PIPELINE TECHNICIAN HELPS KEEP FUEL FLOWING THROUGH THE REGION

ORAN -- If you buy gasoline or diesel fuel from gas stations in Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois, chances are David Sturgeon had a hand in making sure you got the fuel.

Sturgeon works for Texas Eastern Transmission Corp. Texas Eastern moves petroleum products through its 16-to-24-inch pipelines that provide natural gas to heat homes and run industries and gasoline and other fuels to run vehicles.

Sturgeon is a maintenance technician with Texas Eastern's products division pump station south of Oran. The station is one of many pump and compressor stations that straddle the huge pipelines that carry natural gas, gasoline, diesel fuel and other petroleum products from the oil and gas fields of Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, to the Midwest and Northeastern areas of the United States.

Sturgeon's job is to make sure giant pumps along the pipeline stay in operation to push over 180,000 gallons of products through the pipeline each hour. Some of the products are taken out of the pipeline at Texas Eastern's Cape Girardeau bulk terminal near the Mississippi River east of Scott City.

Every day hundreds of gas tanker trucks line up at the bulk terminal plant to take on loads of gasoline or diesel fuel that will eventually end up in trucks and cars in the region.

The Oran compressor station gets its name from the huge compressors on the west side of the plant site. The compressors are similar to air compressor, except they recompress the natural gas as it moves through the pipeline. The compressors are operated by employees of Texas Eastern's gas division, which is separate from the products division.

Sturgeon's first job after his discharge from the Air Force was temporary summer work as a member of a maintenance gang in Texas Eastern's gas products division. The work consisted of keeping the company's pipeline rights of way near his hometown of Seymour, Ind., clear of undergrowth and maintaining a series of valves along the pipeline.

Sixteen years ago Sturgeon was transferred from Indiana to the company's Oran compressor station a few miles south of Oran on Highway 77.

Sturgeon says about 75 percent of his work consists of replacing seals and thrust bearings on the pipeline pumps he maintains at the station. Sturegon is the only employee of the products division at Oran, so he stays busy five days a week keeping the pumps and auxiliary equipment in running order.

When he's not busy at the Oran station, Sturgeon is on the road inspecting and maintaining the products pipeline equipment from Oran to northeast Arkansas.

Sturgeon normally works from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, but he carries a radio pager in case of trouble. Nowadays, that's not very often; he said the number of off-duty calls from the pager has dropped considerably since he arrived at Oran 16 years ago.

"It was pretty bad at first," he said. "I was always getting a call on some kind of problem with the equipment. But since then, the number of calls has really gone down; maybe one call a month, and that's usually something simple like resetting a relay. Five minutes work and you're gone again."

When he and his family moved to Oran they lived in company-owned housing at the compressor station. In 1982 the company decided it was less expensive to have its employees live elsewhere. Sturgeon says it was a good idea.

"When you live where you work you never really get away from your work," he said. "Now, when I go home, I can really leave my work and go home."

Sturgeon lives in nearby Benton with his wife and three children: a daughter, 18, who is in college, and sons, ages 14 and 11.

Despite his busy schedule Sturgeon finds time for his family and Benton American Legion Post 369, where is post adjutant. Sturgeon received two Purple Hearts for combat service in the Air Force in Vietnam.

The Sturgeon family is also a scouting family. He's cubmaster of Pack 36 in Benton and his wife is den mother of one of the dens in the pack. Their oldest son is in Boy Scouts while the youngest is finishing Cub Scouts preparing to go into Boy Scouts.

Sturgeon said he and his family love Southeast Missouri, particularly the Benton-Oran area. He said the terrain and friendly people here remind him of the rural setting of his hometown of Seymour, which is about 60 miles north of the Ohio River, halfway between Indianapolis and Louisville, Ky.

Sturgeon said one thing he particularly likes about this area is the hunting and fishing, which he enjoys with his two boys.

"I wouldn't want to leave this area," he said. "I hope to be able to retire from Texas Eastern and stay right here in Southeast Missouri."