Offshore Technical Safety FAQ

Technical Safety FAQ / Sreejith / November 2008

Offshore Technical Safety FAQ

The FAQ and their answers provided below are intended to provide guidance / clarifications tooffshore safety engineers while carrying out technical safety assessments.1. In HAZID (Hazard Identification), how should the risk levels determined? Should thesafety devices / procedures in place be considered in the probability while ranking risks?

The r

isk levels for each of the identified hazards are determined using operator or field owner’s risk matrix considering the proposed safeguards. The probability gets reduced once the safeguards are considered, thereby lowering the risk levels. If the safeguards are not decided, then they will be recorded under the recommendations.

2. Since HAZID is the logical starting point for safety assessment, the Major AccidentEvents (MAE) will have to be identified in this facilitated exercise. One of the commonpractice is to cull out the medium and high risks and categorize them as MAEs. Is thislogical?

In the definition of MAEs, probability aspect is not mentioned and hence it may not be logical to consider risks. MAEs should ideally be identified based on consequences alone.

3. Can you summarize HAZID objectives and methodology?

HAZID is the logical starting point for FSA (Formal Safety Assessment) studies where the MAEs are identified through this facilitated exercise. The causes and consequences for all hazards are identified for various systems using guidewords. Then the consequences are ranked based on the agreed risk matrix.

4. In ESSA (Emergency System Survivability Assessment), normally only the major sub-systems are assessed. Is this the right approach?

All sub-systems for all emergency systems should be assessed in order to make the ESSA process complete.

Offshore Technical Safety FAQ

Technical Safety FAQ / Sreejith / November 2008

5. Are all emergency systems designed to survive all MAEs?

No. The survivability of emergency systems depends on their performance objective.Some emergency systems will be designed to survive MAEs but not all. For details, the Technical Safety Note, ‘Insights on ESSA’ may be referred.

6. In FPSOs (Floating Production, Storage and Offloading), typically all accommodationforward bulkhead is protected with A60 fire wall. A60 fire walls are designed to withstandcellulistic fires for 1 hour where as on FPSOs, hydrocarbon fires are possible. Is there alogic

al explanation for this?

A class fire walls are designed to withstand cellulistic fires for a defined period of time.Ideally, H class fire walls are recommended if hydrocarbon fires are expected.

7. Can you explain the design specifications for A0, B30, H15, J 30 fire wall & 7 bar Blastwall?

A 0: Steel wall, will withstand 1 minute of jet fire and 8 minutes of pool fire (not designed for limiting temperature rise)A60: withstands 60 minutes of cellulistic fire

(The partitions shall be made of steel or equivalent material. They shall be sufficiently braced and shall prevent flames and smoke from advancing for the duration designed for. A type firewall: partitions shall be insulated with non-combustible materials so that the average temperature on the side of the wall not being exposed does not exceed 139 degree C above the initial temperature and the temperature shall not at any place exceed 180 degree C above the initial temperature within the designed time limits)

B 30:

(B type firewall: The partitions shall be made of non combustible materials and shall prevent flames from advancing for the duration designed for. The partitions shall be in such a way that the average temperature on the side of the wall not being exposed does not exceed 139 degree C above the initial temperature and the temperature shall not at any place exceed 225 degree C above the initial temperature within the designed time limits)

H 15: withstands 15 minutes of hydrocarbon fire

(H type firewall: The partitions shall be insulated in such a way that the that the average temperature on the side of the wall not being exposed does not exceed 139 degree C above the initial temperature within the designed time limits)

J 30: withstands 30 minutes of hydrocarbon fire Blast wall 7 bar: withstand 7 bar over explosion pressure

Offshore Technical Safety FAQ

Technical Safety FAQ / Sreejith / November 2008

8. While carrying out FEA (Fire & Explosion Analysis), why should the sensitive receivers bedefined?

Generally the emergency systems and critical areas / rooms are identified as sensitive receivers to check if any of the fires or explosion will cause impairment. Typical sensitive receivers on an FPSO are accommodation forward wall, escape routes, life boat access areas, control room, etc.

9. Is it logical to provide water deluge for gas compression module?

No. Normally water deluge is provided for liquid hydrocarbon vessels to provide cooling to avert escalation from jet fires. The scrubbers in the gas compression modules could be provided with water deluge since they will contain some liquid hydrocarbon.

10. The sub sea reservoir design data will normally involve several Heat & Material Balance(HMB) diagrams for various cases (pressure, oil, water). Which case should beconsidered in FEA?

Generally, the HMB with maximum pressure and oil case is considered for assessment since this will be the worst case.

11. If the liquid hydrocarbon process equipment is provided with local coaming with a 6” opendrain system, will there be still a pool fire possibility?

Technically, hydrocarbon leak from a 4” hole will get drained from the local coaming through the open drain system provided there is leak is not from pressurized equipment and the leak size is limited to the open drain size. But in FEA, these factors are not given credit since the assessment is based on worst case conditions. Sometimes, these design measures are considered when the pool fire can impair some sensitive receivers and the impairment frequency is higher than the industry acceptable value.

12. The blast assessment in FEA typically considers critical factors such as stoichiometricmixture, congestion, blockage ratio, etc. How is a practical balance achieved indetermining realistic explosion over pressure?

These are the factors that finally decide the blast / explosion over pressure values. The explosion modeling software guidelines should be properly understood and interpreted while choosing the values. Since the blast results can cause lot of cost impact, it is very