Combining Layout Requirements, Consequence Modeling & Quantitative Risk Assessment in Safe Buildings Siting in Process Facilities

Abstract This work x-rays the relevance of combining both the oil and gas production facility's layout requirements, consequence modeling using industrial simulation tools, and Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) of credible releases from potential leak sources when analyzing and choosing safe sites for occupied portable or permanent buildings. The work emphasizes understanding the problems, the required task, available options, the requirements, the methodology, and the desired results when choosing safe locations for personnel occupancy in process facilities. The identified scenarios are checked with the layout requirements, consequence modeling, and QRA, depending on the availability of the right resources to either prepare them or use already existing results from the tasks. The authors also presented a similar assessment done for an Oil and Gas Facility considering locating accommodation Camp for contractors on the northern part of its facility's Well Bay, which also has an adjacent Central Processing Facility (CPF). Other considerations of the facility regarding wells on each well bay, spacing, and sequencing of the wells, will be assessed. The efforts of the assessment team, and the resources deployed to analyze the impacts on the proposed accommodation locations from the process facility using this combination for credible releases from the hazardous area will be provided. The results helped to identify all the risks, tolerability criteria (jet fire and pool fire potential at the Well Bay areas for various release hole sizes), and how they affected the siting of personnel accommodation at the originally proposed locations and made recommendations on other identified safe locations within the facility. The industry can apply the gains from this piece of work in choosing locations for occupied buildings to prevent potential safety incidents and to reduce the risks (thermal, toxic, and explosive) to personnel and the public to As Low as Reasonably Practicable (ALARP).