An exploratory study on safety records and risks involved in lng shipping market

This paper notes the overall success of the LNG shipping market in ensuring safety and reliability, and highlights the opportunities and dangers of recent business growth. Risks are organized by theme, with focuses on politics and regulation, safety and security, environmental impact, public perception, technological innovation, cost and time management, competence and quality of assets, and harsh climates.

Using liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a vehicle fuel introduces certain potential safety hazards to fuel handlers, vehicle drivers and passengers, and the general public. In some regards, LNG is safer than propane or gasoline because it is flammable only within a narrow range of fuel/air ratio and it is less subject to accidental fire if vapors come into contact with a spark or flame. In the event of an accidental fire, methane tends to burn along a flame front rather than explode. Because it is lighter than air, methane tends to rise and dissipate instead of accumulating at dangerous concentrations the way gasoline and propane vapors do. This is not to say that LNG use is without risks. Fires and explosions can occur under certain conditions. Furthermore,LNG is stored as a pressurized liquid at very low temperatures, at about -130 to 160°C (−200 to -260°F), so handling and use is subject to the general risks associated with any cryogenic fuel, including the risk of skin and eye burns on contact. Hazards such as these needs to be identified and quantified in terms of the impact they will have on different applications and designs. Quantifying all of the risks associated with the use of LNG represents a significant task. A qualitative risk assessment reduces the effort and expense by focusing on only the important safety issues.

A qualitative risk assessment identifies different likely accident scenarios and determines the consequences that might affect general and public health and safety. This allows the quantitative work to be focused on only the most reasonable and likely safety concerns. The steps for this work are to collect from existing resources all of the phenomenological data on LNG into a single report, then identify all of the accident-initiating events using master logic diagrams, failure modes, effects analysis, and historical operating experiences. This paper will discuss such hazards and safety records handling LNG till date and explores the dynamics of risk management in the context of specific recent experiences in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) business.