The oil and gas industry is paying more attention to safety in the region, as information is more readily available and regional companies look to international safety standards for guidance on ensuring that their projects are secure.
“Stakeholders, from clients to developers, are paying more attention to fire and life safety, recognising its importance to the overall success and longevity of a project,” says Mazin Al Yaarubi, director in Oman at Tenable Fire Engineering Consultancy (Tenable).
Tenable’s work involves creating a fire safety strategy, reviewing the system, the drawings for development, and passive fire protection measures. It can also include a wider range of work depending on the application and specific projects.
In Oman, Tenable has worked on major oil and gas projects which include the Duqm Refinery, Liwa Plastics, Sohar Refinery improvement project, Ras Markaz Crude Oil Facility, BP’s Khazzan project, and the Salalah LPG production facility, aside from its other non-oil and gas presence in the country.
Stakeholders, from clients to developers, are paying more attention to fire and life safety, recognising its importance to the overall success and longevity of a project.
Mazin Al Yaarubi , director in Oman at Tenable Fire Engineering Consultancy
He notes that oil and gas projects present unique and specific challenges: “The dangerous environments associated with oil and gas projects add a layer of complexity to creating fire and life safety strategies that protect both life and the operations of projects.”
Al Yaarubi adds that oil and gas projects generally require “more performance based design, and lots of the protection layers and requirements are based on process safety studies.”
That means reviewing explosion analysis, hazard identification, and operability studies to highlight potential hazard points and dangerous scenarios at the facility. Tenable can then provide fire protection analysis, safety recommendations and potential solutions to the risks that have been highlighted.
“It is especially important to ensure all standards are met in the oil and gas sector,” Al Yaarubi notes. “This is due to the inherent danger of the sector and operating environments.”
Indeed, with the volatility of the materials involved in oil and gas operations, minor fires can escalate extremely quickly, since hydrocarbons and many of the chemicals involved onsite are highly flammable.
Adding a layer of complication is the dual ‘ownership’ of site safety—fire engineering consultants must not only meet the standards of the government’s relevant safety entity, but also those of the project’s operators.
The company is currently working on three hospitals in Oman in association with the Ministry of Health, and one of the biggest hotels in the country, the St. Regis.
When asked about industry trends, Al Yaarubi says that the increased focus on safety means that companies are partnering with Tenable earlier. “We are getting involved from the beginning, in the design phase,” he says, noting that it gives them more opportunities to improve safety, since it can be designed into the project.
The company is also taking advantage of digital technologies to improve operations. Al Yaarubi says that computation fluid dynamics modelling using PyroSim helps as an interface for its fire dynamics simulator. Other simulation technologies like Pathfinder allow them to create advanced simulations for evacuation modelling to improve safety.
“While digital technology plays an important role in ensuring the fi re and life safety of projects, it is not and cannot be a substitute for human interaction and expertise,” he says. This makes sense, since much of its operations hinge on cooperative eff orts and joint work with operators and other safety authorities.
Despite its wide range of activities, Tenable doesn’t subcontract any of its services, which Alyaarubi says helps to “ensure all information is coordinated fully” to the benefi t of its clients.
