Atlantic reviews safety procedures

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) producer Atlantic is conducting an external review of its process safety systems following separate incidents in August and September. Atlantic CEO Nigel Darlow spoke about the review on Tuesday at the American Chamber’s (Amcham) HSSE conference at the Hyatt Regency Port of Spain.

“We had achieved over 37 million man hours – stretching back almost ten years – without a lost time injury (but) in August we had a gas release on Train Three due to a failure of a control valve. Fortunately no one was hurt in that incident but things could have turned out very differently.

“The train was shutdown for 11 days whilst repairs were undertaken and safety checks carried out. Then about five weeks later (September 12) Atlantic had a fire at one of our nine power generation units. Again nobody was injured but it did cause damage to the unit ” Darlow said.

He added that these incidents are quite difficult for the company to come to terms with not only because of its strong track record but because all safety indicators appeared very positive. In fact Atlantic was ranked the leading company in TT for Process Safety and Asset Integrity Management in the 2016 National Audit conducted on the Government’s behalf by globally renowned experts DNV.

“DNV commented that Atlantic’s process safety management was amongst the best they had seen globally ” Darlow revealed. “Yet ” he added “two incidents happened in quick succession.

We have spent a lot of time investigating them and putting in place corrective actions to ensure there can be no repeat.

Beyond the immediate investigation we have been standing back and asking ourselves some more fundamental questions about how we operate and maintain the plant – and are there changes we need to make?”

“So we are having a re-look at things including an external review with our shareholders – to determine what changes are required. We need to ensure we reinforce and sustain all the good safety processes and systems that exist at Atlantic but also that we identify and correct weaknesses in those processes and systems.”

Darlow advised others to take away one critical lesson from Atlantic’s experience. “Always be wary – and have that ‘chronic unease’ that something could go wrong at any time.

Never get complacent never get complacent.” Another challenge Atlantic faced this year was continued gas supply shortages to its plant with rates down at around 70 per cent of utilisation.

“This has had a significant impact on the business – not only the considerable lost revenue opportunity but the operational challenges of having to continually adjust to gas supply fluctuations.

The plant is not on steady operation making things more complicated and putting additional strain on the plant & equipment and the people operating and maintaining it. Consequently this has had an adverse impact on our plant reliability which is lower than normal.”