Dear business and industry friends, welcome to our September issue of BIC Magazine — your business, industry and community connection.
For those of you who may not know or who may have forgotten, the name of our parent company is the Business & Industry Communication Alliance. Since 1980 when we launched Videoscan, a video production and training company and 1981 when we launched Training Coordinator Magazine, the forerunner of BIC Magazine, our mission at BIC Alliance has been to connect key decision makers in business and industry with each other, the community and your suppliers for the betterment of all.
In order to help better connect our BIC readers and suppliers, we have used and continue to use a wide range of communication tools including magazines and books, online, video, webinars, trade shows and conferences, community relations and networking events. Some of our energy companies, universities and entrepreneurs have even begun producing and/or sponsoring Hollywood style movies and documentaries like “Haynesville: A Nation’s Hunt for an Energy Future,” “American Made Movie,” the Rational Middle® Energy Series funded by Shell and the Pembina Institute and “Energy At The Movies” produced by the Webber Energy Group.
I’m sharing this with you because there is a manufacturing renaissance taking place in America and the partnership among business, industry and the media will play a major role in maintaining this momentum. In our August issue of BIC Magazine, my partner Thomas Brinsko wrote in his “From The Publisher” about the U.S.A. becoming the largest producer of oil in the world and that general manufacturing in the U.S. has made a significant rebound as investments are being made in everything from steel factories to fertilizer plants due in part to cheap shale production.
Side by side with Thomas’ article in our August issue was an article titled “Unconventional revolution rapidly unfolding” wherein world-renowned energy expert Dr. Daniel Yergin, vice president of IHS, said this unconventional revolution supported more than 2.1 million jobs in 2012. Dr. Yergin goes on to say the petroleum industry and these various companies have committed many billions of dollars to additional investments in the U.S. I want to stress one of the primary reasons Dr. Yergin is recognized as a world-renowned leader not only in energy but also in publishing and filmmaking is because he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Prize” in 2008, which led to one of the best and most watched energy-related documentaries in the world.
Over the years, “The Prize” was one of the books and movie documentaries we have recommended more than any other in BIC Magazine. Now, thanks to a renaissance in energy coupled with expansion of cable television and programs like Netflix, we are seeing some of the best energy-related movies and documentaries since the ’50s and ’60s when movies like “Giant,” “Tulsa” and “Hellfighters,” the story of Red Adair that was portrayed by John Wayne, were produced. Also, thanks to globalization, American-made movies are being watched and purchased around the world. In fact, “movies that travel,” like documentaries, family movies and movies with redeeming values, are estimated to generate as much as 70 percent of total sales outside the U.S.
Before wrapping up, I want to share some interesting facts I ran across while preparing for this column. For many of us who were involved in the energy sector before 1970 we can remember the challenges we faced with safety and environmental conditions. What many folks do not remember is that it was during the Richard Nixon Administration EPA was founded in 1970 and OSHA was founded in 1971. For many it is hard to believe Nixon, one of the left’s most despised figures, was the person who created EPA and OSHA. It is also hard to imagine today such strong bipartisan support it took to make 1970 and 1971 a historic period by which by conscious choice we began transferring our land to become what we want it to be.
Since OSHA was established in 1971, workplace fatalities have been cut by 62 percent and injuries and illness by 40 percent. In the same time period, employment has doubled from 56 million at 3.5 million worksites to 115 million at over 7 million worksites. We have also witnessed the transition from watching 16 millimeter training films to Super 8 movies and then video to where we are today with energy companies, suppliers and even publishers producing our own training, marketing and community relations movies with in-house video channels, showing videos on our websites and even joining forces to co-produce energy-related movies and documentaries we can share with each other and, in some cases, a world audience.
In this issue, we share with you interviews with Calumet Specialty Products Partners LP President and COO Jennifer G. Straumins, BASF Vice President and Site Manager George Vann, Canadian Heavy Oil Association President Kym Fawcett, The Water Institute of the Gulf President and CEO Charles “Chip” Groat, Domestic Energy Producers Alliance President Mike McDonald, The JV Driver Group Inc. President Roger Gossett and Satellite Shelters Inc. Director of Blast-Resistant Module Development Michele Sevchek.
We also include the latest information on industry hot topics like crude by rail and work force development, and best practices in maintenance, safety, reliability and more.
As always, we invite you to share this issue of BIC with your colleagues, friends and family. For those who are interested in knowing what BIC Media Solutions, our custom publishing, event planning and media partnership company, is doing to help our BIC readers and marketing partners expand their media, online, social media, film or video capability, you may want to check out our BIC Media Solutions article in each issue of BIC or visit BICMagazine.com.