Official web site of the Western Energy Alliance

Get more value from your IPAMS membership

Each year, professional trade organizations like IPAMS ask you for financial support.  This year, we also encourage you to get more value from your membership.

IPAMS volunteer leaders and professional staff were able to save the natural gas and oil industry here in the Intermountain West over $9 billion during 2009. Even so, we know we could do more if we were able to better leverage the voices of the 260,000 natural gas and oil employees in our region.  Our future success depends on an actively involved and deeply informed membership.  Likewise, the greatest challenge we face is effectively communicating with our members’ employees across our region.

With over 400 member companies in every sector of natural gas and oil development, IPAMS is now one of the largest and most effective natural gas and oil trade associations in the country.  Nevertheless, I am deeply concerned that our workforce doesn’t appreciate the extent to which federal and state policies currently under consideration could impact our region.  Policies that saddle the Intermountain West with greater uncertainty and higher costs will discourage investment and long-term growth.  Engaging our industry’s employees is critical to help our region succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace for natural gas and oil.

There are a number of quick and painless ways that you take full advantage of IPAMS membership:

1. Sign-up to receive updates and action alerts
2. Encourage your employees to sign-up to and receive updates (If your company is a member, your employees are members too!)
3. Get involved in one of our many committees or social networks
4. Attend an IPAMS event
5. Invite other companies to join IPAMS and consider upgrading your company membership

For more specifics on increasing the value of your IPAMS Membership, please read below.

Sign-up to receive updates

Please create (or update) your user profile on the Members Only section of our website, http://member.westernenergyalliance.org/public/.  After you have successfully logged in, please make sure that we have all of your current information in the Manage Account feature on the left side of the page.   There, you can add your preferences including name, title, address, username/password and decide which IPAMS messages you’d like to opt-in/out of. If you have any questions or trouble logging in, please call us at (303) 623-0987.

Once you are on the Manage Account page, you can choose which services you’d like to subscribe to, such as:

• Daily Newsbrief (a daily posting of industry-specific news articles)
• IPAMS newsletter Wildcatter Weekly
• Marc Smith’s Weekly Message (which includes important industry action alert notifications)
• Basin-specific Advisory Networks
• Environment & Air Quality Issues
• Government & Public Affairs Issues
• Market trends
• Tax Issues
• Wildlife Updates

Get involved in a Committee or Social Network

As an IPAMS member, you are also invited to participate on our committees, where your expertise and experience is needed.  Below are the IPAMS standing committees that support the efforts of our professional staff:

• Government & Public Affairs Committee (Vice President- Tim Hopkins, Black Hills Exploration)
  • IPAMS Basin Advisory Networks focus on basin and state-specific issues. By assigning task forces to manage issues for each region, IPAMS is able to monitor activities in the active basins in the region with input from Board-appointed State Vice Presidents.
    • Colorado State Vice President – Pam Roth, Williams
    • Montana State Vice President – Bruce Bowman, Fidelity Exploration & Production Co.
    • Nebraska State Vice President – Phil Kriz, Evertson Oil Company
    • New Mexico State Vice President – T. Greg Merrion, Merrion Oil & Gas
    • North and South Dakota State Vice President – Brent Miller, Whiting Petroleum Corp.
    • Utah State Vice President – Brad Miller, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation
    • Wyoming State Vice President – Randy Bolles, Devon Energy Corporation
• Crude Oil Markets Committee (Vice President – John Benton, El Paso E&P Company, L.P.)
• Membership Committee (Vice President – Bill Lancaster, GMT, Inc.)
• Events Committee (Vice President – Jeff Lang, Samuel Gary, Jr. & Associaties, Inc.)
• Natural Gas Markets Committee (Vice President – Porter Bennett, Bentek Energy LLC)
• Natural Gas Transportation Committee (Vice President – Greg Ruben, El Paso – Western Pipelines)
• Banking & Finance Committee (Chairman – Daria Mahoney, U.S. Bank National Association)
• Legislative, Legal & Regulatory Committee (Chairman – Shane Schulz, Questar Market Resources, Inc.)
• Air Quality Subcommittee (Chairman- Phil Schlagel, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation)
• Tax Subcommittee (Chairman – Bryan Pratt, Ehrhardt Keffe Steiner & Hottman PC)
• Wildlife Subcommittee (Chairman – Joe Icenogle, Fidelity Exploration & Production Company)

For those of you who understand the power of social media networks, I strongly encourage you to become connected on IPAMS Facebook page, or receive updates from our Twitter feed.

Attend an IPAMS event

IPAMS hosts numerous meetings and events throughout the year. Please be sure to stay up to date with important industry issues by attending IPAMS regularly scheduled meetings, speaker series, workshops, and conferences focusing on regional, national, and global outlooks, marketing, transportation, technology, and other current issues. Please mark your calendar for the following 2010 events and check our Meetings and Events page often:

• IPAMS Board of Directors’ Meeting, January 27, 2010 at the Brown Palace, Denver, CO
• 2010 Washington, D.C. Call-Up, March 1-3, 2010 (Click here to register)
• Wildcatter of the Year Gala, May 15, 2010, in downtown Denver, CO
• IPAMS Annual Meeting & Summer Conference, June 23-25, Park Hyatt, Beaver Creek, CO

Invite a company you work with to join or consider upgrading your membership.

The Intermountain West is home to thousands of companies that derive a livelihood from the natural gas and oil industry.  Consider asking one of the contractors or vendors you work with to join IPAMS.  To find out if a company is already a member, use your log in and password to search IPAMS membership directory (http://member.westernenergyalliance.org/public/core/directory.aspx?&iSession=8e2b6982b2474bc99780591487fb0d13.)

Thanks to word of mouth advertising, more than a dozen new companies have already joined IPAMS during the first three weeks of 2010.

Special thanks to IPAMS members who have recently upgraded their membership!

• Pure Energy Services (USA), Inc.
• Pioneer Natural Resources
• Jonah Gas Company, LLC
• Mesa Energy Partners
• BENTEK Energy LLC
• Tall Grass Energy Company
• Macquarie Tristone
• Denver Mineral & Royalty Company
• Petros Environmental Group, Inc.
• NVI-Nondestructive & Visual Inspection
• Albrecht & Associates

If you are the primary IPAMS contact for your company, please consider forwarding this information to all of your employees and colleagues.  The more involvement we have, the more effective advocates we will be for your company and for our industry.

If you would like to know more about IPAMS or discuss a membership upgrade, please give me a call at your earliest convenience.  Again, thank you for all that you do for IPAMS. It’s because of you that our association is bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.  We look forward to serving you in 2010!