LNG fire training gets a boost

Aug. 28, 2006
Rebirth of LNG (see special report, p. 48) has also seen increased concerns among populations and their politicians about LNG’s safety.

Rebirth of LNG (see special report, p. 48) has also seen increased concerns among populations and their politicians about LNG’s safety.

In fact, industry’s safety record is one it can feel proud of, more about which presently. But industry is not content with history.

As LNG facilities have proliferated since about 2000 and the world’s LNG fleet has leaped past 200 vessels, industry has taken initiatives to ensure its people are trained and ready for fire in or near LNG production, vaporization, vessels, storage, and transfer lines.

Cooperation between BP PLC and a major industrial fire training school in Texas shows that effort.

Safety record

No industrial activity is without incident, but LNG shipping has neither taken a human life nor precipitated a major LNG release in 47 years, according the Center for Energy Economics of the University of Texas, Sugar Land, Tex. (www.beg.utexas.edu/energyecon).

Through 2005, carriers had delivered LNG across oceans “without major accidents or safety problems, either in port or on the high seas.” There had been “more than 33,000 LNG carrier trips, covering more than 60 million miles.”

In 2005, says the center, one LNG carrier entered Tokyo harbor every 20 hr and Boston harbor nearly every week without incident.

In LNG’s modern era, dating from its first transocean shipment in 1959, incidents (explosions, fires, so forth) at LNG production plants and import terminals have been extremely rare. Of three major accidents resulting in loss of life, none resulted from an explosive release of LNG or a spreading cloud of vaporizing LNG.

LNG at TEEX

In 2004, BP approached one of the world’s premiere industrial fire training centers-the Texas Engineering Extension Service at Texas A&M University-with a proposal to upgrade TEEX’s 20-year-old LNG program. At the same time, BP also instituted support for LNG vapor-cloud-behavior research in Texas A&M’s department of chemical engineering.

TEEX Program Manager Mike Wisby told OGJ that, under BP’s support and advice, the center expanded and enhanced its curriculum and built a larger LNG-fire training prop (for real-life, full-scale fire training) that was completed earlier this year at its Brayton Fire Training Field in College Station. TEEX calls the field the “largest live-fueled fire training facility in the world.”

TEEX technicians generated this vapor cloud on the LNG-fire training pad. Once the cloud had burned away and the fire evolved into a pool fire, the high-expansion foam generator (lower center-right) was activated to demonstrate fire control with application of foam. Photo from TEEX.
Click here to enlarge image

Enhancements to the prop included four separate LNG-fire pits, monitoring and detection instrumentation, and dry chemical and high-expansion foam suppression equipment.

Wisby said that interest in LNG-fire training has jumped not only as a result of growth in LNG trade but also in response to TEEX’s expanded facilities and thorough, realistic instruction. In the program’s early years, said program supervisor Kirk Richardson, “we might run one or two schools a year.” Since September 2005, TEEX has run nine schools with about 20 students in each class.

Wisby said TEEX has now conducted LNG-fire training for crews and companies from as many as 45 countries from around the LNG world. And it has set up cooperative learning centers in Riyadh and Qatar.

TEEX is neither the nation’s nor the world’s only LNG-fire training location, but it may be the largest. If the LNG industry is to retain its stellar safety record, however, such training must continue and expand everywhere.