas (PNGLNG) pipeline proved to be intimidating simply because of the path it traces. \u201cThe line travels 700 kilometers to carry natural gas from the country\u2019s highlands across terrain that\u2019s very rugged, with lots of mountains and volcanoes, down to the coast near Port Moseby to be processed into LNG,\u201d Autin says.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECulturally, the country is also very different than the United States. \u201cPapua New Guinea has more than 800 languages,\u201d Autin says. \u201cAnd its people are spread out, 85 percent of them living in rural settings, living in little pockets.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo complicate matters even more, most of the country\u2019s roughly 7 million citizens had little-to-no experience seeing a woman in such a leadership position.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAll of these added up to make the PNGLNG project the most challenging one she\u2019s ever worked on in her 30-plus years with ExxonMobil. The logistical hurdles of building the pipeline from mountaintop to shore were trickier than she could have imagined. \u201cWhen you face problems, you need to work through the logic to solve them,\u201d Autin says. On the PNGLNG project, we faced so many issues: \u2018How do you move this, how do you get these people to agree, how do you work with the government?\u2019\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe pipeline\u2019s remote point of origin demonstrated just one of several difficult problems that Autin and her team faced.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere was a single 800-kilometer highway into the Hides area where the natural gas was drilled and produced\u2014the last 200 kilometers of which were unpaved. Faced with either building an airport or driving supplies all the way up that road, Autin loaded up in a truck and surveyed the road for herself. What she found was a major infrastructure project: There were not just 200 kilometers of road to pave, but also 98 bridges to cross, many of which required upgrades to use. \u201cWe ran the economics, and the airport won out,\u201d Autin says.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBuilding the airport, the pipeline itself and other related work, the PNGLNG project employed up to 22,000 people at its peak. In total, more than 55,000 individuals from across the globe were somehow involved in the pipeline\u2019s construction. After an estimated $19 billion in construction costs, the pipeline today produces 1 billion cubic feet of liquid natural gas each day.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnd it was Autin who stood in charge of making sure everything went as planned. \u201cMy commitment was to deliver on the entire project,\u201d she says.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENot only did Autin fulfill her commitment, she did so ahead of expectations. The PNGLNG project shipped its first cargo load of natural gas in May 2014, five months ahead of schedule. The liquid natural gas pipeline will meet rising natural gas demands in Asia\u2014particularly Japan, Hong Kong and China.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAs happy as Autin is with the PNGLNG\u2019s technical successes, she also found tremendous fulfillment in her role working directly with the people of Papua New Guinea. ExxonMobil sponsored numerous community efforts throughout the duration of the pipeline construction and, during her free time, Autin became very involved in developing programs to help empower and train the country\u2019s women. \u201cOne of ExxonMobil\u2019s core efforts across the globe is to help educate women,\u201d Autin says. \u201cAnytime you educate the women in a community, you expand the limits of what they can do.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the end, Autin left a strong imprint on the nation\u2014so strong that a Papua New Guinea firm, Hides Gas Development Company (HGDC), now sponsors the Decie Autin Engineering Scholarship for Women. HGDC Chairman Libe Parindali says Autin was chosen as the scholarship\u2019s namesake to honor the pipeline as an impressive feat of engineering, as well as to tribute her humble and capable leadership.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAutin\u2019s reaction fit the chairman\u2019s description. \u201cAt first I was embarrassed \u2026 then I was proud,\u201d Autin says. \u201cI\u2019m very fortunate and very blessed. There were plenty of women on our project team. Of all people, I thought it was interesting that they wanted to honor me.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EThis originally appeared in Vol. 90, No. 4 of the\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/gtalumnimag.com\/2014\/12\/building-a-gas-pipeline-halfway-across-the-world\/\u0022\u003EGeorgia Tech Alumni Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/em\u003E.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Decie Autin, ChE 80, helped lead ExxonMobil\u2019s $19 billion project in Papua New Guinea."}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EDecie Autin, ChE 80, helped lead ExxonMobil\u2019s $19 billion project in Papua New Guinea.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Decie Autin, ChE 80, helped lead ExxonMobil\u2019s $19 billion project in Papua New Guinea."}],"uid":"27507","created_gmt":"2015-01-14 15:09:02","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:17:50","author":"Rachel Isaac","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-01-14T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2015-01-14T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"364421":{"id":"364421","type":"image","title":"GT Alumni Magazine- Pipeline 1","body":null,"created":"1449245805","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:16:45","changed":"1475895100","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:40","alt":"GT Alumni Magazine- Pipeline 1","file":{"fid":"201641","name":"timthumb-1.php_.jpeg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/timthumb-1.php__0.jpeg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/timthumb-1.php__0.jpeg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":69528,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/timthumb-1.php__0.jpeg?itok=ZcMf4hDR"}},"364431":{"id":"364431","type":"image","title":"GT Alumni Magazine, Pipeline 2","body":null,"created":"1449245805","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:16:45","changed":"1475895100","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:40","alt":"GT Alumni Magazine, Pipeline 2","file":{"fid":"201642","name":"forum-e1418158688459.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/forum-e1418158688459_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/forum-e1418158688459_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":126312,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/forum-e1418158688459_0.jpg?itok=xTEpuMlv"}}},"media_ids":["364421","364431"],"groups":[{"id":"1316","name":"Green Buzz"}],"categories":[{"id":"130","name":"Alumni"},{"id":"129","name":"Institute and Campus"},{"id":"145","name":"Engineering"}],"keywords":[{"id":"35011","name":"georgia tech alumni magazine"},{"id":"15791","name":"Pipeline"},{"id":"114611","name":"PNGLNG"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71911","name":"Earth and Environment"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAuthor: Jonathan Crowl\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEditor: \u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:roger.slavens@alumni.gatech.edu\u0022\u003ERoger Slavens\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}