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BUCKEYE PARTNERS, L.P. | COVER STORY

Superior LogisticsBuckeye Partners manages its infrastructure projects to increase its speed to market and efficiently complete capital projects.BY JANICE HOPPE

As a leading energy logistics firm, Buckeye Partners, L.P. focuses on improving the integrity of its infra-structure and expanding

it to take on new marketing projects. “Buckeye is a different brand of compa-ny and I was attracted to them because of the entrepreneur-type of approach it has to building projects,” Senior Director of Engineering Services Craig Brown says. The Houston-based company provides mid-stream energy logistics services. Buckeye owns and operates one of the nation’s largest independent petroleum products common carrier pipeline networks, providing refiners, wholesalers, marketers, airlines, rail-

Buckeye Partners

P R O F I L E

www.buckeye.com | Revenue: $6.6 billion |

Headquarters: Houston | Employees: About 1,800 |

Specialty: Mid-stream energy logistics solutions

• Houston

“Everyone understands the critical nature of getting projects done in the most time-efficient way possible while still doing it in a safe manner.” // CRAIG BROWN, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF

ENGINEERING SERVICES

Manifold at BORCO..

roads and other commercial end-users with dependable, all-weather trans-portation of refined petroleum prod-ucts. The company transports refined products by pipeline mostly in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Buckeye owns and operates about 6,000 miles of underground pipelines, in conjunction with more than 120 terminals, including marine and truck-loading facilities.

The pipelines transport refined petroleum products from major supply sources to distribution terminals located in major end-use markets. “Our pipelines provide a vital transportation link between major petroleum refining and supply locations and consumption centers,” the company says. “Buckeye’s operations deliver consistent results because pipeline volumes are driven primarily by demand in the markets

served, the partnership’s pipelines and terminals are geographically diversi-fied of supply and the pipelines deliver petroleum products to numerous deliv-ery locations.”

TAKING THE LEADAs a company that self-performs the engineering, procurement and construction management process, Buckeye’s project managers act as general contractors and take the lead on procurement, bidding, and over-seeing engineering and construction. “Project managers handle everything from cradle to grave,” Brown explains. “From small to large projects, they handle everything from the initial feasibility to final execution, and are accountable and responsible for every aspect of the project.” One of the benefits of working at

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BUCKEYE PARTNERS | COVER STORY

Perth Amboy terminal rail delivery system..

“We ask them to be very. adaptable, flexible and handle. different types of projects. It’s not. uncommon for a project manager . to build a pipeline, do a pump. station next, followed by a. vapor-recovery unit.” - Craig Brown.

+ Consolidated Fabrication & Constructors, Inc. is a Mechanical Contractor serving the needs of the Nation’s leading Industrial Companies. For the last several years, we’ve been Buckeye Partner’s Core Contractor for New Tank Construction, Maintenance and Pipeline Integrity throughout the Buckeye sys-tem in the US, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. We’re proud of our great working relationship and congrat-ulate Buckeye Partners on 125 years of excellence! Visit us at consfab.com.

+ FM Sylvan has served the Energy industry for more than twenty years, enabling industry leaders such as Buckeye Partners to adopt next generation production solutions. Buckeye has engaged FM Sylvan’s industrial pipe fabrication, installation, and layout services on a series of critical projects over the last two years at Buckeye’s Perth Amboy, Port Reading, and Peotone Plants. Despite aggressive schedules and the need to manage pipe fabrication and installation and layout services in parallel, FM Sylvan delivered the projects successfully--on time and on budget. Buckeye has formally commended FM Sylvan’s work on the Perth Amboy Modernization Project, which included more than 2500 welds with less than a 1 percent rejection rate, specifically call-ing out FM Sylvan’s “dedication and determination to seeing this massive project to completion.”

a company such as Buckeye is that project managers are given significant latitude as decision makers for the projects they oversee, Brown explains. “We are able to attract really good man-agers because they like the fact that they are given responsibility and held accountable,” he adds. Because it relies so heavily on its project managers, Buckeye performs a thorough interview process to ensure it has the right people in those positions. “Our project managers fully believe that problems are nothing more than opportunities for solutions,” says Joe Sauger, senior vice president, engi-neering and compliance. “This philos-ophy allows us to execute extremely challenging projects across all of our business units.” Project managers must be able to

handle tasks such as selecting ven-dors, working with the supply chain to ensure materials are delivered on time and executing projects correct-ly, for example. “We ask them to be very adaptable, flexible and handle different types of projects,” Brown says. “It’s not uncommon for a project manager to build a pipeline, do a pump station next, followed by a vapor re-covery unit. We don’t just do one type of project.” The company has put a major em-phasis on training its project manag-ers and developed a three-day project simulation class for experienced and junior project managers. “We simu-late a project from the beginning to the end that touches on every pro-cess, template, tool and requirement that a project manager needs to know

about building a project the Buckeye way,” Brown explains. “We train so they are aware of and understand each step, so when they walk out they have everything they need to accom-plish the project and know who to reach out to for help to complete a step or process.”

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BUCKEYE PARTNERS | COVER STORY

Managing projects internally, like BORCO, helps Buckeye ensure efficient speed-to-market with large terminal projects..

+ Proud To Be A Part of the Buckeye Partners Team. Buckeye Partners, L.P., owns and operates more than 100 refined petroleum products terminals, including the recently acquired Texas Dock and Rail marine loading facility in Corpus Christi, TX. As part of these facilities, the company also owns approximately 150 vapor recovery and vapor combustion units. Understandably, optimizing the performance of these systems is a complicated and vital task. That’s why we were honored when Buckeye Partners turned to John Zink Hamworthy Combustion for vapor control expertise. Acting as Vapor Program Manager, we provide engineering and field service expertise to maximize recovered product and equipment uptime, while optimizing planned maintenance to reduce overall operation expenses. By managing vapor control upgrades, retrofits, and replacements, we are also able to help Buckeye keep pace with terminal growth and stay ahead of regulatory compliance requirements.

SPEED TO MARKETOne of the most critical pieces of Buckeye’s success is its speed to market. Buckeye reduces project costs by manag-ing procurement, contracts and third-party engineering firms itself. The company has a competitive number of potential engineering firms that it works with to main-tain long-term relationships while also making sure it pays a fair price. By building its infrastructure, Buckeye has grown significantly in the past eight years. Maintaining speed to market as the company grows has become more import-ant, Brown notes. “We can’t afford to not have certain pol-icies and process in place to standardize the way we build things,” he adds. “We don’t want to bind project managers down with a lot of bureaucracy, rather we strive to imple-ment new processes and standard practices to complete projects safely while meeting aggressive timelines.” EMI

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BUCKEYE PARTNERS | COVER STORY

Perth Amboy railway that is part of the crude oil delivery system..

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COVER STORY | BUCKEYE TEXAS PROCESSINGSummer 2015

Quality Infrastructure

Buckeye Partners gains a significant presence in the Gulf Coast and adds to its goal of operating more marine terminals after its acquisition of a mid-stream platform in Texas.

BY JANICE HOPPE

Buckeye Partners , L.P. oversaw 1,500 capital projects last year – both maintenance and revenue producing – expanding up to more than $200 million. Over the past four years it has spent $1 billion on capital projects, says Steve White, vice president of engineering.

As part of its expansion into marine terminals, Buckeye acquired the Bahamas Oil Refining Company International (BORCO) in 2010 for approximately $1.7 billion. Located 80 miles from the Florida coast along the Northwest Providence Channel of The Grand Bahama Island, BORCO is one of the largest crude oil and petroleum products storage terminal in the world and the largest petroleum products facility in the Caribbean. The BORCO terminal offers customers storage, berthing, heating, transshipment, blending, treating, bunkering and ancillary services.

The facility had total installed stor-age capacity of 21.4 million barrels and after a significant two-year expan-sion project, Buckeye added about 4.7 million barrels of flexible petroleum storage. “Instead of developing a com-pletely virgin area, we expanded with-in the existing footprint and were able to achieve significant cost reduction,” Senior Project Manager Clint John-son says. “One thing Buckeye does well is phase in our work so that we don’t wait until everything is designed before we begin construction. The phased-in approach achieves results faster than we would have otherwise.” “This project was a great project. It was very comprehensive and challeng-ing,” White notes. “It was really the big step-out project for Buckeye.” The marine infrastructure of

BORCO consists of three deep-water jetties that are about 4,000 feet from the shoreline. These jetties are capable of berthing the largest liquid petro-leum carriers. BORCO also included an inland dock with a 650-foot berth located in Freeport Harbor. Buckeye oversaw the refurbishment of the jetties and inland dock renova-tions that included the build-out of a new berth. Both projects combined were close to a $200 million capital investment. One of the major challenges Buckeye overcame during the BORCO proj-ect was sourcing materials, because materials are not as readily available internationally. “We can’t run down to the local hardware store or industrial supplier, so we were forced to plan ahead,” White notes. “This project was

all about planning to ensure we didn’t run into those issues.” Buckeye maximized the use of local labor in the Bahamas in addition to its supplemental resources from outside the island. “We are very pleased with the successful partnerships we devel-oped with our Bahamian colleagues,” White notes. In fact, the company partnered with a pipe fabricator in the Bahamas and used the same company two years later

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BUCKEYE TEXAS PROCESSING | COVER STORY

Delivering the manifold system to Perth Amboy..

+ TF Warren/Tarsco Tarsco has been an industrial tank contractor for over 30 years and currently serves the Western Hemisphere with expertise in storage tanks and terminals for the oil and gas industry. As an approved contractor for the project, Tarsco was proud to be selected to engineer, fabricate, construct, insulate, and field coat 3.2 million barrels of storage for the terminal in Corpus Christi, TX including storage for propane, butane, crude oil, and other products. Tarsco looks forward to working with Buckeye Partners on future solutions to meet the important needs of the oil and gas industry.

when it acquired the Perth Amboy facil-ity in New Jersey. This was one of the few times a company in the Bahamas had fabricated large industrial equipment for ship-ment to the United States.

STRATEGIC ACQUISITIONSPerth Amboy sits on about 250 acres and is located six miles from Buckeye’s Linden, N.J., complex. It features more than four million barrels of storage and four docks, as well as pipeline, rail and truck access. Buckeye acquired the property in 2012 for $260 million from Chevron U.S.A. Inc., which continues to be a key customer. Perth Amboy was a strategic move for the company because the terminal is located on the New York Harbor, a major trading hub that provides the company with direct access to interna-tional and U.S. Gulf Coast petroleum products imports. “We are excited to bring this stra-tegic facility into Buckeye’s portfolio of assets,” CEO Clark C. Smith said at the time of the acquisition. “We ex-pect its integration into our network to proceed quickly and smoothly, and we intend to initiate our planned commercialization activities imme-diately. The Perth Amboy terminal should provide Buckeye with security and diversity of product supply by di-rectly linking our domestic pipeline and terminal network to an owned

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BUCKEYE TEXAS PROCESSING | COVER STORY

New manifold and pump installations at Perth Amboy..

+ Since 1956, Coonrod Electric Co., LLC has been a trusted turn-key industrial contractor providing electrical and instrumentation services to a variety of oilfield and industrial companies. Our mode of operation and combined management expertise of over two centuries has established a leading reputa-tion of quality craftsmanship, safety and integrity on every job throughout Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Mexico. Currently, Coonrod Electric is proud to play a key role in one of the fastest growing markets of the Gulf Coast by providing such services and expertise to Buckeye Partners, LP in the construction and continued development of the Texas Hub, Texas Processing and Texas Field Services terminals.

Buckeye acquired BORCO, which is one of the largest crude oil and petroleum products storage terminal in the world..

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BUCKEYE TEXAS PROCESSING | COVER STORY

and operated marine facility through a new 16-inch pipeline to be built to our Linden complex.” Buckeye rebuilt the dock facilities,

installed a new rail facility, replaced the internal piping and constructed incremental storage capacity at Perth Amboy. “It was completely modern-

ized with state-of-the-art systems and took a total of two years to com-plete from inception to completion,” Johnson adds. One of the major takeaways from the Perth Amboy project was the importance of developing good partnerships with local stakehold-ers, including trade unions and local government. “We had a lot of success gathering a coalition of people who were extremely supportive of our proj-ect that we could draw on for expertise and assistance,” Johnson says.

CORPUS CHRISTIBuckeye last summer acquired a ma-jority interest in a mid-stream plat-form in the Gulf Coast with long-term committed revenues and significant opportunities for further growth. The Corpus Christi, Texas-based facility was attractive because of its location.

+ Lord Construction Services Dba Lord Contractors, Lord Construction Services is an industrial and com-mercial construction corporation established in the state of Delaware, currently doing work in the state of Texas for the Petroleum Distribution Industry and pursuing major construction business in the rest of the nation. Lord traces its origins to Frederic W. Lord, a student from M. I. T. and a visionary in the elec-trical engineering field, who founded Lord Electric Company in 1895, in Boston, Massachusetts. Since then, Lord has maintained its commitment to quality and innovation as a tribute to its founder. Lord has a well-established record of quality work during its 120 years of existence in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, in almost every market of the construction industry: commercial, industrial, institutional, state and federal government buildings, pharmaceutical process and biochemicals, communications, power lines, transpor-tation infrastructure, power generating plants, re-newable energy, petroleum product terminals, water processing plants, and the oil and gas industry. The quality, integrity and efficiency of Lord Construction Services cannot be written into a contract, but they are well remembered long after the work is done.

+ Mirage Industrial Group, LLC Mirage Industrial Group was founded in 1999 as a company specializing in structural concrete. Today, Mirage is recognized construction leader providing a broad range of ser-vices in numerous markets, including process facilities, heavy commercial, oil and gas industry, and power. As a specialty contractor in heavy civil, mechan-ical and structural steel, customers rely on Mirage’s meticulously maintained equipment, proven project management procedures and sound financial resources for excellent results. And our highly skilled craftsman and project managers stand ready to tack-le even the largest of challenges. Whatever project you may need accomplished, we have the capability and experience to handle the job at Mirage Industrial Group, LLC.

“For the first time this gives us a significant presence in the Gulf Coast area,” Director of Engineering Lewis Collings says. “The facility in Texas was significant to us in our marine terminal strategy that includes BORCO and Perth Amboy, and now Corpus Christi.” Buckeye’s Texas hub is a deep-water marine terminal on the Corpus Christi Ship Channel. Its five vessel berths in-clude three deep-water docks, and the facility is equipped for rail and truck loading and unloading. This facility also allows Buckeye to expand its services to include some processing. “One of the things that is unique about the facility is that it is not just a processing facility, but we have a world-class LPG storage facility that can be shipped by water,” White notes. The Corpus Christi hub is under construction and will be completed in phases. A 50,000-barrel-per-day condensate splitter is under construction and in a May 1, 2015 confer-ence call, Buckeye indicated the splitter is anticipated to be completed in 2015. After the splitter is completed, Buckeye will then begin operations under a seven-year agreement with a global commodities trading firm. Three field gathering facilities with associated storage and pipeline connectivity will allow Buckeye to move Eagle Ford crude and condensate production directly to the terminal complex in Corpus Christi. After completion of the initial development phase, the hub will form an integrated system with connectivity from the

production in the field to the marine terminal infrastructure in Corpus Christi, creating a premier logistics platform with significant flexibility and optionality. The facility will offer about 5.6 million barrels of liquid petroleum products stor-age capacity. Buckeye is expected to invest about $300 million in this project. “We believe these strategic assets will provide signif-icant opportunities for additional infrastructure expansion to support further expected growth in these markets,” says Smith. After completing BORCO, Perth Amboy and now working on the Corpus Christi terminal, Buckeye looks forward to continued growth. “Growth is a very key part of our overall goals,” White says. “Our role is project execution and making sure we execute on small and large projects. Our team fully expects we will remain busy with additional expansion and other capital investment opportunities down the road.” EMI

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BUCKEYE TEXAS PROCESSING | COVER STORY

Corpus Christi will offer about 5.6 million barrels of liquid petroleum storage capacity..

+ PMI (Palacios Marine and Industrial) PMI is committed to being the best con-tractor and service provider possible. To be the best, we recognize that we must provide world class safety, exceptional quality craftsmanship and a productive workforce to Buckeye, along with an opportunity for all of our team members to excel in a working environment that emphasizes safe behavior and safe working conditions. Buckeye has contracted the services of PMI to help construct their world class terminals. Our relationship with Buckeye has experienced steady growth throughout the construction of the BTP and BTH projects. The discipline and structure provided by the on-site Buckeye Project Management team has been instrumental in successfully bringing these facilities on line and has contributed to our success as one of their core General Contractors.

The condensate splitter under construction in Corpus Christi..