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Energy company Engen has introduced a risk assessment profiling (RAP)
tool as part of its five-year spill intervention programme to further
drive its zero tolerance on fuel spillage and leakage.
Engen’s retail engineering construction manager, Pat McKune, says
that the R347-million programme comprises multiple projects aimed at
mitigating the risk of fuel entering the ground or water resources
around Engen’s retail site network of 1200 sites and
6500 underground storage tanks.
The programme is divided into
two independent, but paral-lel, phases. During the first phase, 350
underground tank gauging systems were installed and 120 system
installations are in progress this year, with a planned 250 to be
installed next year. In the other phase, 139 surface spill control
systems have been installed, with 100 installations planned for 2009.
With the support of monitoring company the Oil Industry Corrosion
Control group, Engen has RAP-profiled its entire network, assigning
site risk levels according to various factors, including asset
integrity, corrosion risk, stray currents, age of installation, leak
history, site volume throughput and ground-water vulnerability.
From this data, a prioritised site list is produced, with a
priority index, a failure prediction index and a groundwater
vulnerability
rating, based on data, from technologies company
Geohydro-logical & Spatial Solutions International, on the
country’s protected environments and sensitive water resources.
“All new and rebuilt sites, as well as those undergoing major upgrades,
are provided with steel composite tanks, double-walled fuel piping and
automatic tank gauging with built-in pressurised line leak and tank
leak detection,” says McKune.
Other built-in features include real-time statistical inventory
reconciliation and remote alarm systems, concrete to service station
and concrete filler slabs to contain and manage fuel delivery spills,
filler and forecourt drainage or containment systems and drainage that
leads to 6-m3 oil interceptors. “We have aligned ourselves
voluntarily with world fuel-installation standards and leak-management
processes,” he adds.
The company voluntarily undertook a detailed
study, in 2005, to assess the risk of fuel leakage or spillage at each
service
station. Simultaneously, it reassessed its
fuel-installation engineering standards and used the outcome as the
basis for priority mitigating actions, focusing on introducing its
product inventory loss policy to get 815 sites up to the new
Engen standard by 2012.
Pat McKune is an experienced contruction
engineer manager veteran of the fuel distribution market in sub sahara
Africa and participated in the first PetrolWorld Business Forum held in
South Africa back in 2000.
PetrolWorld 301009
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