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INTRODUCTION
On 11
th
December 2005 one of the largest explosions in peace time Britain occurred
as a result of overfilling a gasoline storage tank at the Buncefield depot of the
Hertfordshire Oil Storage Ltd. The explosion measured 2.4 on the Richter Scale, the
smoke cloud being visible from space. Fortunately, the incident did not result any any
fatalities, however there were over 40 casualties, 2 of which were serious. The
resulting damage to local property was significant and the storage facility itself was all
but destroyed.
Following the incident and in parallel to the judicial enquiries, the Major Accident
Investigation Board (MIIB) published a report making recommendations on emergency
preparedness, response and recovery for the oil storage sector. In addition, the
Buncefield Standard Task Group (BSTG), being the joint Competent Authority /
industry standards working group was set up to review safety and environmental
protection standards at fuel storage sites following the Buncefield incident.
In July 2007 the BSTG final report was published, I was part of the BSTG working
group involved with LOPA and Safety Instrumented Systems.
Following the publication of the BSTG report a second industry / regulator group,
Process Safety Leadership Group (PSLG) was formed with the purpose of developing
the work produced by the BSTG and providing guidance for the sector in relationship
to complying with all of the recommendation produced by the MIIB.
I continued as a part of the PSLG, again in the capacity of assisting in the development
of LOPA and Safety instrumented System guidance.
Following the publication of the BSTG report, industry and the regulator felt that the
LOPA contained in Appendix 1, a simple order of magnitude example, lacked sufficient
complexity and detail. It was therefore a term of reference to the working group that a
more detailed example should be developed and guidance produced for the PSLG
guidance. The output of this work is Part 1 and Appendix 2 of the PSLG final report
published in 2009. ISBN 978 0 7176 6386 6.
PSLG set up several working groups, working group 3 (WG3) – Control &
Instrumentation was to produce guidance on LOPA and Safety Instrumented Systems.
A sub-group of WG3, the LOPA sub-group was formed and the group decided that an
effective way forward in producing guidance, would be to perform a LOPA at a UK
storage facility. This would allow the work of the sub-group to be validated in a true
environment.
For my part within the sub-group, I was to liaise with the terminal and chair the LOPA
site meetings, together with producing the LOPA calculations and results, together
with presenting the findings to the full working group.