Pipeline Fall 2015

C A N A D A’ S O I L A N D G A S S A F E T Y M A G A Z I N E

PIPELINE

FALL 2015

THE

TAPPING

UNDERGROUND

Balancing risks and rewards

FUEL TO FIRE

Controlling oil-refinery hazards

DRESS TO SURVIVE

Getting flame-resistant apparel right

EYE ON TRENDS

Fatalities in the oil and gas sector

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| CONTENTS

PIPELINE Vol. 3, No. 2 FALL 2015

DEPARTMENTS

4 More than a Dead Duck 6 8 EDITORIAL

IN THE NEWS

BY THE NUMBERS

FEATURES

10

STEAM-ASSISTED GRAVITY DRAINAGE

Deep Down

Like other forms of drilling techniques, steam-assisted gravity drainage has its proponents and critics. As this extraction method becomes increasingly common, what are the safety risks it poses?

16 Refining the Risks REFINERY FIRES

Many refinery explosions, like the one that injured more than 50 workers in Saskatchewan in 2011, could have been prevented with a robust fire-prevention program.

10

SHOWS

22 26

22

PETROLEUM SAFETY CONFERENCE 2015 SAFETY 2015

PRODUCTS

28 Up against Fire

FLAME-RESISTANT APPAREL Flame-resistant clothing is a necessity for many oil and gas workers.

Selecting the right protective apparel for the task at hand and the ratings required to get the job done safely are key to shielding workers from arc flashes and burns.

16

28

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EDITORIAL |

MORE THAN A DEAD DUCK

A

ruptured pipeline discovered near Fort McMurray, Alberta on July 15 has raised doubts about the integrity of pipelines. Five million litres of emulsion spilled over an area of roughly 16,000 square metres came from a pipeline carrying a mixture of bitumen, produced water and sand from Nexen’s steam-assisted gravity drainage operation at Kinosis to the Long Lake plant.

While the National Energy Board (NEB) defends the record of Canadian pipelines with the statistic that 99.9 per cent of crude oil and petroleum product transported on federally regulated pipelines arrived safely from 2011 to 2014, this assurance is beginning to sound hollow, as a CBC News report on July 17 outlined six major oil spills in Alberta alone from 2011 to 2014.

As well, the 2014/2015 annual report by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) reveals that Canada’s pipeline incident rate in 2014 was 1.6 per 1,000 kilometres — up from 1.4 in 2013. The report claims that this increase was, in large part, due to the AER focusing more attention on the pipeline sector through inspections and education and to operators doing a better job of checking their lines and reporting problems. While the overall incident rate was up, “most of that increase were smaller incidents with limited environmental impacts” and “there were fewer large pipeline releases in 2014,” the report adds.

Pipeline failures occur for various reasons, including corrosion, environmentally assisted cracking, equipment failure, environmental incidents and human interference (like being hit by heavy machinery). Pipeline operators use inline inspection tools called “intelligent pigs” to detect corrosion, determine the size of dents and assess changes in the alignment of pipelines. Modern pigs have a detection probability of about 90 per

cent and can size defects with around 80 per cent confidence, according to Science Media Centre of Canada in Ottawa.

Pigs are smart, but in the case of the Nexen spill, it still takes a contractor walking the pipeline to detect the rupture the size of a fish mouth. A disturbing fact, considering that the pipeline had been installed just last year and a warning system had failed to detect the leak.

So just how resilient are pipelines, and how far can we trust pipeline companies to incorporate integrity-management programs into their day-to-day operations, as required under the NEB’s regulation? Recent developments involving pipelines are far from encouraging.

The six spills in Alberta aside, in 2012, a TransCanada engineer-turned-whistleblower Evan Vokes raised concerns about the competency of some pipeline inspectors and the company’s lack of compliance with welding regulations set by the NEB. An NEB investigation into the allegations culminated in a final report released on February 24, 2014, concluding that while TransCanada had identified the majority and most significant hazards and risks, there were areas where the company was non-compliant.

This past March, it came to light that the NEB is, once again, probing TransCanada over a dozen new allegations of safety-code violations involving a natural-gas pipeline — this time raised by a second, unidentified whistleblower.

On July 19, Nexen reported the discovery of a deceased duck on the western side of the spill site. While we await the findings of what caused the leak with abated breath, two things are clear: this will not be the last spill, and empty assurances are not enough to stem the tide of pipeline leaks. We need answers quickly, because what is at stake is more than just one dead duck.

PIPELINE Vol. 3, No. 2 FALL 2015 EDITOR

EDITOR (CANADIAN OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY NEWS) ASSOCIATE EDITOR HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES ART DIRECTOR

JEAN LIAN jlian@ohscanada.com JEFF COTTRILL jcottrill@ohscanada.com

WILLIAM M. GLENN ANNE MIRON PHYLLIS WRIGHT

PRINT PRODUCTION MANAGER PRODUCTION MANAGER

GARY WHITE

MARKETING SPECIALIST

DIMITRY EPELBAUM BARBARA ADELT

CIRCULATION MANAGER

badelt@bizinfogroup.ca

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER (OHS CANADA MAGAZINE)

SHEILA HEMSLEY shemsley@ohscanada.com

PUBLISHER

PRESIDENT, ANNEX-NEWCOM LP

PETER BOXER pboxer@ohscanada.com ALEX PAPANOU

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS

DAVID IRETON, Safety Professional, Brampton, Ont. ALLAN JOHNSON, Director of Construction, Hospitality, Oil and Gas, Workers’ Compensation Board of B.C., Vancouver, B.C. JANE LEMKE, Program Manager, OHN Certification Program, Mohawk College, Hamilton, Ont. DON MITCHELL, Safety Consultant, Mississauga, Ont. MICHELE PARENT, National Manager, Risk Management and Health and Wellness, Standard Life, Montreal, Que. TERRY RYAN, Workers’ Compensation and Safety Consultant, TRC Group Inc., Mississauga, Ont. DON SAYERS, Principal Consultant, Don Sayers & Associates, Hanwell, N.B. DAVID SHANE, National Director, Health and Safety, Canada Post Corporation, Ottawa, Ont. HENRY SKJERVEN, President, The Skjerven Cattle Company Ltd., Wynyard, Sask.

PETER STRAHLENDORF, Assistant Professor, School of Environmental Health, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, Ont. JONATHAN TYSON, Association of Canadian Ergonomists/Association canadienne d’ergonomie, North Bay, Ont. PIPELINE is the magazine for people who make decisions about health and safety in Canada’s oil and gas industry. It is designed to keep workers, managers and safety professionals informed on issues in the sector, up to date on new developments and in touch with current thinking in the oh&s community.

WEBSITE: http://www.pipelinemagazine.ca INFORMATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS contained in this publication have been compiled from sources believed to be reliable and to be representative of the best current opinion on the subject. No warranty, guarantee, nor representation is made

by Business Information Group as to the absolute correctness or sufficiency of any representation contained in this publication.

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Date of issue: FALL 2015.

Jean Lian Editor jlian@ohscanada.com 4 | FALL 2015 PIPELINE

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IN THE NEWS |

>> O IL PRICE PLUNGE HAS LITTLE EFFECT ON REMOTE-CAMP OPERATIONS EDMONTON — Remote-camp operations in North America remain stable despite the uncertainty around oil prices, concludes a quarterly report examining year-over-year trends in the remote-camp industry.

Workforce Accommodation — Quarterly Industry Watch, covering the first quarter of 2015, was released on June 29 by Edmonton-based Orissa Software Inc., North America’s leading provider of accommodation and guest-management solutions. The findings are based on data from more than five million resident days and 15 different camp installations across the Alberta oilsands, western Canada and parts of the United States. “The sheer volume of data makes this a very credible source of information,” says Orissa’s acting chief operating officer, Jim Seethram.

Large camp operations, which refer to those housing more than 1,100 people, remained steady despite the drop in oil prices, according to a statement from Orissa. The report also cited an industry-wide increase in length of stay and strong reservation activity. While the decline in West Texas Intermediate — a grade of crude oil used as a benchmark in oil pricing — was universal, the data show regional differences in the timing and size of its impact, with some regions showing very little to no negative impact.

“The camps in our data set did not see a significant reduction in operations in the initial wake of the drop in oil prices,” the report’s summary states.

“Supported by notable increases in average length of stay in most regions, as well as strong reservation activity in the Alberta oilsands, higher first-quarter occupancy rates in 2015 versus 2014 seem to indicate a tempered reaction to lower energy prices.”

PIPELINE PROJECT SIGNS AGREEMENTS WITH SIX FIRST NATIONS KITIMAT — TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink pipeline project has signed project agreements with six First Nations in northern British Columbia. The six First Nations are Wet’suwet’en First Nation, Skin Tyee Nation, Nee-Tahi-Buhn Band, Yekooche First Nation, Doig River First Nation and Halfway River First Nation.

According to a TransCanada statement issued on June 29, the agreements are “a positive step” for the project and these First Nations, whose traditional and treaty territories are located along the proposed 670-kilometre natural-gas pipeline route from the Groundbirch area near Dawson Creek, British Columbia to the proposed LNG Canada liquefied natural-gas export facility near Kitimat.

“These agreements reinforce the strong relationships we have built with these First Nations communities and demonstrate their willingness to participate in the many benefits this project will bring to their people,” says Rick Gateman, president of Coastal GasLink pipeline project.

WHEEL DEFECT CAUSED DERAILMENT: REPORT OTTAWA — A broken wheel in the 13th car of a Canadian National (CN) freight train caused track damage that spiraled into the derailment of 19 cars and a locomotive near Plaster Rock, New Brunswick on January 7, 2014, concludes a report from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) released on June 19.

Nobody was injured or killed in the accident, but the train’s tank cars spilled about 230,000 litres of crude oil, sparking a fire that led to the evacuation of around 150 nearby residents. The incident also destroyed more than 105 metres of track.

According to the report, the CN train was travelling from Toronto to Moncton just after 6:45 p.m. that day, when the L3 wheel on the 13th car broke as a result of wheel fatigue due to a very large area of porosity under the surface. This damage had not been detected during the wheel’s initial ultrasonic testing in 1991, nor was it found during the wheel’s 2006 re-profiling.

“The impacts generated when a part of the tread detached from the L3 wheel caused the wheel plate to break, which caused the wheel to come loose and slide inside the gauge and then derail,” the report says. “After the L3 wheel left the running surface of the rail, the R3 mating wheel derailed inside the gauge and began striking the spike heads

and anchors over several miles, causing rail failures.” The report also reveals that the train was carrying crude in Class 111 and 112 tank cars.

“This accident and other recent accidents in North America, including the one at Lac-Mégantic, have illustrated the vulnerability of Class 111 tank cars to damage in a derailment and to product release,” the report states, referring to the fatal derailment and explosion in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec in July 2013. “If Class 111 tank cars that do not meet enhanced protection standards transport flammable liquids, there is an ongoing risk of product loss and significant damage to persons, property and the environment when these cars are involved in accidents.”

The TSB report notes that ultrasonic testing of wheels have become stricter since the broken wheel’s original manufacture. “Most failures due to shattered rims occur when the wheels are fairly new,” the report notes. “There is reason to believe that the action taken by the industry has improved detection of defective wheels before they are placed into service and, as a result, reduced the risks of failure due to shattered rims.”

Since the Plaster Rock incident, CN has seen other derailments, including three in Northern Ontario in less than a month in February and March of this year.

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| IN THE NEWS

GOVERNMENT FUNDING SUPPORTS CLEANTECHNOLOGY PROJECT IN QUEBEC DOLBEAU-MISTASSINI — The federal government is providing $2.2 million to support a clean-technology project in Dolbeau-Mistassini, Quebec. The project by Montreal-based Sysgaz Inc. is developing a technology that can transform methane gas collected from landfills into renewable liquefied natural gas (R-LNG).

The announcement on June 19 was made on behalf of Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, Greg Rickford, by Denis Lebel, Minister of Infrastructure, Communities and Intergovernmental Affairs and Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec.

The funding was provided through Sustainable Development Technology Canada’s (SDTC) SD Tech Fund.

Sysgaz Inc. has developed a solution that integrates three proprietary technologies — an innovative landfill gas capture and measurement system, a gas-upgrading system and an energy-efficient cryogenic system — into a single plant to produce R-LNG, which will be used to fuel off-road equipment and heavy-duty trucks.

Compared with diesel, the use of RLNG could enable a 90 per cent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions.

“We are very proud to be an SDTC funding recipient, as we feel it is the most important clean-tech fund in Canada,” says Charles Tremblay, president of Sysgaz Inc. He adds that this project will “contribute to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in the industrial and transportation sectors.”

>> F EDS ACCEPT RECOMMENDATION TO APPROVE NATURAL-GAS-PIPELINE PROPOSAL OTTAWA — The federal government has accepted the National Energy Board’s (NEB) recommendation to approve the North Montney Mainline pipeline project, subject to 45 conditions, federal Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford announced on June 10.

Nova Gas Transmission Ltd. (NGTL) submitted the North Montney Mainline Pipeline proposal to the NEB for review in 2013. The $1.7-billion project will transport natural gas from northeastern British Columbia to the existing NGTL system, where it can be sold to markets in Alberta and, through a separate pipeline, to the proposed Pacific NorthWest LNG terminal.

The proposal, which was reviewed by a three-member, science-based panel independent of the NEB, recommended the imposition of 45 conditions. In April 2015, the NEB found the project — subject to the terms and conditions imposed — to be in the public’s interest.

“The approval of this project contributes to Canadian energy security and jobs, while supporting the competitiveness of our natural resources globally,”

Minister Rickford says in a statement.

The proposed 42-inch pipeline would have an initial gas-transportation capacity of 2.1 billion cubic feet per day.

Before construction of the pipeline can begin, NGTL must demonstrate to the NEB how it will meet the necessary conditions, which includes engaging further with Aboriginal groups and local communities on efforts to mitigate the project’s impact.

>> U NION FILES EVIDENCE TO OPPOSE PIPELINE PROJECT WITH SIX FIRST NATIONS VANCOUVER — Unifor, Canada’s largest union in the private sector representing more than 305,000 workers, has filed evidence with the National Energy Board (NEB) to demonstrate that the Kinder Morgan pipeline-expansion project poses serious risks to British Columbia’s economy and food security.

The union is especially critical of the threat to the commercial fishery and job losses in the refining industry. “The Kinder Morgan expansion project is all risk and no gain for British Columbians,” Joie Warnock, Unifor’s Western Director, says in a statement issued on May 28.

“We are calling on the NEB to do its job and reject pipeline proposals that aren’t in the public interest.”

On May 27, Unifor provided its own evidence that expanding the existing pipeline would harm the supply of product to the Chevron refinery in Burnaby, potentially closing it. Unifor’s submission also warns that the pipeline’s proposed path near the Fraser River generates unacceptable risk of a spill that could be catastrophic to the commercial fishery.

The Tsleil-Waututh Nation has also declared opposition to the pipeline and published its own report on the dangers to their traditional territory, which includes the Burrard Inlet.

NEW VERSION OF STANDARD FOR OIL AND GAS PIPELINE AVAILABLE TORONTO — A new version of the Oil and Gas Pipeline Systems Standard with expanded safety requirements is now available. In a statement issued on July 7, CSA Group announces the seventh edition of Canada’s primary standard for conditions typically encountered in a wide array of environments that make up the oil and gas industry.

Gianluca Arcari, executive director of standards and vice-president with CSA Group, says the new standard will

be available in an interactive version that can be downloaded to any mobile device and accessed remotely.

Key updates include the following: revisions of the requirements for safety and loss-management systems, integrity-management programs and an engineering-assessments process; expansion of Annex M to address system control; and clarification of requirements for steam-distribution pipelines and high-temperature pipelines.

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BY THE NUMBERS |

The Pipeline Safety Act (Bill C-46), which Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources Greg Rickford tabled last December, has received royal assent. The Act enshrines in law the “polluter pays” principle by holding polluters financially responsible for the costs and damages they cause. A statement from Natural Resources Canada released on June 18 reports that the legislation further improves Canada’s safety system by introducing absolute liability for all pipelines regulated by the NEB. This means that companies operating pipelines are required to hold a minimum level of financial resources, set at $1 billion for companies operating major oil pipelines.

“The $1-billion minimum financial capacity and absolute liability limit are unique to Canada. Countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom do not currently require pipeline operators to demonstrate a minimum financial capacity to respond to any incident and to remedy damage caused by pipeline spills, though they have similar polluter-pays legislation in place,” the statement says.

The Act also clarifies the audit and inspection powers of the NEB by ensuring that companies operating pipelines remain responsible for their abandoned pipelines, according to a backgrounder from Natural Resources Canada. Under the legislation, the NEB has the authority to order reimbursement of any cleanup costs incurred by governments, communities or individuals. It also has the power and resources to take control of incident response and cleanup in exceptional circumstances, if a company is unable or unwilling to do so.

“These new measures demonstrate our meaningful commitment to enhancing environmental protection while supporting jobs and growth,” Minister Rickford says in the statement.

The Pipeline Safety Act represents the latest milestone in the government’s plan for Responsible Resource Development. Previous actions introduced by the federal government include the following: • Increasing annual inspections of oil and gas pipelines by 50 per cent and doubling the number of audits to improve pipeline safety across Canada. There is now an inspector for every 1,217 miles of federally regulated oil and gas pipeline in Canada, compared with every 5,830 miles in the United States; • Introducing new financial penalties on pipeline companies for small infractions to prevent larger incidents from occurring; and • Giving the NEB the ability to provide guidance on the use of the best available technologies employed in federally regulated pipeline projects. This includes materials, construction methods and emergency-response techniques.

Other non-legislative actions of Bill C-46 include working with Aboriginal communities and industry to develop a strategy to integrate Aboriginal peoples more in pipeline-safety operations, planning, monitoring, incident response and related employment and business opportunities, the backgrounder notes.

The Act will take effect in 12 months. Certain provisions may come into force earlier by proclamation by the Governor in Council, the statement adds.

$129 billion

Energy export revenue for 2014. This number represents almost 10 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product and a record-high year for annual energy export revenue since 2010.

Source: National Energy Board

$90,000

Total penalty issued to two companies on April 20 in connection with an incident in 2013. Two workers employed by chemical-cleaning services company CEDA International Corporation collapsed at Shell Canada Limited’s oil refinery in Corunna, Ontario, after being exposed to hydrogen-sulphide gas.

Shell and CEDA were fined $40,000 and $50,000 respectively.

Source: Ontario Ministry of Labour

IMAGE: Cherkas / Thinkstock

Pipeline Safety Act gets royal assent

73,000 km

Length of pipelines regulated by the National Energy Board.

Source: Natural Resources Canada

1.2%

Expected shrinkage of Calgary’s economy in 2015 as a result of the slump in oil prices.

Source: Conference Board of Canada

˚ 0 36

Explosion rocks Norway The trailer of a tanker truck carrying about 16,500 litres of fuel detached from the vehicle on July 15 and crashed into a 1,901-metre subsea tunnel wall that links two islands in the Sogn og Fjordane county in Norway, causing a huge explosion. No one was seriously hurt, but more than 20 people were evacuated from the tunnel and a nearby house. It was not clear how the trailer became loose, but the trucker was able to get out and call a rescue centre. The truck driver reportedly told local newspaper Firda that he had problems with the brakes in the deepest part of the Source: The Associated Press tunnel that goes 91 metres below sea level.

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FEATURE | STEAM-ASSISTED GRAVITY DRAINAGE

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STEAM-ASSISTED GRAVITY DRAINAGE | FEATURE

Most of the oil coming from Alberta’s oilsands today is extracted through a process that few Canadians have even heard of: steamassisted gravity drainage, or SAGD. While this extraction method has been around for only about 15 years, it has become increasingly common. So just how safe is SAGD, compared to conventional drilling methods?

I

By Danny Kucharsky

t is no secret that 80 per cent of Canada’s oilsands are buried too deep below the surface for conventional open-pit mining and can be accessed only through in-situ methods. Unlike conventional crude oil, the oilsands in Alberta come in the form of bitumen — a heavy, thick and viscous substance that requires more intensive extraction techniques than traditional oil production does.

Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD, pronounced as sag-dee) is the most common form of in-situ production. This energy-intensive extraction method uses steam generated from natural gas to heat the bitumen, so that it softens and flows to the surface. Only about 20 per cent of the oilsands are recoverable through mining operations, in which oilsands are scooped from the surface and moved in trucks, according to A Primer on the Canadian Oil Sands from the Energy Policy Research Foundation, Inc. in Washington, D.C. Steam-assisted gravity drainage “is likely to be the workhorse of technologies” in the oilsands for decades to come, says Terry Abel, director of oilsands with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in Calgary.

“In-situ development has now surpassed mining in terms of barrels per day produced,” says Ken Schuldhaus, director of in-situ operations at the Alberta Energy Regulator in Calgary.

Experts involved in the SAGD process say it carries potential risks to workers, but insist that it is no

with hightemperature steam is very ” more or less dangerous than conventional forms of oil production. “SAGD extraction is somewhat similar to conventional drilling, so similar safety practices must be adhered to,” says Brett Harris, media lead at Calgary-based Cenovus Energy, a Canadian oil company with oilsands operations in northern Alberta. Cenovus uses specialized methods like SAGD to drill and pump the oil to the surface and has operations in Foster Creek and Christina Lake.

“As with any industrial operation involving heavy equipment, there are numerous safety risks that our staff constantly need to be mindful of,” Harris says.

Two Sides of a Coin Essentially, in-situ development at the oilsands refers to two thermal technologies — cyclic-steam stimulation and SAGD. Cyclic-steam stimulation involves the injection of high-pressure steam into a well, while SAGD involves lower-pressure steam injection.

Cyclic-steam stimulation, also known as the huffand-puff method, comprises three stages: injection, PIPELINE FALL 2015 | 11

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FEATURE | STEAM-ASSISTED GRAVITY DRAINAGE soaking and production. Steam is injected into a well at a temperature of 300 to 340° Celsius for a period of weeks to months. The well is allowed to sit for days to weeks to allow heat to soak into the formation before pumping the hot oil out of the well. Once the production rate falls off, the well is put through another cycle of injection, soak and production. This process is repeated until the cost of injecting steam becomes higher than the money made from producing oil.

The SAGD method exploits differences in the density between steam and oil, says Maurice Dusseault, a professor of engineering geology at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. Using not one but two horizontal wells, drilled one above the other about five metres apart, steam is introduced into a reservoir through a top-injector well that heats up the sand and the hard oil underground. As steam rises, the highdensity oil decreases in viscosity and flows downward into a production well that collects the oil, so that it can be pumped up to the surface.

“Using SAGD, we drill for oil up to 500 metres below ground, similar to conventional oil operations that use horizontal drilling,” Harris explains.

Since oilsands oil is very thick and viscous, there are few options for extracting it aside from the use of energy. As a result, SAGD “has turned out to be the technology of choice,” Abel says. “We haven’t had a lot of [SAGD] projects that are well into their operating life, but for the ones that have, it looks like they can recover 60 to 70 per cent of the oil in place. On the conventional side, with some enhanced recovery, it is down in the 30s.”

The production cost per barrel for SAGD is lower than that of mining, Dusseault says.

“In SAGD, once you make a decision to go ahead with the project, you can probably be producing oil within two years, whereas in mining, it is probably seven or eight years from the time you start construction to production.”

He adds that the SAGD method allows production volumes to be built up in small increments of, say,

20,000 to 25,000 barrels a day. “You don’t need additional wells, whereas in mining, building of incremental production is much more complicated.”

One of the concerns related to working with steam, especially those that are high-pressure, is well blowouts, cautions Eric Newell, former chief executive officer of Syncrude Canada Ltd. Newell, who previously managed an oil refinery at Imperial Oil Limited, reports that there used to be a lot of incidents, and well blowouts were among them.

Harris says that steam piping at Cenovus operations “is tested and approved well above its operating pressure” before it is put into service. “Our work is never too urgent or important that we cannot take the time to do it safely,” Harris says. “We can’t speak to how we compare to our industry peers, but in 2014, we achieved an 18 per cent improvement in workplace safety, compared with 2013. We worked about 45 million hours — the highest number of hours worked in Cenovus’ history — with the lowest rate for contractor injuries.”

Steam Power Working with high-temperature steam is “obviously very dangerous,” says Karlis Muehlenbachs, a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

“But I think people have been working with steam ever since the Industrial Revolution,” he says, adding that it is well-known that oil and gas is a dangerous industry in which to work.

Dusseault says he is unaware of any evidence to suggest that SAGD presents more challenges to health, safety or the environment (HSE) than other forms of oil production. “In terms of personal safety and deaths on the job, I think that fishing and forestry and agriculture are all ranked as considerably higher than the oil and gas industry in HSE issues.”

The oil industry’s accident rate is substantially lower than those of many industries, “but you are always going to have accidents,” he adds.

Enform, which runs courses in oil and gas safety, does not offer specific courses in SAGD. “None of our courses even mentions it,” says an Enform spokesperson, adding that its main course, H2S Alive, can be applied to all oil-industry processes. H2S Alive certification is mandatory for most occupations within the industry.

Abel says that workplace-safety regulations at SAGD operations are similar to those of any facility that uses high-pressure steam boilers and that there is “nothing unique” that would apply to SAGD operations. That said, the SAGD process involves the injection of steam. Depending on the depth of the reservoir, the steam pressure required could be in the neighbourhood of 3,000 megapascals. “If you had a

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STEAM-ASSISTED GRAVITY DRAINAGE | FEATURE break or something, you’d have that hot liquid.”

That risk would explain why the oil industry has reached out to the Protective Clothing and Equipment Research Facility at the University of Alberta in Edmonton for assistance. Stephen Paskaluk, a research engineer at the facility, which opened in 2004, admits that some of its research “was very much driven by SAGD operations and the potential hazard for steam exposure.”

The facility’s role is to evaluate garments and provide guidance for protective gear that “might fit the bill for steam or hot liquids,” he says. It has a fullscale hot-water system used to test garments and provide recommendations to manufacturers.

To provide skin protection to workers, “the important thing is some ability to block the flow of the steam mechanically,” Paskaluk says. Regular coveralls would not do the job, because steam flows through them. But testing at the laboratory has found that even a semi-permeable membrane that lets water vapour through will be sufficient to block the vast majority of steam flowing from a steam jet.

A bit of insulation behind the semi-permeable membrane will also prevent burns. “So having some sort of membrane, even a semi-permeable membrane, seems to be the most important factor.”

While the surface temperature of steam in a SAGD operation is about 300 degrees Celsius, the temperature drops as soon as it gets out into open air, Paskaluk says. In an accident involving a steam jet, the jet will cool off quickly to 100 degrees Celsius.

“There seemed to be a lot more problems with hot-liquid injuries — people getting splashed by water and things of that nature — than there were of steam,” notes Paskaluk, who has, along with his colleagues, interviewed workers about accidents. Most injuries occur on the arms, but there have been occasional foot injuries. It seems that it is fairly easy for water to permeate through the bottoms of coveralls and socks.

He adds that fabrics are becoming more practical to use, even though they do not yet have a membrane to provide a measurable increase in protection.

Fabrics provide only a marginal increase in protection from steam, but “the fact that they don’t make the burns worse is important.” They also seem to perform quite well in hot-water and hot-liquid applications, which is a “significant improvement,” because once a semi-permeable membrane is added to any fabric, it becomes very difficult to wear for a full day of work.

“Trying to get real-world injury information isn’t the easiest thing,” suggests Paskaluk, adding that he does not know how frequently burns are occurring at SAGD operations. Injuries are not usually categorized by industry, and not many details about these

A BALANCING ACT

In 2012, Alberta’s total in-situ bitumen production was about 990,000 barrels per day — a 16 per cent increase from 2011. By 2022, in-situ production is forecast to reach 2.2 million barrels per day, according to information from the government of Alberta.

But mobilizing and producing bitumen from the Athabasca oilsands reservoirs requires an inordinate amount of energy. While steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is the method of choice, this extraction technique demands large amounts of energy and emits significant volumes of greenhouse gases to the environment.

A team of researchers from the University of Calgary did an analysis of energy balances and emissions of SAGD oilsands production.

The findings of the paper, which was published in the January issue of the journal Fuel, found that current SAGD projects in Alberta show a very wide range of field performance. While the world’s heavy oil and oilsand resource is large, average recoveries from heavy oil and oilsand reservoirs are typically low, ranging from five per cent to 15 per cent for cold heavy-oil production and from 25 per cent to 60 per cent for steam-based in-situ processes.

The data suggest that at the extreme, some operations are actually not net-energy-generating — meaning that the energy injected via steam exceeds the recovered chemical energy in extracted bitumen.

The low prices of natural gas, which is the main steam-generating fuel, permit these extreme cases to remain economically profitable.

In all cases, carbon-dioxide intensity is high. “Thus, there is a strong motivation to develop better recovery processes with lower energy and emission intensities,” the paper concludes.

incidents are available. “So we have had to rely on the people we know in the industry to keep us informed.”

Based on what Paskaluk has observed during onsite visits and through interactions with operational and safety people, accidents involving steam seem to be very infrequent.

Under the Microscope However, thermal projects have come under increased public scrutiny since the summer of 2013, when Canadian Natural Resources struggled to contain bitumen emulsion seepage at its Primrose facility near Cold Lake, Alberta. A blowout resulted in more than 10,000 barrels of steamed bitumen seeping into the boreal forest and putting groundwater at risk.

That incident involved high-pressure cyclic-steam stimulation, Harris says. He adds that Cenovus’ wells at Christina Lake and Foster Creek are very deep and have a large shale formation above the SAGD zone. “This shale caprock covers the steam chamber and prevents it from escaping out of the SAGD zone.

In addition, the vertical portion of the well is sealed with cement and steel casing to prevent any leaks out of the SAGD zone.”

The Primrose incident led to a group of environmentalists demanding that the Alberta Energy PIPELINE FALL 2015 | 13

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FEATURE | STEAM-ASSISTED GRAVITY DRAINAGE Regulator conduct a public inquiry into cyclic-steam stimulation and SAGD operations. They argued that there had been other incidents, including a surfacesteam release in 2006 from the Total E&P Canada SAGD operation in Joslyn Creek, Alberta. That project has since been abandoned.

Leakages at are because of the of the While the call for an inquiry went unheeded, the Alberta Energy Regulator has expressed concerns that some SAGD projects in a shallow thermal area around Fort McMurray risk releasing steam and “reservoir fluids.” As a result, the regulator notes on its website that it is undertaking a technical review of the factors that affect reservoir containment of SAGD projects and will be consulting with stakeholders to develop formal regulatory requirements.

“We are looking at assuring reservoir containment is achieved. That is a big issue for us,” Schuldhaus says. “We believe that shallow operations pose the greatest risk in containment. That is why we are focusing on those right now. We are coming up with more formalized regulatory requirements.”

Overall, SAGD “has been quite successful in terms of bitumen recovery,” Schuldhaus says. He

adds that the approval process for oilsands projects is extensive, with even a fairly basic application taking two to three years.

According to Muehlenbachs, leakages at SAGD facilities are inevitable, because of the nature of the process. “When you start pumping steam in the ground, metal expands and contracts, and you just increase the chance of a leakage. The more steam you put in a well, the more likely it is going to have a migration issue.”

But when there is a leak at a SAGD operation, it is usually a slow one. “The leak is bad environmentally, but it is not the kind of scale that is going to hurt a worker,” Muehlenbachs says.

The Big Picture According to industry experts, there are pros and cons when it comes to the environmental impact of the SAGD process in the oilsands. Unlike conventional mining, SAGD does not cause major surface disturbances, nor does it result in tailings — a major environmental problem in the oilsands, Dusseault notes. Although SAGD results in water-treatment sludge, “it is trivial compared to the tailings for the open-pit, oilsand mines,” he says. “However, the carbon footprint [from SAGD] is larger than the carbon footprint from mining, because methane is used to generate the steam.”

The injection of steam means that more energy has to be burned to get the oil out of the ground, resulting in more carbon-dioxide emissions compared to surface mines, Abel explains.

With SAGD becoming the major production process in the oilsands, there will be a huge increase in greenhouse-gas emissions if nothing is done, warns Newell, who co-chaired an expert-panel report on

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STEAM-ASSISTED GRAVITY DRAINAGE | FEATURE the oilsands, entitled Technological Prospects for Reducing the Environmental Footprint of Canadian Oil Sands, released in May. It was written by the Council of Canadian Academies at the request of Natural Resources Canada and Environment Canada.

It will be necessary to obtain not only per-barrel reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, but reductions in absolute emissions from the oilsands as well.

Production at the oilsands is increasing to meet rising global energy demands, and Canada has to live up to its climate-change commitments.

“We need to move forward with transformative technologies,” says Newell, who also chairs Alberta Innovates — Energy and Environment Solutions, the lead agency for advancing energy and environmental-technology innovation in the province.

For example, new solvent-assisted technologies that are now being tested will lead to fairly substantial reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions by approximately 20 to 30 per cent. Doing so will also reduce the amount of water used in the SAGD process.

Newell thinks that solvent-assisted technologies are probably about a decade away from being deployed. While the SAGD process requires a large amount of water, it is “nowhere near the usage for surface mining.” And progress has been made. “They have reduced their intake of fresh water per barrel of production down to half a barrel of fresh water. They have learned how to use brackish water that is in the aquifers.”

At the moment, “SAGD is primarily a big water-processing operation, so one of our challenges is effectively managing water use,” Harris says. The primarily brackish water that Cenovus uses for steam conversion is not suitable for animal or human consumption or agriculture and is mostly recycled, he explains.

Newell believes that with technology and the continued emphasis on energy efficiencies, “we can see a route to bringing the emissions down well below or close to conventional crude oil.” Instead of being considered a dirty fuel because its extraction requires an energy-intensive process that results in significant greenhouse-gas emissions, it would be one of the cleanest fuels. But obtaining such a result would be a huge challenge, and one that would require leadership and a much higher level of collaboration

among industry, government and academia.

Harris points out that SAGD is a complex technology that will keep improving as innovative advancements are made. “One of our ongoing objectives is to advance technologies that increase oil production using the smallest amount of water, natural gas, electricity and land.” PL Danny Kucharsky is a writer in Montreal. Follow us on Twitter @PipelineOHS.

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FEATURE | REFINERY FIRES

refining the RISKS

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By William M. Glenn

When a fire or catastrophic release occurs at an oil refinery, the overt cause might be the failure of an overfill alarm or monitoring sensor, corroded piping, a poorly maintained pump or an outdated storage tank. Or it might be simple human error.

Typically, a combination of factors is at play. But dig beneath the technical explanations, and the root cause is often a failure of the facilityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fire-prevention program and protocols. In almost every case, it appears that refinery fires are foreseeable and, therefore, preventable.

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REFINERY FIRES | FEATURE

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inch rupture, the hydrostatic charge sparked one and then a series of four more explosions. Subsequent analysis found that recent process changes had created severely corrosive conditions within the piping — conditions that had gone undetected by the company’s monitoring program.

After the first blast, Subramaniyam’s crew raced to the southeast corner of the platform and huddled behind the housing of a large fan. “Guys were screaming.

I thought we were all going to die, until one fellow grabbed me and pointed north. We were running through the flames when a third explosion sent a fireball right through the place we had been hiding,” Subramaniyam recounts.

Although Subramaniyam was protected by his coveralls, hard hat and goggles, he still suffered serious seconddegree burns on the right side of his face.

One member of his crew had a heart attack, he says, and the rest were treated for burns and smoke inhalation. A total of 52 workers at the refinery were injured that afternoon, and 13 spent up to three weeks in hospital.

October 6, 2011, pipen fitter Vasi Subramaniyam had just finished the Thanksgiving luncheon that the Co-op Refinery Complex had prepared for the entire crew. A lot of the guys were flying out of Regina early that afternoon, but his super visor had asked him to stick around and finish testing some new piping they had installed.

Subramaniyam had been working on contract at Co-op for slightly more than two years and needed the extra cash to support his family. He cancelled his afternoon flight home to Toronto. He

was up on the third deck with six other workers when the first explosion blew out the piping in one of the refinery’s distillate units below them.

“There was this really loud boooom,” Subramaniyam says from his home in Toronto. “I thought maybe a crane had dropped a piece of heavy pipe or something. I looked up and saw this huge ball of flame rushing toward us.”

The operating pressure in a heavily corroded effluent pipe had caused it to burst, according to an engineering report prepared by an independent consulting firm for the Regina Fire Department. As the highly flammable mix of hydrogen and diesel fuel gushed through the seven-

DRIVING SAFETY “These refineries are big complicated machines,” says Saskatoon-based Vic Huard, executive vice-president of strategy for Federated Co-operatives Limited, of which the Co-op Refinery Complex is a wholly owned subsidiary. “Accident and fire prevention is a matter of ongoing, diligent, hard work. You can’t take your foot off the pedal for a moment.”

Modern refineries are largely selfcontained, automated and closed processing systems. Exposure to highly flammable and hazardous feedstocks and refined products is minimized primarily by reducing worker interference.

Operating 24/7, refineries may have only 200 or so workers onsite at any one time, many in supervisory and support roles.

However, when a facility is shut down for regular scheduled maintenance, Huard says, up to 1,500 company and contract workers may be employed.

Co-op used to be a relatively small refinery, Huard explains, but two rounds of expansion undertaken since the late 1990s have increased the facility’s nameplate capacity to 145,000 barrels a day.

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FEATURE | REFINERY FIRES Its primary business is refining gasoline and diesel fuel, but it also produces smaller quantities of synthetic crude, butane, propane, fuel oil and asphalt.

“In January, we hired our thousandth full-time employee, a staffing increase of 33 per cent over just the last five years,” Huard says. “Today, we are the fourthlargest refinery in the country.”

The company’s accident-prevention program has also grown, Huard adds.

“Admittedly, we had some catch-up to do, but we have come a long way. The accident in October 2011 forced us to step back and take another long look at our safety programs and protocols.”

Association (CFA), which represents the downstream oil and gas sector, from large refineries to local gas retailers, “the safety record for the 15 refineries that our members operate is among the highest for all Canadian manufacturers.”

Total recordable injuries for refinery, distribution and retail employees are down nearly 80 per cent since 2000, and the lost-time-injury frequency rate of less than 0.10 per 100 full-time workers is well below the averages seen in other heavy industries, the CFA reports.

“From an historical perspective, safety can always be improved, but fires and major incidents are quite rare. Canadian

become a “highly specialized” and sophisticated discipline over the last 20 years, Hertz says. In designing or upgrading a refinery, engineers look for all the potentially flammable product streams and the possible ignition sources and do everything possible to eliminate contact between the two.

“From a design and process standpoint, you segregate, relocate and enclose systems, eliminate human interference and incorporate monitors, safety checks and backup systems,” Hertz says. For example, one might decide to switch to a smaller batch-based process to limit the amount of dangerous product onsite at

“It is all about properly understanding and managing risk.”

Over the last three years, the company has formalized its safety procedures in writing, completed integrity assessments of all of its lines, undertaken risk-based assessments of all of its process units, audited its corrosion-testing and monitoring programs and coordinated the activities of its process, inspection, maintenance and engineering teams better.

“We are taking a much more sophisticated, much more complex approach to incident prevention. We spend a lot of time making sure everyone is on the same page now,” Huard says.

The company has also been working with consultants from DuPont Sustainable Solutions since 2009, updating and improving its process-safety-management plan to address process-hazard analysis, pre-startup safety, management of process changes, equipment integrity, worker training and performance, contractor safety and emergency and incident response, according to Huard.

“Recent incidents aside, we have had a darn good safety record,” Huard claims.

“In our minds, our commitment to health and safety protection and incident prevention is now a cultural priority.”

SETTING THE BAR It appears that the Co-op refinery is catching up to the high safety standards set by the rest of the oil-refining sector in Canada. According to a fact sheet published by the Canadian Fuels

oil refineries operate pretty close to incident-free,” says Bill Simpkins, the CFA’s spokesperson in Ottawa. “Due to the volatile nature of the operations, safety is the top job. As a result, oil refineries typically appear at the top of the list of the safest Canadian industries and manufacturers.”

When compared to other occupational safety threats in the average refinery, fire and explosion risks do not rank very high. According to data compiled by the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada, of the 210 total lost-time injuries reported by petroleum refiners between 2011 and 2013, only seven, or 3.3 per cent, were caused by fire or contact with hot objects.

While this is likely an underestimate — fire- and explosion-related injuries among contract personnel are likely captured in their respective employment categories — the statistics do show that falls, slips, trips, strains and exertionrelated injuries predominate.

“Generally, both the upstream and downstream oil and gas sectors have been doing an excellent job in preparing and implementing fire-prevention and other safety programs,” says Bruce Hertz, vicepresident of business development for Emergency Response Management Consulting Ltd. in Edmonton. “You might work in a refinery for 35 years and never have a problem. It is all about properly understanding and managing risk.”

Process-safety engineering has

any one time. “You engineer safety into the process and engineer the risks out.”

Once the design has been taken care of, an emergency-response protocol needs to be developed to take into account potential scenarios, such as failing safeguards, hazardous-material spills and fires. It could include the fire apparatus and gear needed and the amount of foam and water required, as well as training regimes, disaster exercises and refresher courses.

It is detailed, painstaking work. “You have to ensure that your fire apparatus has the clearance it needs to reach a burning unit, that your workers have an alternative evacuation route if the primary one is blocked and that your firefighting water reservoir won’t freeze solid when the temperature drops to 40° below,” Hertz says.

Finally, a fully trained and attuned workforce is “absolutely critical” for ensuring the success of a fire-prevention program, Hertz notes. “First, they must follow all operating procedures in accordance with the company’s stringent health and safety policies. And second, if they do see any variations, they must bring those forward to management so that they can be addressed,” he explains.

VIGILANCE IS RELIGION Suncor operates oil refineries in Sarnia, Ontario, Commerce City, Colorado, Edmonton and Montreal. “Our frontline

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REFINERY FIRES | FEATURE happen if things go wrong.

If a valve does not close properly and a vessel overfills, spilling product that is then set aflame by an unguarded ignition source, the hazop study would describe what could go wrong if the pressure or temperature increases. Based on the results, the process risk would be engineered out or a fire-prevention program would be implemented.

As a result, Morrison says, the safety record of the oil-refinery sector is pretty good. “In my experience, they work very hard to control risk,” he suggests. “Your chances of being injured or dying while driving back and forth to the refinery are much higher than they are while you are working there.”

But complacency is often the enemy.

“Just because something has never gone wrong, doesn’t mean it never will,” Morrison cautions. “You have to cultivate vigilance as a religion.”

MANAGING CHANGE At Valero Energy’s Jean Gaulin Refinery, every processing change, upgrade or addition made in the plant “is carefully reviewed for its risks by a team of representatives from the operations, maintenance, engineering, safety and environmental departments,” says Veronique Roy, health, safety and environmental director and emergency-response coordinator at the refinery in Lévis, Quebec.

“The risks are rated and any unacceptable risks are mitigated by a design change, a procedure or an administrative measure that brings it to an acceptable level.”

The company has adopted the Washington, D.C.-based Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) voluntary protection program (VPP) — a comprehensive, performance-based system for managing health and safety. Roy says their VPP was audited by OSHA representatives in 2008 and 2012, and received the exemplary “Star Status,” given to 20 per cent of sites in the United States.

The program incorporates the following incident-prevention and emergencyresponse components: • Incidents and accidents are reported and investigated to implement corrective actions; • Every process-unit operation is sys-

ACCEPTED TIME-LOSS INJURIES IN THE REFINED-PETROLEUM-PRODUCTS SECTOR, 2011 TO 2013 CAUSE OF INJURIES

# OF INJURIES

% OF TOTAL

Falls, slips, strains

80

38.1

Overexertion

47

22.4

Struck by object

28

13.3

Repetitivemotion injuries

12

5.7

Inhalation

9

4.3

Transportationrelated

8

3.8

Fire, contact with hot object

7

3.3

Other

19

9.0

Total

210

100

tematically reviewed every five years, including its design, human factors, procedures and maintenance; • Contractors must undergo a full safety program and understand the risks of working with petroleum and toxic substances before entering a refinery; All employees and contractors must • attend monthly safety meetings and complete annual safety training; • Process units, shops and buildings are inspected weekly to ensure that the facility is well maintained and that all potential hazards are eliminated; • Every worker in a process unit must first obtain a formal permit that ensures that the equipment is properly prepared and secured and outlines the safety requirements for that job; and • Any worker who deviates from a safety rule or regulation faces sanctions, including being removed if the employee has put anyone at an unacceptable risk.

“We have not had a major release or fire in years,” Roy says. “Despite this great performance, we are always very careful when we talk about it. Although

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workers certainly play a key role in the success of our fire- and emergency-prevention program,” Suncor spokesperson Nicole Fisher says from Calgary.

Many of the refinery’s personnel — in addition to performing their normal work duties — are members of a welltrained and equipped 24/7 emergencyresponse organization that includes volunteer fire and rescue teams and emergency-command-centre personnel.

Suncor has incorporated many engineered controls into its emergencyresponse and fire-prevention program, including surveillance cameras, automated fire-suppression systems, emergency shutdown and isolation devices, and state-of-the-art technology and instrumentation for proactive monitoring and detection.

“Each of our refineries also works very closely with their stakeholders and outside agencies regarding their emergency-response plans,” Fisher says. They also undertake a robust preventivemaintenance program for emergencyresponse equipment and offer industryleading emergency-response training, drills and exercises for responders and refinery personnel, she adds.

“Fire protection is a little different than any other engineering discipline,” says Luke Morrison, principal engineer and president of PLC Fire Safety Solutions in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

“Most processes are designed to operate every day, day in and day out. Your fireprevention system might sit there unused for 20 years, but when you need it, it has to operate perfectly.”

The company provides professional engineering services in fire and explosion protection to “high risk” clients, including nuclear facilities, oil refineries, power plants and petrochemical facilities. “We understand how things burn and blow up and then how to put them out if they do,” he says.

The first step is to quantify the fire and explosion hazards — operating unit by operating unit — identifying all the potential problems and the various loss exposures. There are a number of study methodologies, industry standards and design tools that can be used, Morrison says. For example, a hazard and operability or “hazop” study predicts what might

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FEATURE | REFINERY FIRES

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Refinery Fire Sparks Lawsuit In August 2013, following a lengthy investigation into the explosion at the Regina Co-op Refinery Complex that injured 52 workers in 2011, the Saskatchewan Department of Occupational Health and Safety laid five charges against the company.

The department alleges that the company failed to implement a regular corrosion-monitoring program, failed to ensure that all equipment was adequately maintained and monitored and did not ensure the health, safety and welfare of the workers at its facility.

On January 22 of this year, the company pleaded guilty to “failing to ensure all work was sufficiently and competently supervised.” On May 12, the refinery was fined $280,000 for violating the workplace-safety legislation. Four other charges were withdrawn, according to a statement from Labour Relations and Workplace Safety in Regina.

But the company’s legal odyssey may not be over yet. A number of workers injured in the incident in 2011 have asked the Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board for the right to sue the company, its owners and the contracting firms onsite at the time of the fire, for additional damages. According to Saskatchewan’s “no fault” workers’ compensation laws, workers are not allowed to sue employers.

“This is more than about getting more money,” the group’s lawyer, Tavengwa Runyowa, says from Re-

gina. “It is about a sum that will hold the employers accountable and provide an active deterrence for those who gamble with worker’s lives for their own benefit.”

Runyowa says the group does not oppose the concept behind workers’ compensation, since it prevents “a tremendous amount” of litigation.

“However, if an employer knowingly creates and maintains a dangerous work environment and, when alerted to this situation, deliberately chooses to do nothing, he should be held civilly accountable if workers are injured or killed in his workplace.”

According to the statement of claim, corroded piping was an ongoing, serious problem at the facility.

When workers complained about gas leaks and the lack of monitors, they were told that “they could take their tools and go home.” Runyowa charges that the employer’s emergency medical plan was “wholly inadequate” and that the medical staffers onsite were “poorly prepared”.

While admitting the case may be “a long shot,” Runyowa says, “even if we fail to win the right to sue, we will increase the pressure for legislative change. The compensation scheme was never intended to protect deliberate behaviour that may be irresponsible or even criminal. It is a question of conscience.”

Co-op would not comment on the case before filing a defence with the court. There have been four fires at the plant since 2011.

we put a lot of effort into incident prevention, there is no such thing as zero risk and we need to be prepared to respond at all time[s].”

Shawn Farrell knows that better than most. Farrell was foreman of a scaffolding crew at the Co-op Refinery Complex, working just 20 to 30 feet from the initial blast site that October afternoon in 2011.

“The air turned this dingy orange colour, and the ground started shaking really bad. I knew right away what was happening,” he recounts from his home in Newfoundland. “I turned and saw the hair start to melt on [one worker’s] head.

I yelled at my crew to run! But before I could follow, there was this high-pitched screaming noise and then the blast knocked me off my feet. I passed out.”

When Farrell came to, he managed to crawl away from the accident site before collapsing and being carried to the firstaid tent. He had severe burns to his cheek, ears and neck and from his shoulder down to his elbow. He developed hearing problems, and the impact from his fall caused several small spinal fractures.

“I slept in a recliner in my basement apartment for three months, until I was strong enough to drive myself home to Alberta,” Farrell says. “Today, I have still got the scars, some permanent hearing loss, numbness and swelling in my left leg, and pain in my lower back. But these are the demons I have got to live with if I want to make a living.”

Farrell says he has worked in the oil and gas industry for more than 20 years, and many of the companies he has worked for have operated safely, while others will run it until it blows up and fix it when it breaks.

“Every day, thousands and thousands of people work in these places. We all know they are high-risk,” he says. “That is why we follow the permits and the protocols. We tie off, and we wear our goggles and hard hats and hearing protection. We do what we are supposed to do.”

He stresses that employees “also need to know that if there is a problem, [that] the company is going to fix it, that everything is going to be okay. We just want to make sure nobody else gets hurt.” PL William M. Glenn is a writer in Toronto.

Follow us on Twitter @PipelineOHS

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SAVE THE DATE

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SHOWS | PETROLEUM SAFETY CONFERENCE 2015

on the

western

front

C IMAGE: THINKSTOCK / ARINAHABICH / ISTOCK

By Jean Lian Crane hazards, occupational diseases and recent measures taken to improve safety outcomes in the oil and gas sector were among the topics addressed by three representatives from Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan at a panel discussion on workplace-safety developments in the industry. The session took place on May 6 at Petroleum Safety Conference 2015 in Banff, Alberta.

One of the key changes taking place this year in Alberta is the implementation of the Occupational Health and Safety Code in September. Updates to the Code were presented to the public from November 2014 to January 2015, and the feedback received has been reviewed by the province’s oh&s policy staff.

“There is a six-month grace period before we have that change,” says Derek Kearney, director with the oh&s division of Alberta’s Ministry of Jobs, Skills, Training and Labour.

Since January 2014, the province has added new compliance tools, namely ticketing and administrative penalties. Workers and employers who contravene ticketable provisions of the oh&s legislation can now be issued tickets by safety officers.

Administrative penalties of up to $10,000 per violation per day can be imposed against workers, contractors, suppliers, prime contractors and employers.

Tickets administered under the Provincial Offences Procedure Act require peace-officer appointments. To date, Alberta has 39 safety officers who have peace-officer status. “The really good news is, no ticket has been given to the oil and gas industry as yet,” Kearney says.

Another positive trend is the improvement in injury numbers in Saskatchewan’s and British Columbia’s oil and gas industries. From 2011 to 2013, Saskatchewan’s time-loss-injury rates dipped across the industry’s four sectors, namely petroleum, oil-well operation and servicing, service rigs and seismic and drilling. Total injury rates for these sectors from 2011 to 2014 also saw a similar decline. Both statistics are below the provincial average, reports Kim Meyer, Regina-based manager

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t

ANFF

PETROLEUM SAFETY CONFERENCE

(From left): Derek Kearney, director with the oh&s division of Alberta’s Ministry of Jobs, Skills, Training and Labour; Budd Phillips, regional prevention manager with WorkSafeBC (Fort St. John’s office); and Kim Meyer, manager of Safety Operations South with the oh&s division of the Government of Saskatchewan.

of Safety Operations South with the oh&s division of the Government of Saskatchewan. “That is good, and we want to keep that trending downward as far as we possibly can.”

In British Columbia, oil-and-gas drilling and field servicing saw about a 20 per cent decrease in their base rates over a fiveyear period. The injury rate of the upstream oil and gas industry remains lower than that of all the province’s classification units combined, reports Budd Phillips, regional prevention manager of the Fort St. John’s office with WorkSafeBC. “The injury rate of British Columbia is hovering [at] about 2.5; your overall injury rate is below one. It is pretty significant in the way that you have been performing,” he says.

But the industry’s average short-term disability duration for work days lost is significantly higher than that of British Columbia, Phillips notes. Between 2010 and 2014, there were 177 serious-injury claims, which represented 29 per cent of all claims and 61 per cent of claims costs paid to date. There were nine work-related deaths in the sector between 2010 and 2015.

“IT IS A HIGH-RISK INDUSTRY. IT IS TOUGH, TOUGH WORK — HARD WORK.” HIGH STAKES The challenge in the oil and gas sector, Kearney says, is that when something goes wrong, it goes really wrong. “It is a highrisk industry. It is tough, tough work — hard work.”

To mitigate the risks, Alberta has put in place an 18-month Strategic Inspection Program, which focuses on approximately 100 oil and gas employers identified through an index. “This strategic program is based on our selection criteria for losttime claims, disabling injury, days lost, fatalities, and you must be double the industry average before you are selected to be in the program. The focus, again, is on what is your history.”

For Saskatchewan, “Mission Zero” is the province’s goal.

“We are working hard on that mission as a partnership between

Labour Relations and Workplace Safety and the workers’ compensation board,” Meyer says. In relation to the four oil and gas sectors cited earlier, there were $33 million in costs, 65,000 compensation days (or 300 man-years in four years) and 13 fatalities, which she describes as “too many.”

Meyer suggests that the biggest change for Saskatchewan is the increase in penalties since the Saskatchewan Employment Act was passed in April 2014. “They have pretty much doubled,” she notes. Corporations that commit workplace-safety offences can be fined up to $1.5 million, while the penalties for individuals who contravene the Saskatchewan Employment Act or safety regulations run up to a maximum of $500,000.

Like Alberta’s Strategic Inspection Program, Saskatchewan follows a Focused Compliance Model, which targets about 100 employers selected primarily for their injury rates. Apart from meeting these companies and requesting that they develop plans to reduce injury rates, they will be monitored for about a year. After that, the workers’ compensation board may step in to assist these firms.

Meyer acknowledges that most of those 100 firms are large employers. “So we are missing some of the small guys.”

The other significant change is the Prime Contractor Regulations, which took effect in Saskatchewan on January 1.

The affected industries are oil and gas, construction and forestry.

“Those three industries have to comply with our Prime Contractor Regulations,” which, Meyer says, apply to worksites with 10 or more workers and two employers. “The legislation talks about the requirement to coordinate safety and make sure the activities one employer is performing will not affect the activities and safety of another employer. If there is no prime contractor designated by the owner, the owner is then the default prime contractor.”

Jean Lian is the editor of Pipeline Magazine. Follow us on Twitter @PipelineOHS PIPELINE FALL 2015 | 23

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SHOWS | PETROLEUM SAFETY CONFERENCE 2015

PETROLEUM SAFETY CONFERENCE

A Word with Cameron MacGillivray From May 5 to 7, more than 1,100 people gathered in Banff, Alberta for Petroleum Safety Conference 2015 — the 64th annual safety conference and trade show for Canada’s upstream oil and gas industry. Pipeline caught up with Cameron MacGillivray, president of Enform — the safety association for the oil and gas sector — on what the industry is up to and the latest challenges it faces.

Q: What are your views of the industry’s recent job cuts stemming from low oil prices?

A: There are some positive things about it. First of all, when you reduce staff, what you do is, you try to keep your best staff, the most experienced staff. For a drilling rig, for example, you get better-quality crews, have better work practices, and you can actually see an improvement in safety performance. The other side of this is, how do you prepare for when there is an upturn in price of oil and you get a whole bunch of new workers coming? Some of the workers that left may never return, so you lose that experience. So the real concerns are, how do you manage and bring in those new workers and train them to work safely?

Q: How can the industry respond to cyclical downturns without taking a toll on safety?

A: We have had the blessing of going through these cyclical turns many times in the last 30 years. And with each of those downturns, we learn how to manage a bit better. One of the things we have learned is that when you do have a downturn and you know you are losing some key staff, you want to make sure that the people you retain are your best staff. You also want to take advantage of a relatively slow period to train those staff, so that when you do have new staff coming on and things resume in growth, they will be able to help the new workers get the right training and be a guide for the new workers.

Q: How well has the industry addressed contentious issues, like environmental concerns and working with First Nations?

A: One of the things the industry is continually working on is how to better explain to the average layman what they are doing and how they address, for example, the safety issue. One of my challenges is to make sure that the general public and the industry know the standards that we have and how we go about meeting those standards. I think a lot of it is education. We realize that we can do a much better job at communicating on all levels — not just statistics — but understanding how it affects local employment, individual communities and com-

Enform president, Cameron MacGillivray

munities in which we operate. So there are a lot of challenges for us. We are getting better, but we have to do even more.

Q: The oil and gas industry employs many foreign workers. What is the industry doing to address safety issues relating to new or foreign workers?

A: We do that in a number of ways. We work with independent agencies that deal with new immigrants. For example, the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society works with us on our training programs, brings recent immigrants into the industry and makes sure that they have adequate training. It is also important to explain what is really important to the worker.

We realize that a lot of the new workers will be from nontraditional groups. One of the things we are doing on the front of safety culture is that we are going to have a senior executive steering committee that will work with the regulators to advance safety culture in the industry, so that is a big push. The other one is process safety, which is a fairly new concept in the upstream oil and gas industry.

Process safety has three elements to it: individual worker safety, administrative control and engineering controls. They originated in the refining industry, where things were more complex, but as the upstream industry grows, we become more complex, so now we want to bring process safety into it. That is a big area of focus for us.

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PSC 2015 PRODUCT | HIGHLIGHTS More than 170 exhibitors showcased their safety products and services at Petroleum Safety Conference 2015 in Banff, Alberta. Below is a snapshot of products showcased at the event.

Personal-Detection Alarm

Armour System

R&D Facility

SCAN~LINK Technologies Inc. Blind spots on worksites with moving vehicles can lead to fatal accidents. The Armour System is a personal-detection system that uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) to alert drivers of reversing vehicles to the presence of ground workers behind them.

The system comprises an antenna sealed in a weatherproof case for installation behind a vehicle, a display unit with an audible alarm that signals alerts to the equipment operator and RFID tags for attachment to safety apparel or hard hats.

Apparel Innovation Centre Western Canada’s first openaccess apparel research and development facility made its debut at PSC2015. This non-profit organization provides services in three areas: research (on thermal comfort and hot-liquid/ steam-protection), development (product innovation from the inception of an innovative idea to the final prototype) and training (hands-on apparel-industry training and education). The centre, which was made possible through Western Economic Diversification Canada and contributions from Olds College and Alberta Garment, was scheduled to be fully operational in mid-2015.

Flash-Fire Protection

Lone-Worker Protection

SATcase Mobile Satellite Communications Device SATcase Ltd. Maintaining communication is vital to the safety of oil-andgas workers, who often work alone in remote locations. As most drill sites are located in areas where cell-phone service is poor or unavailable, SATcase™ does away with the need to carry multiple devices by combining the functionality of a smartphone with the capabilities of a satellite phone into one compact, durable unit. Working in conjunction with an app, the device can relay information at the instant when conditions change, enabling companies to respond accordingly.

The device is also equipped with multiple emergency functions to facilitate rescue by land, air or sea, and includes an SOS button, silent alarms, two-way rescue communications and online track and trace for live monitoring.

Flame Shield FX1 Cooler Heads Safety Inc. The Cooler Heads Flame Shield Model FX1 offers head and face protection from flash fires. In its passive state, the unit is worn over the shoulders on top of standard flame-resistant clothing. At 100 degrees Celsius, the sensors are activated and trigger an immediate release of compressed gas, which initiates a rapid expansion of the shield around the wearer’s face and head to protect against disfiguring burns.

Once the danger of a flash fire, which typically lasts three seconds, has passed, the wearer simply pulls down or tears away the protective shield in order to make his or her way to a safe area.

Hazardous-Exposure Detection

FluidSafe™ Hydraulic Fluid Additive Alerton International LLC A pinhole leak in a hydraulic hose under high pressure can release fluid at more than 180 metres per second, approaching the velocity of a gun. FluidSafe™ is a fluorescent additive that aids in the quick detection of hydraulic fluid that has penetrated the skin. When viewed under high-intensity blue light, its bright green glow pinpoints the exact location of hydraulic fluid under the skin to limit soft-tissue dissection required during surgery. The fluorescence will remain visible in the tissue for at least 24 hours with no ill effects to the human body. FluidSafe can also detect leaks in fluid power system hoses, fittings, seals and other components.

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SHOWS | SAFETY 2015

TRENDS in

OIL-&-GAS-EXTRACTION

FATALITIES IMAGE: THINKSTOCK / GEORGIY SHPADE / HEMERA

By Jean Lian national database that tracks oil-and-gas-extraction fatalities in the United States is a new tool that the Washington, D.C.-based National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) uses to collect data and guide its safety-intervention efforts to prevent further loss of lives.

“The need for that detailed information about some of the key contributing factors to deaths in this industry is not being identified elsewhere,” says Kyla Retzer, an epidemiologist with the NIOSH’s Western States Office in Denver, Colorado. “So we decided to work together to develop some database.”

Retzer was one of two speakers who gave an update on the current trends and contributing factors to oil-andgas fatalities at the Safety 2015 Professional Development Conference and Exposition, held by the American Society of Safety Engineers in Dallas on June 8.

The Fatalities in Oil and Gas (FOG) Extraction database tracks all identified fatal events involving landbased and offshore oil-and-gas-extraction workers. The database was developed in response to increased fatalities in the sector in 2004, says Ryan Hill, manager with the NIOSH oil and gas safety and health program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Morgantown, West Virginia.

“This is an industry we will characterize as having experienced tremendous growth over the last decade,” Hill says, pointing to the doubling of the oil-and-gas workforce and a 71 per cent increase in the number of drilling rigs from 2003 to 2013. The number of people employed in well-servicing companies rose by a whopping 245 per cent, while those hired by oil-and-gas operators and drilling contractors increased by 62 per cent and 92 per cent respectively. There were approximately 110 to 120 deaths a year on average during the same period.

That being said, Hill adds, “the good news is that the

rate is going down and has gone down significantly during this time period.”

Fatal events that get logged in the database are identified through various sources, which include citations and closed investigations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Occupational Safety and Health Information System, media reports, formal investigations from federal, state and local agencies, motor-vehicle crash reports, emergency-responder and police reports, coroner and medical-examiner reports and death certificates.

Workers involved in the construction of pipelines and related structures or other midstream and downstream activities, as well as non-fatal injuries and illnesses occurring in the oil-and-gas-extraction industry, are not tracked by the database.

The FOG does collect incident-specific information by recording some 35 variables that include operationtypes specific to the oil-and-gas industry, whether the incident is related to fatigue or weather conditions, the location in which the incident occurred, whether the worker was working alone and the type of equipment used. Worker-specific information is also collated, encompassing 21 variables, such as the worker’s race, how long the worker has been working in the oil field, the size of the contractor onsite, whether subcontractors are involved and the tasks performed by the worker.

“This is just a tool to understand what is really happening in this industry, so that it can guide health and safety efforts,” Retzer says. She adds that the agency is trying to make the database industry-specific by adding variables and different operational categories.

“Ultimately, we want it to be real-time, so that we can get on the NIOSH website and take a look at what we have so far collected. We are not there yet, but that is our goal. Thirdly, we want it to be customizable, so that we can change it as the industry changes.”

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Toxic Plumes As a result of the FOG database, the first report on suspected inhalation fatalities during tank gauging was published last year. The genesis of the first report dates back to 2013, when the NIOSH was contacted by an occupational health physician based out of California regarding two oilfield deaths, suspected to be related to inhaling volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

The NIOSH reviewed the database for fatalities that occurred from 2010 to 2014 and found nine occupational fatalities in which inhalation of petroleum hydrocarbons had been a likely factor. All the deaths occurred at production tanks. In May 2014, the agency published its first science blog, which includes a series of recommendations to reduce the risk of inhaling VOCs by tankgauging employees.

“As we started to monitor the fatalities for slightly over a year, we developed a case definition. We knew the worker needed to be working in proximity to a known and concentrated source of hydrocarbon gases and vapours. In

these cases, it is the open thief hatch,” Retzer says.

Another possible contributing factor is the new tanks with environmental emission controls that allow for a greater concentration of pressure inside the tank to build up, so that when the thief hatch is open, larger quantities of hydrocarbon gases escape, she explains.

According to Retzer, a second report on the inhalation of VOCs covering the first six months of 2014 is scheduled to be published this year. Future topics that will be looked at in subsequent reports include hydrogen sulphide, dropped tubulars and fires and explosions.

“There is nothing really new about it,” Retzer says of hydrogen sulphide. Nevertheless, two to three fatalities from hydrogen-sulphide exposures continue to be reported each year. “By putting out a special report describing these fatalities, maybe we can work from there and identify where we are going wrong.”

Jean Lian is editor of Pipeline Magazine. Follow us on Twitter @PipelineOHS

Between 2003 and 2012, transportation-related incidents (40 per cent) accounted for the most frequent fatal events that occurred in the United States’ oil-and-gas-extraction industry, followed by contact with objects (26 per cent), fire or explosions (15 per cent), exposure (nine per cent), slips, trips and falls (eight per cent) and others (two per cent), according to data from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in Washington, D.C. When fatalities are categorized by company type, 58 per cent of those killed worked with oil-and-gas operators, 33 per cent in well-servicing companies and 27 per cent with drilling contractors.

Below is a breakdown of fatalities, by operation, that occurred in the industry in the first six months of 2014:

Number of Fatalities

9 5 4 3 2 1 0 43

Rigging up/down

Unspecified operation

In each of commuting and general well-servicing

Rig/equipment repair or maintenance In each of coiled tubing operations, flowback operations, hot work/welding and other types of operations In each of equipment dismantling, material handling, routine drilling operations, running casing, tank gauging, tripping pipe, truck transport (oil hauling, other, separated water hauling) and winching activities

IMAGE: THINKSTOCK / STUDIOM1 / ISTOCK

S

SAFETY 2015 | SHOWS

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IMAGE: THINKSTOCK / FOUROAKS / ISTOCK

PRODUCTS | FLAME-RESISTANT APPAREL

AGAINST

F

FIRE

By Jeff Cottrill lame-resistant (FR) clothing is a must for any occupations that put workers at risk of burns from hydrocarbon flash fires and electric arcs. One of the top markets for FR apparel is the oil and gas sector, in which sudden, unexpected flashes and fires are just one of many safety hazards.

Why oil and gas? “They have a greater hazard dealing with highly flammable materials,” explains Andrew Wirts, sales and marketing director with NASCO, a rainwear manufacturer in Washington, Indiana. “Their work methods, their processes, their general environment has more conditions that are conducive to creating a fire event.”

As hydrocarbon fires are frequent and severe

in this sector, FR clothing is essential for employees. “They can engineer the hazard to its minimal state, but they can’t completely remove it,” Wirts says about oil and gas work environments.

“Flame-resistant apparel becomes then another barrier to reducing the amount of burn injury that the worker would encounter in that event.”

With exposure to flammable hydrocarbons being part of oil and gas workers’ jobs, the risk of flash fire is very real, concurs Dennis L. Mater, thermal-apparel-sales technical leader for North America with DuPont Protection Technologies in Richmond, Virginia. He points to a number of injuries and fatalities every year in this sector.

“Flame-resistant clothing can significantly

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FLAME-RESISTANT APPAREL | PRODUCTS reduce both the extent and severity of burn injuries to the body. Burn injuries can result in some very painful and lengthy recoveries, can be lifealtering, can result in fatalities,” he adds.

Wirts notes that a worker’s likelihood of surviving a burn depends on the worker’s age and on the percentage of the body that is affected. “There have been studies done that indicate that the older the worker, the less likely they are to survive burn injuries,” he says.

For example, those in the 18-to-25 age group have a pretty good likelihood of surviving a 35 per cent burn to the body. “But if you are in the 50-to55 age group, not so much, and what you are trying to do is take that 35 per cent burn injury and reduce it to something significantly less.”

UNDERSTANDING THE RISKS Depending on the job’s needs, FR apparel comes in many forms — from shirts, jackets and pants to full-body coveralls, hoods with face shields and outerwear for the weather. Before deciding what kinds of FR clothing to purchase, Mater stresses, an employer must conduct a comprehensive hazard-risk assessment of the worksite.

“If you are choosing or implementing a personal-protective-equipment (PPE) program without performing a completely comprehensive hazard-risk assessment, you could be leaving workers under-protected, or not protected at all, and vulnerable to greater injuries,” Mater cautions. “It is important to understand the extent of possible exposure a worker may have to an unexpected fire event.”

For oil and gas workers, Mater recommends inherent flame-resistant products with strong overall thermal protective performance, longterm durability and high comfort. “Inherent means that the flame-resistant properties are not added by post-treatment,” he explains. “Comfort certainly is needed in hot environments where heat stress can be problematic.”

As with all PPE, FR clothing must meet the compliance standards of the employer’s country or area. “Those standards are intended to elevate the performance of FR materials, so that the burn injury is minimized for the worker,” Wirts notes.

In Canada, FR apparel that protects against flash fires is subject to CGSB-155.20, regulated by the Canadian General Standards Board.

Otherwise, garments should meet the American standards ASTM F2733 for rainwear and NFPA 70E for protection against electrical fires.

Mater points to DuPont’s Nomex®-branded products as those that offer both superior protection and long-term durability — the latter being a factor of particular importance in the oil and

“FLAME-RESISTANT CLOTHING CAN SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE BOTH THE EXTENT AND SEVERITY OF BURN INJURIES TO THE BODY.” gas sector these days.

“Nomex fibres and branded blends have been used in thermal-protection products for close to 50 years,” Mater says. As the industry has become increasingly focused on costs and reducing expenses, due to sharply reduced oil prices, “maximizing the value of longevity of their protective garments has become more important to companies and even private individual contractors buying their own protective garments.”

That said, he stresses the importance of choosing PPE with durability in mind. “Durability will lead to longer life cycle and lower the cost of ownership, which is very important at this time in the oil and gas industry,” Mater says. Durability

PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT — DUPONT’S NOMEX MULTI-HAZARD PROTECTION OVERALL Nomex® multi-hazard protection (MHP) fabric protects against various thermal hazards, including heat and flame, arc flashes and small molten-metal splashes. Unlike other materials, Nomex® MHP fabric has flame-resistant properties built into the fibres that are not affected by washing, abrasion or exposure to heat. Made of 34 per cent aramid, 33 per cent lyocell, 31 per cent modacrylic and two per cent anti-static materials, Nomex® MHP is engineered to absorb moisture and dry fast, so that workers can stay comfortable on the job.

Available in medium blue, khaki and navy, Nomex® MHP fabric offers better colour protection after ultraviolet exposure, compared to other blends and fire-resistant-treated cotton. The durability of Nomex® MHP for arc-flash clothing is achieved through improved breaking strengths and high abrasion levels. According to DuPont, Nomex® MHP’s abrasion improves with laundering, and its break strength is 60 per cent higher than that of fire-resistant-treated cotton.

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PRODUCTS | FLAME-RESISTANT APPAREL molten-metal splash in a durable, comfortable fabric that performs well in a four-second burn.

IMAGE: THINKSTOCK / Purestock

includes such factors as resistance to abrasion, ease of cleaning and longevity of flame-resistant fabric, and it is often worth a higher initial investment. “The cheapest choice initially may turn out to be more expensive in the long term.”

For employees who need protection from multiple hazards, Mater recommends Nomex MHP, which provides inherent multi-hazard FR protection against heat and flame, electric arc and small

PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT — NASCO’S PETROLITE 9000 SERIES PetroLite™ by Nasco provides multiple-hazard protection for workers who are exposed to foul weather, electric arcs, flash fires, chemical splashes and steam and hot-water hazards. This waterproof and flameresistant work suit offers versatility to maximize worker functionality. Durable and designed for use in heavy-duty industries like oil and gas, chemical manufacturing and processing and pulp and paper mills, PetroLite reduces the number of replacements — making it a cost-effective gear for use in a work environment that presents various hazards.

LONG-LASTING PROTECTION Employers need to maintain their FR garments carefully to help them last longer and reduce replacement costs. Mater cautions against washing FR garments with non-FR apparel, as loose fibres or contaminants from the latter could become entrained in the fabric weave of the former. Residual minerals could also build up in hard water, diminishing FR properties.

“Residual flammable contaminants can be problematic in a sense that these contaminants could ignite during exposure to fire,” Mater cautions, adding that washing FR-treated cotton fabrics and garments with chlorine bleach can also be counter-effective.

“When a garment gets contaminated with hydrocarbons that are flammable, it is very counterproductive to the FR characteristics,” explains Wirts, adding that a typical work environment in the oil and gas sector is “a very dirty application.”

As such, it is important to launder FR garments properly, in a way that removes hydrocarbons without diminishing the fabric’s flame resistance.

“There are commercial laundry programs that do that,” he says, pointing to home laundry programs that companies use. “I would say that the home laundry programs are less effective than the onsite or commercial, but that is a key, because you definitely want to be able to remove those hydrocarbons and not sacrifice the longevity of the garment.” Wirts adds that there is a significant amount of work being done to develop a technology that will accomplish that.

“The garment manufacturer’s laundering procedure should be followed to ensure the level of protection expected is delivered,” Mater stresses.

He also advises employers to inspect employees’ FR apparel on a regular basis to ensure that it is still usable.

“Worn or thin areas in a garment will not offer the same level of thermal protection in a fire. Cuts or holes in the garments will also reduce its effectiveness to protect the wearer in the event of a fire.

So garments with thin spots, cuts or holes should be repaired with like, flame-resistant materials only or should be replaced,” he notes.

In an industry that is watching its expenses carefully, “extending the life of these garments is important, as well as choosing garments that have a long product life cycle,” Mater says.

Jeff Cottrill is editor of Canadian Occupational Health & Safety News. Follow us on Twitter@ PipelineOHS.

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OHS e-learning PAGE gm2004 OIL RIG.qxd

12/16/08

10:41 AM

Page 1

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visit: www.ohscanada.com/elearning Products Flame.indd 31

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3M Scotchlite Reflective Material ™

3M Personal Safety Division 3M Canada P.O. Box 5757 London, Ontario N6A 4T1

Products Flame.indd 32

™

For more information Technical Service: 1-800-267-4414 Customer Service: 1-800-364-3577

3M and Scotchlite are trademarks of 3M. Used under license in Canada.

Please recycle. Printed in Canada. © 2015, 3M. All rights reserved. 1508-01897 E BA-15-20436

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