Golf


Formed in 1913, Milford Haven Golf Club has enjoyed a long and mutually-beneficial relationship with those who use the adjacent waterway and its shores for sports, leisure and industrial purposes. Mike Bird visits a course whose maintenance needs occasionally lie a little deeper than normal


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aid out in a spectacular and historic waterside location, Milford Haven Golf Club is reminded, from time to time, that it shares its little patch of Pembrokeshire with an industry that is very much part of the modern age.


That industry is centred on energy, helping make Milford Haven the UK’s third largest port handling, each year, more than twenty percent of the country’s energy requirements in the form of crude and refined oil, liquid petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas. Milford Haven’s natural deep-water estuary makes it an ideal place to dock and unload the mighty sea-going oil carriers that bring in raw materials to be processed by the two oil refineries operating on the shores of the estuary - Valero on the south side and Murco on


the north, less than a mile from the golf course’s clubhouse.


Both crude oil and the refined end-


products are pumped to and from the jetties through a network of pipes, fourteen of which lie buried deep beneath Milford Haven Golf Club, unseen and undisturbed until essential pipe maintenance is required. The need for maintenance is determined by Murco refinery’s maintenance team using a portable scanning device known as a PIG, the acronym for pipeline inspection gauge. Inserted through purpose-designed hatches, the PIG travels the length of a pipe detecting and recording defects, which are then assessed by skilled oil industry technicians as to the urgency and timing of repair. Normally taking three to four weeks


It can be a PIG of a job!


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