CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A West Virginia-based fully-integrated natural gas company has started to use its new control center.
Diversified Gas & Oil Corporation unveiled the updated operation last week at its regional headquarters in Charleston.
Company COO Brad Gray told MetroNews the new center allows company workers to manage and monitor the natural gas on the pipelines Diversified Gas & Oil manage.
“Where we’re metering and measuring the flow of gas, the rate of flow, the pressures that are flowing. It’s really focused around safety,” Gray said.
The control center is particularly keeping an eye on the Cranberry Pipeline system Diversified Gas & Oil purchased last year.
The center has four work stations and up to eight monitors for each work station, Gray said.
“It allows us to reroute gas in the event we are doing maintenance on a pipeline or are dealing with any type of disruption,” Gray said. “If we have a new sales customer we want to move gas to, our control center has the ability to do that.”
It can also help prevent explosions by an overloaded line.
“They are monitoring not only the flow but the pressures and if there is any type of pressure increase that’s not planned they have the ability to regulate those pipelines and shut off the flow of gas where there may be a problem,” Gray said.
All of the operations are cloud-based so the flow of gas can be monitored and controlled anywhere there’s a security internet connection, Gray said.
Diversified’s Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Rusty, Hutson, Jr., is a West Virginia native. Gray said the investment in the control center is Hutson’s further commitment to his home state. Gray said the control center has the ability to be used as Diversified expands in West Virginia and possibly moves to other states.
“We can run gas control operations monitoring natural gas flows here in the Appalachian basin in the state of West Virginia and even outside of Appalachia in other basins we may invest in moving forward,” Gray said.
Diversified Gas & Oil has more than 425 workers in West Virginia.