The continuous management and improvement of safety risks on gas pipelines and above ground installations (AGIs) requires development of wide ranging models and procedures. The type of event which affects pipelines and assets located on an AGI is of low frequency, but can have extremely high consequences, therefore it requires accurate models to make safety decisions and keep risks as low as reasonably practicable. Because of this challenge, the efficient development of models and procedures has historically been coordinated through joint ventures.
Benefits
The continuous management and improvement of safety risks on gas pipelines and above ground installations (AGIs) requires development of wide ranging models and procedures. The type of event which affects pipelines and assets located on an AGI is of low frequency, but can have extremely high consequences, therefore it requires accurate models to make safety decisions and keep risks as low as reasonably practicable. Because of this challenge, the efficient development of models and procedures has historically been coordinated through joint ventures.
Learnings
Outcomes
The project aims and objectives were met for the phases of the project within the financial year of 2023/24. Deliverables include the provision of updated tools, data and methodologies for undertaking risk assessments of National Gas and Cadent’s high pressure gas assets.
The effective collaboration between the project partners and other operators of similar assets worldwide continues to deliver significant leverage, and this has helped National Gas and Cadent Gas to benefit from sharing experience of the application of the tools and learning from incidents.
The deliverables for each element of work undertaken between April 2023 and March 2024 are listed below:
Hazard and Risk Assessment Methods for Gas Transmission Pipelines
1. An updated version of PIPESAFE (v2.29.0), incorporating improvements and incremental developments, as directed by the PIPESAFE JIP Steering Committee, accompanied by lists of reported problems with PIPESAFE and their resolution and updated lists of FAQs. PIPESAFE now includes functionality to enable preliminary risk assessments of gas transmission pipelines transporting hydrogen to be carried out, whilst evidence is awaited from other innovation projects for validation of the models and methodology.
2. Annual report (PG/24/01) summarising activities and outputs from the PIPESAFE JIP in 2023, including the development of a refined methodology and supporting spreadsheet for risk assessment of pipeline/rail crossings and specification of the required software changes to PIPESAFE to incorporate overpressures in risk calculations for hydrogen pipelines, which commenced in 2023/24. An abstract for a paper describing the pipeline/rail crossing methodology has been provisionally accepted for presentation at the IChemE Hazards 34 conference in November 2024.
3. Report summarising new methodology developments identified and recommended for implementation in the next update of HAMM Pipelines, including sensitivity analysis and an impact assessment of an updated version of the failure frequency model for external interference (FFREQ).
Data for Failure Frequency Estimation for Use in Risk Analysis
1. Annual submissions for 2022 prepared for:
a. FFA detailed pipeline incident database
b. AGIFF detailed installation incident database
2. Annual report (FFA/24/01) on the development of the FFA database, summarising data collected to date and performing analysis of trends and examples of failure frequency calculations made possible with the database.
3. Annual report (AGIFF/24/01) on the development of the AGIFF database, summarising data collected to date and performing analysis of trends and examples of failure frequency calculations made possible with the database.
Hazard and Risk Assessment Methods for Above-Ground Installations
1. An updated version of ORDER (v2.26.0) incorporating improvements and incremental developments, as directed by the Steering Committee, accompanied by lists of reported problems with ORDER and their resolution and updated FAQs. ORDER now includes functionality to enable consequence and risk calculations to be carried out for hydrogen and hydrogen/natural gas blends.
2. Annual report (OG/23/08) summarising activities and outputs from ORDER JIP in 2022-23. Highlights included significant progress with the programme of work to extend the application of ORDER to hydrogen and hydrogen/natural gas blends.
3. Report summarising new methodology developments identified and recommended for implementation in the next update of HAMM AGIs.
Ground Movement Threats to Pipelines
No deliverables specified and no funding requirements in 2023-24. No further work is planned.
Effectiveness of Safety Measures
No deliverables specified and no funding requirements in 2023-24. The ESM JIP partners are considering the outputs from Phase 4 for application in their own companies before determining whether further work is required, but no significant further work is planned. An abstract for a paper describing the ESM fault tree approach developed for assessing the effectiveness of “non-physical” measures to protect pipelines has been provisionally accepted for presentation at the IChemE Hazards 34 conference in November 2024.
Hydrogen Transmission Safety
Report summarising new hydrogen developments relevant to Risk Assessment of Pipelines and AGIs, including a review of external overpressure effects on buildings/occupants for hydrogen applications.
Lessons Learnt
The risk assessment tools and methodologies developed in this project provide important input to other Innovation projects addressing the possible introduction of hydrogen into the high pressure National and Local gas Transmission Systems (NTS and LTS) including the FutureGrid project led by National Gas. Communication between the projects could be improved to ensure dependencies and timings are understood.
