Tending Towards Operational Excellence in Terminals- Using Process Safety As a Key Tool

Oil Terminals play a vital role in the business of handling and transportation of the final hydrocarbon liquid products. In October 2009, a major fire blazed for about a week in Jaipur terminal and in the wake of the accident many terminals have understood the sense of vulnerability and efficacy of the process safety. Though the terminal operations and requirements with respect to process safety widely remain similar, when process safety studies are conducted the observations and gaps found from each terminal are surprising and provide lot of inputs which when taken care would have prevented catastrophic accidents. Not deviating from the philosophy stated by Trevor Kletz idea that though two plants are mirror images, the hazards are not similar, this paper throws light on the top issues faced by the terminal industry with respect to hazards identification, consequence analysis, and facility siting.

Chola MS Risk Services having served the wide range of public and private company owned terminal clients in this business and in tribute to the Jaipur accident has developed the following case study analysing the different process safety studies with different objectives and focused improvement areas carried out for terminals in the last decade has analysed the following.

• Inherent design issues in the facility siting aspect of the terminals and resolutions. Example-Location of transfer pump rooms
• The limitations of the general safety studies and the way process safety studies like HAZOP and QRA are being articulated in becoming more instrumental for decision making of expansion activities, societal risk associated
• The common mistakes made in QRA assumptions for terminals, particularly the aged terminals
• The way recommendations are being explicitly understood and challenges faced by the terminals in closing the recommendations, particularly aged ones. On analysis, around 35 % of the recommendations refer to improvement in instrumentations.
• Lists down few of the best practices being followed in Terminals
• The way process safety studies are becoming integral part of life cycle of the terminals beyond the regulatory requirements

Using this paper, it is intended to share the minimum requirements needed to comply for a terminal to be on par with the international best practices, and this paper can act as quick source of information for the terminals to ensure that nothing is missed out