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There has been a boom in development of North Americas unconventional shale gas and oil in
recent years. Equipment spacing and layout is becoming a more complex issue for
unconventional shale projects. Facilities are equipment-intensive operations, and there is a
desire to minimize surface disturbance and footprint without compromising safety. Therefore,
companies are facing significant challenges to achieve these business goals while remaining
focused on safety and minimizing impacts to the environment. In the United States, there are
regulations specifying minimum spacing from permanent well site equipment to offsite facilities
such as residential housing, public buildings, roads, and highways. However, to our knowledge,
there are no existing federal or state regulations for spacing and layout of equipment on well
sites in the United States.
The Technical Safety Engineering team in Shell Exploration & Production Company assisted
Shells1 onshore unconventional projects and operations to identify risks in the development and
production activities, and developed a series of guidance for equipment spacing. The spacing
guidance includes a spacing table with instructions on when and how to apply the tables. The
tables cover both well pad facilities and central processing facilities. The guidance divides the
tables applicability according to characteristics of the facilities and potential associated risks to
onsite personnel and surrounding properties.
The guidance is based on an extensive survey of existing regulatory, industrial and company
standards. Development of the guidance also employed a risk-based method with consequence
modeling to understand potential physical effects of flammable gas dispersion and heat
radiation from jet fires or pool fires. Release scenarios were identified for equipment from which
release and ignition of flammable hydrocarbon may occur. Scenarios and minimum spacing
distances were selected according to the principle of Managing Risk in Shells 1 HSSE & SP
Control Framework.
The spacing charts will be used at Shells unconventional shale gas and oil facilities in the
United States. The spacing guidance will be integrated into Shells Design and Engineering
1
Each Shell Oil Company subsidiary or affiliated company in the United States is a separate legal entity. In this
document the term "Shell refers to the subsidiary or affiliated company of Shell Oil Company that owns, operates,
or provides services with respect to the assets and operations discussed.
Practice (DEP) standards. The development process provides an opportunity to check through
onsite hydrocarbon release and fire hazards in a systematic way for various operations. The
purpose is to create a standard solution and a practical tool to manage the risk of fire hazards in
onshore shale assets, create more consistency in operations, and elevate the bar for safety
performance in Shell.
assessment of consequences from potential hazardous events and risk-based analysis of the
events. This tool should enable sites to be quickly laid out, while achieving onsite and offsite
risk levels which can be demonstrated to meet the ALARP principle.
To design the spacing requirements, it is important to have a proper understanding on the risk
profiles at various types of facilities. In this work, surface facilities in onshore unconventional
shale gas/oil fields consist of generally the following type of sites:
1. Well pad, which typically contains equipment from production wellheads and headers, oil
and gas separation vessels, storage, to the sales point on the sites;
2. Central processing facility (CPF), which is used in the field for centralized bulk
separation treatment of oil and gas, compression, dewpoint control, storage, and sales.
CPFs are usually used to separate, treat, store or otherwise handle raw production
streams in order to get those material processed to sales specification and on to market.
For larger CPF facilities in liquid rich fields, it may also include LPG/NGL extraction as
well as associated pressurized storage and distribution/sales equipment (such as water
hub, compressor station, oil battery, gas plant, NGL extraction, NLG storage).
Facilities are classified into either of two categories below based on associated risk levels:
This classification was derived from definitions of location classes in ASME B31.8 (2014). In
ASME B31.8, locations are classified according to factors such as number of buildings for
occupancy within a certain distance range and their desired functionalities (e.g suburban
housing development, shopping center, etc.).
In the remote AND unmanned site, the major risk is asset damage. Accordingly, for this type of
site, the emphasis for applying spacing requirements is to minimize the potential for ignition
following a potential loss of containment of flammable hydrocarbons and address the potential
for escalation of fire hazards.
In non-remote OR manned site, the evaluation of major risks also include more emphasis on
safety of onsite personnel, potential impact on offsite residential areas, as well as the potential
for asset damage. So for non-remote OR manned site, besides ignition prevention of potentially
leaked hydrocarbons, the spacing requirements also aim to protect people during hydrocarbon
release incidents. This is realized by defining minimum separating distances from equipment
containing flammable hydrocarbons to locations where people may be present, such as
occupied buildings, or material loading/unloading stations, where people carry out job tasks
related to operations.
Accordingly, this work consists of two main parts:
Part 1: identify required minimum spacing between equipment. This part will be covered
in Section 3.
Part 2: identify required minimum spacing between equipment and locations with
personnel activities, such as occupied buildings. This second part will be covered in
Section 4.
Results from Part 1 are a table containing spacing distances applicable to both types of sites
regarding to layout of onsite equipment. The results from Part 2 also include spacing distances
addressing locations with personnel and should be applied to the second type non-remote OR
manned site, in addition to requirements from Part 1.
The methodology utilized is a risk-based approach, which includes a detailed assessment of
risks for various hazardous scenarios. The approach is similar to the risk-based method in IP-15
for Area Classification by the Energy Institute in UK. This work is a derivation of the method and
practical application of it in the relatively new unconventional gas and oil industry.
level of risk was determined by using the risk based approach similar to that adopted in IP-15 [4]
by the Energy Institute in UK.
Although area classification is not the prime tool for determining facility layout, relevant codes
and standards have been frequently referenced during equipment layout practice in the industry.
API RP 500 provides guidance on determination of Class I, Division 1 and Class I, Division 2
areas for petroleum installations. But the extent of API classified areas is mainly limited to
locations where flammable hydrocarbon may exist under normal operations. The code does not
provide details on how to take into consideration the occurrence of abnormal LOC events when
determining hazardous areas. Instead, the European area classification code IP-15 addresses
the abnormal events by dividing hazardous areas into three regimes, Zone 0, 1, and 2, with
Zone 2 referring to the part of a hazardous area in which a flammable atmosphere is not likely
to occur in normal operation but may occur during abnormal situations. IP-15 provides further
background information on how abnormal releases can be determined based on equipment
types and various risk levels. The IP 15 methodology serves as the basis for the approach in
this project, which will be introduced in more details below.
Release Source?
Ignition Source?
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Equipment
Release Source?
Ignition Source?
Yes
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Flares
Vent stacks (not burning)
Natural gas liquid storage vessel (pressurized)
Major pipe racks and pipeways
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
Note: Typical equipment applicable to a regular onshore oil and gas production facility. Other equipment not listed
could be in existence and would be evaluated separately.
Figure 1 shows how the spacing chart looks like when filled up with the identified equipment.
Figure 1 Blank Template for Spacing Chart for Shells Onshore Unconventional
Facilities in US
For different types of equipment, IP-15 further provides example leak hole sizes associated to
each level. For example, for a standard pump without throttle bushes and handling flammable
liquids capable of rapid vaporization upon release, a 5.75 mm leak hole is used to represent the
Level I release, and correspondingly the hazardous radius is 10 m (Table 5.1(a) in IP 15 3rd
edition, July 2005). A 10 mm leak hole is used for Level II release and the hazardous radius is
16 m. A 30 mm leak hole is used ofr Level III release. It can be seen that as the release
frequency becomes lower from Level I to Level III, consequence of the release becomes more
severe, and the hazardous radius, or minimum spacing distance, becomes larger.
Also, it can be seen that release conditions can be related to certain risk levels, and LOC
scenarios can be assigned to different risk level categories based on their release conditions.
So identified LOC scenarios were further classified into three categories: Major LOC (M-LOC),
Most Likely LOC (ML-LOC), and Credible Worst-Case LOC (CWC-LOC). The aim is to assure a
constant level of risk for the scenarios within each category. Design base case scenarios will
then be selected from the groups according to targeted risk levels.
Details of the three release categories based on characteristics of the release conditions are
listed below:
a) Major Loss-of-Containment (M-LOC)
This is the worst-case possible release scenario that may happen. M-LOC involves the
release of inventory in a large amount or an escape through a very large opening, which
essentially establishes the metrics for the furthest extent for a flammable cloud or
damaging fire heat flux. Generally, an M-LOC corresponds to a Level III release as in IP15, which is considered unlikely and therefore not usually applied as a design basis for
equipment spacing.
Process separator
ML-LOC Scenario
A gas leak occurs on production equipment. A 10-mm diameter hole is
assumed under 1440 psi pressure.
Local minor release of natural gas from low-pressure or atmospheric
systems.
Local minor release of liquid hydrocarbons within bund area.
CWC-LOC Scenario
A gas leak occurs on production equipment. Instead of a 10 mm hole, a
larger hole size of 20-mm diameter is assumed for conservative purposes,
under 1440 psi pressure in the vessel and associated piping.
Note: Examples of release scenarios are not all inclusive. Other examples may exist for any particular production site
or equipment.
1. A Credible Worst Case (CWC) LOC (level II) scenario is used as design base scenario
for the type of equipment when it is aimed to use spacing to prevent ignition of
flammable hydrocarbons leaked from the equipment. Based on the gas dispersion
contour from consequence analysis of the scenario, a distance from the release source
to gas concentration of lower flammability limit (LFL) is identified. The distance is used
as the minimum spacing to prevent ignition of released gas.
2. A Most Likely (ML) LOC (level I) scenario is used as design base scenario for the type of
equipment when it is aimed to use spacing to prevent hazard escalation to nearby
equipment due to fire from ignited hydrocarbons. Based on the fire heat radiation
contour from consequence analysis of the scenario, several distances are identified
according to levels of the heat flux, each with different potentials to harm people or
damage equipment. The heat flux levels are based on relevant Shell standards and
industry guidelines. A distance from the release source to a heat flux level of 37.5 kW/m2
is used as the minimum distance to avoid damage to equipment in a short-term period. A
distance to 6.3 kW/m2 is used to avoid injury to properly trained personnel during shortterm exposure.
When selection of the distances is finished for all the equipment, the distances are entered into
the spacing chart.
It should be noted that current spacing distances on process equipment focuses on fire risk. In
most cases the explosion risk at well pad site and gathering stations is considered to be low.
When there are potential explosion hazards due to confinement and congestion in the process
areas, for example when equipment is located inside buildings, relevant procedure for
assessment of explosion risk should be conducted and risks addressed. This is described in
more details in Section 4.2.
assessed using FRED consequence modeling, the distance from the equipment to the
level of 6.3 kW/m2 heat radiation is used as minimum distance to the locations with
personnel.
2. To protect people in occupied buildings from injury or death due to overpressure of
explosion, follow risk-based approach and criteria as specified in API RP 752.
Because the spacing chart is designed for standard or sweet gas facilities, facilities where H2S
is present must follow relevant Shell procedures to assess layout and equipment spacing to
take H2S presence into account, such as using dispersion models to determine the dimensions
of a theoretical 300-ppm H2S plume from a potential credible release event and locating the
occupied buildings, personnel work areas and evacuation route outside of the plumes footprint.
6. Summary
A spacing chart for equipment layout in Shells onshore unconventional gas/oil production
facilities has been developed by Shells Technical Safety Engineering team. The chart was
developed using a risk-based methodology, combining both consequence assessment and
likelihood analysis for various hazardous events from the process equipment, to develop a
series of design base scenarios. The design base scenarios are used to develop minimum
spacing distances between equipment and locations with personnel existence, so that the risks
to personnel and asset can be minimized and demonstrated to be ALARP. As a simple and
practical tool, the spacing chart helps to create more consistency in operations and elevate the
bar for safety performance in Shell.
Use of the chart enables rapid layout of equipment for sites to be conducted without the need
for bespoke risk modeling for each potential layout option. Maintaining the link back to the
source of the risk and a use of a consistent methodology when developing the charts allows the
user to understand the risk basis for the recommended spacing and to perform additional case
specific modeling if an alternate layout may be appropriate.
Acknowledgement
Certain key people enabled success in this project. Support from the Operations in Shell
Exploration and Production Company is appreciated, especially because any changes and
improvements in safety can only be realized with demonstrated leadership.
We are also grateful for the support, time, and valuable input of the following members of Shell
Technical Safety Engineering Team: Natalie Salter, Julie Mialaret, Kiran Krishna, Matt Childs,
and John Pruitt.
Reference
[1] CCPS. Guidelines for Facility Siting and Layout. Center for Chemical Process Safety. AIChE,
2003
[2] British Columbia Oil & Gas Commission, 2013, Well Completion, Maintenance and
Abandonment Guideline, April 2013.
[3] ENFORM The Safety Association for Canadas Upstream Oil and Gas Industry, 2008,
Industry Recommended Practice (IRP) Volume 20, Wellsite Design Spacing Recommendations.
[4] IP 15 Area Classification Code for Installations Handling Flammable Fluids
[5] API 500 Recommended Practice for Classification of Locations for Electrical Installations at
Petroleum Facilities Classified as Class 1, Division 1 and Division 2.
[6] Failure to Learn, the BP Texas City Refinery disaster, Andrew Hopkins, CCH, 2010
[7] Blyth, A., Time to Protect: Layout Methodology for Safe SimOps in High-Pressure, High-%
H2S Facilities, SPE Americas E&P Environment & Safety Conference, San Antonio, Texas,
USA, March 23-25, 2009.
[8] Gulati, C., Mialaret, J., Lian, P., Smith, D., Development and Application of Spacing Chart
for Simultaneous Operations (SIMOPs) in Unconventional Shale Gas Fields, 10th Global
Congress on Process Safety, New Orleans, LA, March 30 April 2, 2014.