(47z) Application of Consequence Analysis in the Development of Emergency Response Plans for Accidental Events in Liquid Fuels Transport Pipelines

Pipelines are the world’s most common operation for hazardous materials transportation due to its low cost. Oil and gas industry (upstream, mid-stream and downstream) concentrates the greatest amount of pipelines of the world, due to the fact that production fields are normally too far away from final users, export facilities or processing plants. The main concern regarding the operation of these systems is the events of loss of containment (LoC), which might take place for several reasons such as corrosion, external impacts, etc. Such events, despite their low occurrence frequency, could have severe consequences to surrounding populations, environment and assets of the operating company or any other company. The consequences of accidental events might be reduced by application of different protection layers (e.g., construction materials, alarms, shutdown valves). Emergency response corresponds to the last layer of protection, and its objective is to control, if possible, an accidental event, or to reduce its consequences in the case the event develops completely.

In a risk management framework, it is imperative to perform risk analysis to determine possible consequences of accidental events and required actions to reduce the frequency of events and/or the magnitude of effects, and thus, support the decision-making process. As a result, many risk analysis techniques have been developed, which can be qualitative, semi-quantitative or quantitative. The selection of a specific technique depends on the particular characteristics of the system under study (e.g., complexity of the operation, neighboring population, sensitive environment). Typically, emergency response plans have been developed from the application of qualitative risk analysis techniques such as Hazid and Hazop. This approach produces “generic” emergency response plans, which do not differentiate most likely scenarios or possible consequences of an accidental event.

This work presents the application of a quantitative approach of risk analysis, through consequence analysis , to determine major factors in attention of emergencies such as preparedness activities (e.g., drills), critical attention points, potential safety barriers required, shelters, evacuation routes and times, etc., in loss of containment events during pipeline transmission of liquid fuels in complex topographical conditions. These factors will allow the development of emergency response plans that guarantee effective attention of accidental events in pipelines. The methodology developed in this work, given the characteristics of the material being transported and the pipeline, guides the user in the construction of analysis scenarios, the selection of source, effects and consequence models. To illustrate this, a hypothetical pipeline is studied and the most important results are presented.