Petroleum industry safety features

The Hydrocarbon Processing Industry (HPI), has traditionally been reluctant to invest capital where an immediate direct return on the investment to the company is not obvious, as would any business enterprise. Additionally financial fire losses in the petroleum and related industries were relatively small up to about the 1950 s. This was due to the small size of facilities and the relatively low value of oil and gas to the volume of production. Until 1950, a fire or explosion loss of more than 5 million U. S. Dollars had not occurred in the refining industry in the USA. Also in this period, the capital intensive offshore oil exploration and production industry were only just beginning. The use of gas was also limited early in the century. Consequentially its value was also very low. Typically production gas was immediately flared or the well was capped and considered as an uneconomical reservoir. Since gas development was limited, large vapor explosions were relatively rare and catastrophic destruction from petroleum incidents was essentially unheard of. The outlays for petroleum industry safety features were traditionally the absolute minimum required by governmental regulations. The development of loss prevention philosophies and practices were therefore not effectively developed within the industry. 

In the beginnings of the petroleum industry, usually very limited safety features for fire or explosion protection were provided, as was evident by the many early blowouts and fires. The industry became known as a "risky" operation, not only for economic returns, but also for safety (loss of life and property destruction) and environmental impacts, although this was not well understood at the time. 

As the large scale commercial use of hydrogen fluoride is now well established, particularly in the petroleum industry, the techniques of the use of large size equipment is well known. Reports are available on various aspects of industrial use. A book has been published with particular reference to paraffin alkylation (Phillips Petroleum Company, 13). Corrosion, instrumentation, materials of construction, safety measures, etc., are included. The following journal articles also contain material of interest on large scale technique (Holmberg and Prange, 17, Frey, 18, Fehr, 19). There are certain features that need to be watched, such as corrosion, embrittlement, etc., but the above references deal with these subjects. Corrosion is not particularly serious in properly constructed equipment except where air enters. 

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