Best Practices For Control Of Major Fire Accidents At The Central Processing Facility (cpf) In In Amenas. Quantitative Risk Assessment Study.

In recent years there have been many spectacular accidents when working in hydrocarbon processing sites which have resulted in major fires and explosions causing the loss of lives and damage to property. For this reason Sonatrach has to address these problems by looking for potential weaknesses in all aspects of its regulations, procedures and risk assessment which are the heart of the HSE management systems. In this modest work we have dealt with those weaknesses in a way that can assist Sonatrach to reduce the potential for major fire accidents. We have completed a comparison between the UK and Algerian legislation which allowed us to come out with a gap analysis that can help to narrow the gap between them. We have stayed at site for a long period and we have talked with many operators in different divisions which allowed us to find out the best practices existing at the plant regarding fire protection. We have also looked for the best practices that should be in place which can help to reduce the occurrence of major accidents in the site. The most important part of my work is the achievement of quantitative fire risk assessment studies for two real case studies, Off-specification condensate storage tank and On-specification LPG storage bullet, which can give the site line- management an idea about the frequency and the consequence of such events. We have found that the risk of these events taking place of such major fires is acceptable and therefore no control measures are envisaged at the current time.