Contents Under Pressure is a comprehensive picture of the business process of Natural Gas Transportation. Beginning with a high-level introductory overview of natural gas and the transportation business, the book then dives deep into the details of daily business and how it is conducted, culminating in a comprehensive glossary. This book covers the transportation business process of contracting, nominations, confirmations, scheduling, measurement, allocations, imbalances and invoicing. Deep dive topics include segmentation, flow day redirects, capacity release, the nomination model types and the lesser of rule. "The Transportation sector of the Natural Gas business has never been covered so comprehensively in one place. This is the book that natural gas has needed for a long time. Sylvia has distilled decades of experience into an informative and readable book. This book has much to offer everyone in the business, regardless of their level of experience." Rusty Braziel, RBN Energy "This is the reference book every QA person needs to be an effective natural-gas pipeline tester. I have Trading Natural Gas by Fletcher Sturm for my marketing clients and now I have Contents Under Pressure by Sylvia Munson for my pipeline and transportation clients." Opral Wisham, IT Quality Assurance Consultant "This will become required reading for all Latitude employees." Leigh Spangler, President, Latitude Software "This book is two books in one. It covers the basics of the gas industry for someone who wants to understand the business, and it covers in-depth workings of the industry for someone who has a good working knowledge of their area and wants to know more. I have 20+ years in the Natural Gas business, and I learned new things from this book." Jeff O'Block, Chorus Solutions Who is this book for? This book is for anyone who wants to understand the transportation of natural gas. It is for business people who work in a specific area of the gas business and want to understand what their counterparts do. It is for support staff, such as legal and IT people, who want to understand the business that is being conducted in the areas they support. It is for experts in the industry who may want to round out their knowledge. It is for anyone. In my career, I have had the opportunity to teach many people - mainly IT people - about the natural gas business. It amazes me how many people work in various business groups in our industry and do what they are told by someone without truly understanding the nature of the business they are supporting. Others have worked in their specific area of the business for several years, but do not have an understanding of the processes of the business as a whole. Understanding the business allows everyone to ask the right questions and to interpret the gaps in information in a much more successful manner. In the last 19 years of my career, since the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) first adopted the standards of the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) (aka Gas Industry Standards Board (GISB)) as operational standards for the interstate gas industry, I have had the opportunity to teach many people about the standards. I have found that, in many cases, an understanding of the North American natural gas business must be taught first, so that the NAESB standards make sense. This book comes from the heart. I love to teach. I love the natural gas industry. I find it a very interesting industry to be a part of because it incorporates so many different types of people and processes. There's the chemistry side of things - natural gas is methane or CH4, plus a host of secondary components. There's the engineering side with pipelines and flow-control valves. There's the geology side with exploration and drilling. There's the financial side with trading and risk and hedging. My list could go on and on. But really, the gas industry consists of a lot of real people who are trying to make sure that they keep your house warm in the winter and your gas grill working well in the summer. Good people doing a great job. I based this book on the North American gas business - primarily the business in the United States. It focuses on the transactions and interactions required to transport gas from its point of origin to the burner on your heater or grill. Getting the gas from the well to your burner may require many transactions, many different business parties, and must comply with many regulations in the lifecycle of that gas flow. One of the fun aspects of the natural gas business is that it is always changing. Technology changes in exploration, production, and transportation create new opportunities, cause market shifts and cause companies to create new services to utilize those shifts. Additionally, the computer-technology changes that are constantly added to the market place create opportunities to see the business in a different way. On top of that, the Federal rules governing th