(55av) Refinery Flare Turnaround during Covid Pandemic: A Success Story of Hpcl-Mumbai Refinery (Lessons Learned from the Emerging Risks like Covid)

Refinery Flare Turnaround during Covid pandemic: A success story of HPCL-Mumbai Refinery (Lessons Learned from the Emerging Risks like Covid)

Ashish Kumar*, S N Soman**

*Department of Maintenance, ** Department of Safety

Mumbai Refinery, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, India

ABSTRACT

Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL), is a Maharatna Public Sector Undertaking of Government of India engaged in the crude oil Refining and marketing of petroleum products. Company achieved a turnover @ 55.8 Billion USD with crude throughput of 19.09 MMT per annum during financial year 2022-2023.

Company has two operating Refineries at West Coast at Mumbai and at East Coast at Visakhapatnam. It also has 2 JV Refineries and one upcoming Refinery with petrochemical complex in India.

HPCL Mumbai Refinery (MR) is one of oldest Refineries in India with state of the art technology in complex units.

Flare system is a common safe let-down system to the entire Refinery. Turnaround of various units are taken at regular intervals for improving the reliability, asset integrity and also carry out revamps for value creation/ capacity enhancement. But for taking the Turnaround of the flare system, it is required to have a shutdown of the complete Refinery complex. Mumbai Refinery planned Turnaround of the flare system for carrying out maintenance and inspection jobs along with the revamp shutdown of the Refinery units.

The Mega shutdown was planned from 1st April 2021 onwards (During COVID-19 peak, devastating 2nd wave) for revamp and integration of expansion project. The flare system in refinery was in service continuously for 12 years and had issues with pilots, pipelines and structural. Some of the major jobs in Flare were as under:

• 250 meter of replacement of 48” flare header.
• Replacement of flare tips at height of 114 meter.
• Major repairs of molecular seal & water seal drum etc.
• 100% replacement of all the lines connected to flare tips and derrick structure members. (6000 Inch Dia & 15 Metric Ton in 20 Mtr X 10 Mtr area).
• Complete painting before flare light up.

Major challenges during the flare TA were:

• Co-ordination with entire Refinery onsite and offsite units for Flare jobs.
• Availability of contractor manpower due to covid 2nd wave peak period.
• Availability of Oxygen for hot work due to diversion of oxygen to hospitals for medical needs.
• Daily tracking of field activities and taking timely decisions in the field.
• Completing the TA in stipulated 25 days since each day delay would cost financial losses of @ 1 Million USD per day.

Novel approach and methodology implemented to mitigate the major challenges:

• Concept of Senior level officer appointed as Turn Around Coordinator was implemented to have a Single Point Contact and Responsibility and for ease of doing the business with all the stake holders.

Following measures were taken to ensure availability of contractor manpower on sustained basis:

• Providing accommodation to the contractor's workers near the Refinery.
• Providing food for the complete day to all the workers (Peak manpower of 16000 number for all turnaround & Revamp jobs) since hotels and shops outside were closed.
• Providing transport to the workers since the public transport was under shutdown outside.
• Daily Covid Testing of all the workers.
• Developing covid isolation and treatment center near Refinery for taking care of the infected workers.
• Co-ordinating with statutory agencies like Police, Municipal Corporations etc for providing essential service passes to all the workers and employees.
• Changing conventional cutting/grinding techniques to innovative techniques like cold cutting, grinding to save oxygen for medical emergencies.
• Designed the Scanclimber platform for safe travel up to 114 meter elevation to safely transport manpower and materials.
• Area segregation in 3 different zones and tailor-made strategy for each area with specialized manpower and resources.
• Extensive research and innovation in contracting strategy for Turnaround Contracts and Decontamination Contracts to ensure nil Hydrocarbon from Flare headers and Drums.
• What Can Go Wrong Analysis for each job and mitigation plan readiness.
• Conduction of Mock TA along with operations, maintenance and Inspection team members.
• Advance JSA for jobs/customized safety pledge/provision of dry Ice/Provision of cold cut/SMS alerts for critical parameters/Arrangement of Dehumidifier
• Use of Cold Cutting Machine to cut the 48” & 36” Pipes ( cold cut was done in 40 Minutes after installing of Machine).
• Mid day TA review meeting daily to enable to have catch up plan for that day.
• Part wise nitrogen purging and Pneumatic test was carried out to minimize the time of Commissioning of Flare header. Pre commissioning activities have started 15 days prior to flare light up.
• 117 no. check list points have been developed for flare light up through detailed brain storming sessions. These points were bible for flare commissioning.

Flare System jobs were completed successfully with nil accident, zero fire incident in challenging COVID-19 pandemic. The paper here is going to bring succinct insight while undertaking turnarounds of the scale that are commensurate to the global norms. We shall be sharing details of all the strategies at play during the planning and also during execution for a successful and safe exercise, specifically with the constraints of a raging pandemic related lockdown and ultra-precautions.