2005 Annual Meeting

Hurricanes top discussions during successful SIGMA conference

Annual Meeting attendees enjoyed the All Industry Reception.

Attendees payed close attention to SIGMA's educational session speakers throughout the conference.

The Annual Meeting is a great place to network with the industry's top executives.

Educational sessions were well attended throughout the entire Annual Meeting.

SIGMA President Bill Shipley (right) announces Doug True (left) of Gull Industries as the recipient of SIGMA's Distinguished Marketer Award. Also shown, Ken Doyle (center), SIGMA's Executive Vice President.

More than 500 people attended the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America’s Annual Meeting at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel from Oct. 21-23, 2005 to discuss the industry’s state of affairs.

“Thanks to Sunoco, Inc., we put on a spectacular meeting here in Philadelphia,” says Annual Meeting Chairman Joe Stark. “Educational sessions were packed and everyone raved about the receptions.” Sunoco, Inc. — the official Annual Meeting Sponsor — enabled SIGMA to step it up a notch, with a lavish Dessert & Cordials party and a Supplier Welcoming Reception with special guest Richard Childress, a former NASCAR driver and current team owner.

Sunoco also opened up its Philadelphia Refinery for a tour, showing off the oldest continuously operating petroleum facility in the world. According to one meeting participant, the “Sunoco tour was outstanding!”

The most popular topic discussed during several educational sessions centered around the devastation wrought on the Gulf Coast by hurricanes Katrina and Rita — collectively dubbed Kat-Rita by one marketer — and the still-rippling effects the storms took on all segments of the oil industry.

To address the issue head-on, SIGMA held a Hurricane Katrina Roundtable workshop that enabled marketers and others to gather for a discussion on the hurricanes’ impact. Bill Sumrall, a marketer from Bay Springs, Miss., delivered the most telling story for fellow marketers, really hitting it home for many.

“Everything you would say could never happen — happened,” says Sumrall. He described how a local first-responder arrived one night at a location in a heavily damaged Mississippi town where there was no power, “fired up a generator,” and used an electric pump to pump an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 gallons of fuel from an underground tank into a tanker truck.

“They just came and took it,” says Sumrall. About a week later, he says, the same first-responder returned to that site and put approximately 3,000 gallons of unleaded regular into a tank for premium.

He told the audience that loss of power and communications heavily effected his company’s operating area and caused the most problems. With cell towers toppled, landlines out of service and most all media out of commission, ordering fuel and dispatching loads became very much rudimentary, in-person procedures. “I had no way of communicating with our common carriers or the terminals to tell them what to carry where,” Sumrall says. “We had to carry directions to the carriers.”

The common carriers were reluctant to send fuel because almost every time they dispatched a truck, FEMA would commandeer it. To find out whether his customers’ sites had power and could sell fuel if he were able to deliver it, Sumrall had to drive to the sites — when and where roads were passable — to get the answer in person.

“When I could get fuel I had no idea what it was costing,” he adds. Since pricing data was unavailable, he just went with whatever the competition was pricing. “We found out as the days went on that it was really critical to plan out where we sent fuel simply because it was mad chaos whenever a truck drove up to a location,” Sumrall says.

Announcers on local radio would report when and where a fuel truck was delivering, with a predictable reaction by drivers desperate for fuel. “We had to be real careful where we sent fuel,” Sumrall says. A drill evolved: Make sure the location could handle the delivery and the crowd it would draw, and be certain that local law enforcement would be present to maintain order. “People got pretty irritable,” Sumrall says, “waiting in long lines.”

In addition to the Katrina-related Roundtable discussion, SIGMA’s Annual Meeting featured its typical slate of educational offerings, various committee meetings and networking opportunities.

SIGMA’s most popular committee meeting, the Legislative Committee Meeting, voted unanimously to recommend to its Board of Directors that SIGMA endorse S. 1859, the boutique-fuels-reduction measure introduced by Sens. Richard Burr, RN. C., and George Allen, R-Va., which would keep the cap on the number of boutique fuels adopted as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, reduce the number of boutique fuels across the nation gradually and seek implementation of a five-fuel national slate of gasoline and diesel fuels by Dec. 31.

The Legislative Committee also recommended to the board that SIGMA support a feasibility study of a national finished-products (gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel) “reserve” creation, similar to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, for times of severe supply emergencies. Rather than endorse legislation circulating in Congress to set up a reserve, the committee directed SIGMA counsel to seek a study of the pros and cons of such a reserve from the National Petroleum Council, an industry advisory body that reports to the Secretary of Energy.

“As always, the Legislative meeting is the most valuable and informative meeting of the conference,” one participant says. “It provides updates on timely issues that affect our future and our success.” Other popular educational sessions showed included the ULSD Workshop, the Biodiesel Workshop and Achieving Growth in Your Business with Jeff De Cagna — a Flint Hills Resources sponsored session. Many of these sessions demanded standing room only from meeting participants and received favorable comments. One participant says, “Jeff De Cagna’s presentation was very insightful and useful.”

The informal gatherings and receptions provided attendees with the opportunity to network and mingle with old and new friends — easily voted the most-valuable aspect of the SIGMA Annual Meeting by attendees. “The informal gatherings were very lively and everyone was very gracious and friendly,” says another participant. “I found it extremely comfortable discussing anything and meeting individuals from the industry.”

SIGMA’s Closing Luncheon speaker Jim Tunney, a former National Football League referee turned motivational speaker, delivered an upbeat message giving many marketers new insight on the teamwork they’ve built within SIGMA and their respective companies. “Jim Tunney was a great finish to the convention,” someone wrote in the evaluation survey.