There are few instances these days when one can say something just keeps on getting better. In the case of RefComm Galveston, though, it’s undeniably true.
This annual technical training, knowledge sharing, and networking conference—focused on safe unit operation and production optimization within delayed coking, fluid catalytic cracking (FCC), and sulfur production and processing units—is not one to miss. And if you do, you’re missing out in ways you can’t imagine.
Held Apr. 29-May 3, 2024, in Galveston, Tex., this year’s event again exceeded expectations but, more importantly, proved the RefComm team’s approach to creating an invaluable learning experience is garnering the wider industry notice it has long deserved.
The 5-day, multitrack event included 2 days of training on delayed coking, 3 days of technical presentations, more than 100 onsite-expert-attending exhibitors, and priceless breakout discussion groups delving into specialized topics in which deep sharing of experience and knowledge among colleagues should—and did—occur. This year’s event broke all previous records with a final attendance of 700 attendees from 25 countries, including 220 refiners.
The 2024 event also included first-time participation from the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), which brought its AFPM FCC Process Safety Roadshow onsite to host a forum in which FCC operators openly discussed shared problems as well as created actionable plans to solve them.
Record setting vs. settling
Where many industry events can fall into the understandable habit of finding a groove that stays on repeat year after year, the RefComm team somehow manages to keep mixing it up with content and experiences that can only be described as reliably consistent yet authentically innovative and forward facing.
Alongside a collective focus on ensuring maximum safety and operational excellence of downstream processing sites and their respective workforces, presentations and exhibitor demonstrations at this year’s event shared the mutual rhythm of reiterating the need to confront—and more importantly, cooperatively solve—the very real difficulties industry faces as its legacy workforce moves into retirement. The past 40-50 years of hands-on, direct experience and deep knowledge of existing downstream operational infrastructure is rapidly exiting the building, and with it leaves the expertise on specific units at specific plants that—more likely than not—never made its way into written documents left behind for posterity.
Think about that for a minute: The most intimate knowledge of processing equipment and plants during the most foundational time of the downstream industry’s evolution simply vanishing. This is wisdom no novice will ever be able to pull up on a phone or smart tablet to help prevent potential catastrophes should and when they arise.
But the knowledge gap is a reality and ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Peer-to-peer, colleague-to-colleague, operator-to-service expert, RefComm remains the best downstream technical conference there is, and one that continues to remind all of us that a set-in-stone reliance on “official” documents and the this-is-just-how-we’ve-always-done-business ways of working no longer suffice.
If you missed it this year, do yourselves and your organizations the service of setting up your calendars to attend next year’s RefComm Galveston, Apr. 28-May 2, 2025. With all the event has to offer, you have this editor’s promise the only conceivable regret you might possibly have by attending—as this editor annually does—is that you can’t be in more than one room attending more than one presentation at a time.
RefComm is that good. And here’s to it staying that way.
