Summary
Large onshore and offshore facilities for production, loading and unloading,
and storage of petroleum products are being constructed with reinforced
concrete. Recent examples include the monumental platforms associated with
the Sakhalin II development and the development of new liquefied natural gas
(LNG) facilities. The political climate of the 21st century dictates a
much higher attention level to questions concerning the safety and security of
these facilities. While the existence of terrorism danger is
unquestionable, the magnitude of threat to industrial facilities is seldom
explicitly addressed in structural design and material
selection. Terrorist threat requires not only heightened surveillance and
threat-response readiness, but also the incorporation of design features that
make the success of such threats less likely. These design features
include both structural- and material-level considerations. The authors
discuss some of the current approaches to making concrete structures more
resistant to terrorist attacks while simultaneously rendering them more
serviceable and long lasting. Research and field studies on
fiber-reinforced concrete, slurry-infiltrated mat concrete, and Kevlar
wrapping of critical concrete structure elements in high-seismicity areas are
some of the discussed topics. Suggestions are made as to how these
examples could lead to the toughening of oil and gas concrete facilities or the
construction of concrete protective barriers.
Introduction
A series of events in recent years should leave no doubt that acts of
terrorism have to be considered in the design and operation of facilities, that
if devastated by an attack, could result in a major loss of human
life; facilities critical to infrastructure operation; and facilities essential
to the functioning of critical service supply. The latter group includes
power plants; oil-, gas-, and water-transmission pipelines; and oil and gas
storage and processing facilities. While the most effective approach is to
stop the perpetrators before they act, toughening the structure of these
targeted facilities and their protective barriers will make them less
vulnerable. Several terrorist acts (Table 1) have been aimed at
intimidating the civilian population through attacks on their transportation
system or, as in the case of the Chechen rebels, on schools and
theaters. It can be noted that terrorist activities are shifting from hard
targets such as military and civilian ships (Fig.1) and high-visibility targets
such as the World Trade Center and the U.S. Pentagon to soft targets such as
indicated by the recent attacks on the public transportation systems in Madrid
and London or the petrochemical facility in Saudi Arabia. Certainly,
supply lines of energy, whether in final form (i.e., electrical) or fuel form
(i.e., natural gas, oil, or refined products), must be high on the list of
potential soft targets. The electricity system in developed countries
(i.e., countries being the principal target of the attacks) is hard to
significantly disrupt because of its high redundancy. Major oil and gas
pipelines can be repaired and restored to full operations rather rapidly;
nevertheless, critical damage to major power plants, major refineries, and to
gas- and oil-storage facilities can have a major impact on the economical
operation of such facilities around the world and could disrupt energy
transport and storage operations. This is particularly true in the case of
LNG processing and storage facilities and in transport systems. Building
LNG receiving and regasification terminals is saddled with an additional
problem: the public perception of an unreasonable risk. The emotional
tolerance of the general public for accidents involving LNG has been vastly
distorted, to a major degree by doomsday speculations of the nature of a
catastrophic release, ignition, or an explosion of large amounts of
LNG. Therefore, the toughness of such facilities should not be taken for
granted, but rather, fully documented in the design process and then
communicated to the public.
© 2006. Society of Petroleum Engineers .
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History
- Original manuscript received:
13 October 2005
- Revised manuscript received:
14 April 2006
- Manuscript approved:
27 April 2006
- Version of record:
20 June 2006
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