Introduction

The facilities involved in the transportation and storage of oil and gas include: drilling platforms; FPSO vessels; mills; processing facilities, including refineries; storage facilities, such as silo tanks, floating roof tanks; spheroid containers, and other types of storage at petrochemical plants, gas stations, military bases, and hangars.

In 2008, from a total of 174 fatal injuries due to fire-related explosions in the U.S., 18 occurred in the oil and gas industry. In 2007, lightning started a fire on a tank which stored 7.5 million liters of petroleum in South Africa. The fire lasted 57.5 hours and resulted in $16 million USD worth of petroleum- and equipment-related damage.

Characteristics:

Petroleum is highly flammable and explosive, and is usually stored in a large scale tanks or barrels. Transportation from one place to another takes place via tankers or pipelines for oil and gas. Lighting was found to be the cause of ignition in roughly 150 of 480 identified cases of fire.

Hazards Identified:

Other leading causes included human error or accident, and static electricity. The remaining causes were unknown.

Risk and Potential Losses:

Construction costs in the oil and gas industry are high, meaning that fire-related damage has a significant economic impact, not to mention the extensive environmental impact that any oil or gas-related accidents have. Dangers include severe contamination of soil and groundwater, seriously endangering the lives of both workers and surrounding communities.

VFDS Advantages with this Type of Structure:

VFDS™ allows quick notification of alarms and easy, remote verification.
Due to the nature of the industry, smoke and flame are often visible. VFDS™ can analyze image feeds and distinguish which are normal and which represent a risk of fire.
VFDS™ can be installed both out- and indoors and detects both smoke and flame, providing solutions in locations where traditional detectors could not be installed.