March 2025, Vol. 252, No. 3
Features
INGAA Foundation Chair Sees ‘Extremely Bright’ Infrastructure Outlook
By Michael Reed, Editor-in-Chief
(P&GJ) — As new chair of the INGAA Foundation, Kim Tarr brings a wealth of experience to her latest role in the pipeline industry.
As the long-time vice president of Engineering & Construction with Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, she is a leading force with a company that owns about 14,385 mi of natural gas and NGL pipelines and operates transportation services across several states.
At Boardwalk, she is responsible for strategic direction and oversight for engineering and construction, as well as project conception and design, among other things.
Tarr has also worked at AGL Resources as managing director, serving as lead for the Golden Triangle Storage development. Previously, she served as a transmission engineer at Williams Gas Pipelines.
In this interview with P&GJ, the INGAA Foundation chair discusses her introduction to the INGAA Foundation, the outlook for natural gas infrastructure and the current relationship between owners and contractors, among other topics.
P&GJ: Where are you from originally, and how did you decide on a career in the oil and gas industry?
Kim Tarr: I grew up in South Carolina but, oddly, ended up going to Rice University in Houston, Texas, for my undergraduate degree in civil engineering. With the strong oil and gas presence in this city, it was a natural fit to end up in this industry. I landed my first job out of school at M.W. Kellogg, a predecessor company to KBR, where I helped engineer petrochemical infrastructure. A few years later I made a move to a natural gas pipeline operator, and I never looked back!
P&GJ: What led to your involvement in INGAA Foundation?
Tarr: About 10 years ago, I had a mentor at Boardwalk who encouraged me to start attending Foundation meetings, as a way to make a bigger impact on the industry and build relationships across the natural gas value chain. During my time with the Foundation, I have become involved with the Quality and Integrity Committee and lead projects through the planning and studies process, such as the Pipeline Tie-In Quality video. All in all, it has been an amazing and rewarding experience for me.
P&GJ: How has your participation in INGAA Foundation contributed toward your career success?
Tarr: My involvement in the INGAA Foundation has contributed greatly to my career success by presenting numerous opportunities to demonstrate leadership and speak on industry topics such as project outlooks and supporting the Foundation’s Leading Mental Health initiative.
Additionally, it has enabled me to build lasting relationships with peers and service providers which have proven invaluable when navigating challenges or accessing critical value chain information.
Bringing valuable information and insights back to my home organization has been instrumental in driving our initiatives forward and enhancing our strategic direction.
P&GJ: What are your primary goals for the INGAA Foundation during your term as Chair this year?
Tarr: Continue to support the four strategic goals/pillars:
- Convene Members and Industry Partners
- Innovate Solutions
- Engage with Stakeholders, Policymakers, and Communities
- Leadership and Workforce Development
The INGAA Foundation is focused on being the industry’s think-tank; throughout my time as Chair, I hope to see the membership create research that benefits the industry and increase utilization of that research.
P&GJ: When you talk to members, where do they see the greatest opportunity?
Tarr: Demand for affordable, reliable energy is growing precipitously in the United States. In 2023, natural gas consumption in the U.S. reached a new high, according to the EIA, and usage continued to grow for the first nine months of 2024. That growth was driven by a 6.7% (2.2 Bcfd) increase in consumption from the electric power sector, which is the largest natural gas-consuming sector.
That spike in demand is a huge opportunity for our industry, which is ready to build the infrastructure necessary to meet that demand. The Trump administration has set ambitious goals around energy leadership, and we look forward to working with our partners at INGAA to ensure that our industry can meet the moment and build the infrastructure necessary to meet growing demand.
P&GJ: What INGAA Foundation studies can we look forward to seeing this year?
Tarr: Before answering your question directly, I want to make sure that readers understand that the INGAA Foundation conducts projects and studies both for consumption by the public and sometimes for internal member use only.
On the public-facing side, we are excited to announce that in 2025 we are conducting our infrastructure study. The INGAA Foundation infrastructure study is a flagship piece of research conducted roughly every five years by the INGAA Foundation that analyzes demand and consumption and predicts the amount of infrastructure that will be necessary to meet those targets in the following 10 years.
Additionally, we have a report being released that will look at emissions mitigation considerations for natural gas pipelines, and we are releasing the final piece of our youth advocacy toolkit, which is a collection of tools that can be used by parents, teachers, or community-members to teach young people about the value that our industry provides.
We also have several members-only reports that will be published this year, such as:
- Cyber-Informed Engineering & Consequence-Driven Cyber-Informed Engineering for Pipeline Safety Equipment
- Contractor & Operator Geohazard Workshop – Identification & Remediation
- Highlighting Workforce Development & Outreach Opportunities in Women and Minority Populations
P&GJ: How has the INGAA Foundation focused on methane reductions?
Tarr: Emissions reductions and environmental stewardship are part of our industry’s license to operate. In fact, in 2023, the INGAA Foundation updated our mission and vision to incorporate emissions reductions and to broaden our membership to include complementary clean energy companies.
Additionally, in recent years, we have had several studies that focused on environmental stewardship and reducing the emissions from our assets that were member-only, and this year, we are doing the first public study to address emission mitigation for natural gas pipelines.
P&GJ: How have you seen the relationship between service companies and operators change in recent years?
Tarr: Today, I see operators and service providers putting aside their respective agendas and thinking more in terms of “we.” How do “we,” together, solve the challenges facing our industry.
Whether it looks like service providers asking how they can use their voice to amplify operators’ messaging to policymakers, or like operators asking service providers to weigh in on designs to ensure they can be safely constructed, while minimizing the impact to the environment, there is a lot of collaboration and communication across the value chain. And the Foundation presents a unique forum that allows operators and service providers to work side by side, on equal footing, to take on the challenges that face our industry.
P&GJ: What is INGAA’s outlook for pipeline construction over the next two years?
Tarr: The outlook for natural gas infrastructure development is extremely bright. With increasing global demand for LNG exports and expanding power generation needs driven by A.I. datacenter buildouts, there is a tremendous opportunity to expand our systems to bring gas from production basins to end users.
We saw several large-scale system expansions reach Final Investment Decision in 2024, and I expect that trend to continue in 2025. Of course, our permitting timelines will push many of these projects towards a 2027–2029 construction timeline.
P&GJ: Are there any new or pending pieces of legislation that the INGAA Foundation is giving special attention?
Tarr: The Foundation does not advocate. However, we support INGAA in its advocacy efforts and, right now, we look forward to helping them advance permitting reform and pipeline safety reauthorization.
P&GJ: How is the INGAA Foundation helping the industry attract younger people to the workforce?
Tarr: With the tremendous growth we are seeing in expanding natural gas infrastructure, the industry needs a continuous pipeline of talent flowing into our companies. We are facing a workforce shortage, and we need to attract new, younger talent to our industry — in the trades as well as in professional and technical career tracts.
To attract that next generation of talent, we need to tell the story about the environmental, affordability, and reliability benefits of our industry, and to reiterate both that we aren’t going anywhere, and that the world will continue to rely on natural gas for the foreseeable future. I am proud to work in our industry because I understand these things, and I think that if we can tell that story to the next generation of talent, they would be proud to work in our industry as well.
One of our strategic imperatives is Outreach, Workforce Development and Leadership. Our efforts in these areas include developing fact-based messaging that we can share with younger generations, to help grow their understanding of the critical role our industry plays in meeting their everyday needs, while also sharing with the general public that the natural gas industry is innovative, creative and safe and that we are stewards of the environment.
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