Colorado Engineering Experiment Station, Inc.

Starting in 1951, the Engineering Experiment Station was a program run by the University of Colorado designed for small rocket research and development. The facility tested turbine meters for the Naval Ordnance Test Station located in China Lake, California. In 1966, Dr. Tom Arnberg of the Mechanical Engineering Department aided in moving the facility to Nunn, Colorado, to separate from the university. The new facility, which used to be an Atlas nuclear missile silo, was renamed the Colorado Engineering Experiment Station, Inc. (or "CEESI" for short) and operated as a nonprofit research and testing facility until 1986.

In 1986, Walt Seidl and Steve Caldwell purchased the organization and reopened it as a commercial test facility. CEESI expanded the Colorado facility with the addition of the Wet Gas Test Facility in 1998 and the Iowa Natural Gas Facility in 1999.

Iowa

CEESI's Iowa facility, in Clear Lake, is located on a custody transfer location owned by the Northern Border Pipeline Company. This facility flows 1-2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. The natural gas used for CEESI meter calibrations is diverted from the Northern Border pipeline, then repressurized and returned into the pipeline after calibrations are completed. The Iowa facility began offering commercial calibrations in April 1999. The first meter calibrated at the Iowa facility was a 12-inch Instromet ultrasonic meter in March 1999. All of the instruments involved in the scale-up were controlled by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) staff and were calibrated using NIST's quality control processes. This scale-up calibration process is repeated regularly in accordance with NIST quality procedures. Flow meter calibration end users have the option to pay NIST to supervise calibrations; these calibrations qualify as NIST calibrations.

Wet Gas

In March 1997, several energy companies formed a Joint Industry Project (JIP) to collectively fund research on gas metering, specifically for wet gas. The project was funded by member companies and the Gas Research Institute for three years. In 1998, CEESI constructed the Wet Gas Test Facility to facilitate flow meter testing on wet or unprocessed natural gas.