LNG Operations in Port Areas: Essential Best Practices for the Industry

This book discusses the criteria influencing site selection for marine gas terminals and provides guidance on control of the main risk elements.

It acknowledges the dynamic nature of operating environments and the fact that risk profiles will change with time. Operators require both a systematic assessment of operating risk and a range of risk reduction methods that can be tailored to be effective in specific circumstances. This book aims to satisfy both these requirements.

It also looks at management of relations with the providers of port services, other port users and the wider social community of the port.

Gas tanker and terminal operations carry a range of operational risks arising from transport, storage and transfer of liquefied natural gas and petroleum gases. These risks are unique to liquefied gas operations and require specific measures to manage them within tolerable limits.

Many gas terminals are situated within the environs of established ports. Hence their operations and those of the gas tankers serving them, necessarily share a common operational environment with other port users. Such situations have existed for many years. Consequently industry members have acquired valuable experience in conducting gas operations in port environments that also host numerous other port users and other industrial activities.

This document draws on this collective experience in setting out guidance to best practice for managing gas shipping operations within ports. It also illuminates the profile of risks attaching to gas operations, for the information of those who administer ports and provide essential services in port areas.

The document draws heavily on SIGTTO’s Information Paper 14 (Site Selection and Design for LNG Ports and Jetties), first published in 1997. Information Paper 14 expounds a doctrine of protective location for gas terminals, arguing for the elimination of major risk elements by locating gas operations in places where they will not be exposed to uncontrolled threats from outside their own operating environments. Under this doctrine operational risks are removed from the operational milieu of gas shipping (by informed selection of locations). Such risks as then remain are assessed and afterwards addressed by the implementation of procedures derived specifically from the risk assessment. Hence gas shipping operations are to be managed within tolerable limits – i.e. residual risk exposures are reduced to manageable proportions.

The guidance offered in this document recognises also the dynamic nature of operating environments and the fact that risk profiles change over time. Hence residual risk exposures may also change and therefore require re-assessment, together with concomitant adjustments to the operational procedures devised to suppress them.

Operators therefore have a need for both a systematic assessment of operating risk and a range of risk reduction measures that can be tailored to be effective in specific situations. The guidance offered in this document aims to satisfy both needs.

Nevertheless change in operational risk profiles may not always be manageable solely by gas businesses adjusting their operating procedures. In many situations the co-operation of port administrations and service providers will be required to achieve the required degree of safety. This will be especially true of risks arising from the movement of gas tankers in port areas and from other activities conducted in the vicinity of gas tankers and terminals, including the movement of other ships. This document therefore addresses also the issue of relations with the providers of port services, other port users and the wider social community of the port.

1. Hazards of LNG Operations

1.1 Safety Critical Properties of LNG

1.2 Containment Systems for LNG

1.3 Resistance of Gas Tankers to Collision and Grounding Impacts

1.4 Characteristics of Gas Releases to the Atmosphere

1.5 Consequences of Ingress from the Sea

2. Risk Assessment

2.1 QRA Methodology

2.2 Special Areas for Performing a QRA of LNG Port Operations

2.3 Summary of General Considerations

3. Managing Tanker Transits

3.1 Anchorages

3.2 Approach Channels

3.3 Turning Basins

3.4 Operational Management of Tanker Transits

3.5 Special Defensive Procedures

4. Terminal Site Selection

4.1 Elementary Criteria

4.2 Terminal Operations (Basis of Design)

4.3 Port Operations (Manoeuvres)

4.4 External Threats (Protective Location)

4.5 Port Development

5. Managing Gas Transfer Operations

5.1 The Elements of Interface Security

5.2 Effective Mooring

5.3 Cargo Transfer Systems (Emergency Shut Down – ESD)

5.4 Jetty Operations and Control

5.5 Protection from External Threats

6. Managing Relations with Port Authorities and Other Stakeholders

6.1 Contingency Planning

6.2 Local Partnerships

6.3 APELL

6.4 Managing the LNG Risk – ‘Successful’ to ‘Significant’

SIGTTO

The Society of International Gas Tanker and Terminal Operators (SIGTTO) is an international body established for the exchange of technical information and experience, between members of the industry, to enhance the safety and operational reliability of gas tankers and terminals. Learn more: https://www.sigtto.org/about-us/