Venezuela refinery fire - ppt

Thanks to G.Satyanarayana and Sanjeevi for sending details of the Venezuela refinery fire. You can see the ppt in this link.

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Asset Integrity policy

Maintaining the integrity of assets is of prime importance to process safety. Many a time, management looses focus on this important aspect. I read the asset integrity policy of Petrofac which, in my opinion is an excellent policy. I especially liked the last statement about responsibility and implementation.
Read Petrofac's asset integrity policy in this link. 
 
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Assessing Pressure Relief Needs | Chemical Processing

A good article on assessing thermal safety valve requirements is given in this link:

Assessing Pressure Relief Needs | Chemical Processing

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Crisis management

I read an interesting article in Forbes where an entire top two levels of the management team (50 persons) died in a plane crash. The article mentions how the new CEO addressed the issue and brought the company back into its tracks. Now this was not a chemical manufacturing company, but just imagine if the same thing had happened in a chemical manufacturing organization. Many companies do have strict travel rules for its top management to avoid this exact possibility, but in India, there is an inevitability about "fate" and often these rules are flouted.
Does your crisis management plan address these issues?
Read the article in this link.

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Process safety - Gasket failures

Gasket failures contribute to a large number of leaks and some of them could be catastrophic. With skill levels going down in India, sometimes a simple gasket that is improperly fixed could cause a big disaster. Are you training your technicians on the intricacies of selecting and fitting gaskets?  A good article by Garlock on the causes and cost of gasket failure highlight the various issues that are simple but are often forgotten.
Read the article in this link.
  
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