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Featured article in the latest Security Middle East Magazine.

A CLASS OF ITS OWN

Student fire fighters in action - during this drill, students isolate and extinguish flames in two tanks to block the valve of a gas tank and extinguish a propane fire

The Aramco Fire Training Centre is a world-class facility that provides a focal point for fire and rescue training for the entire Middle East. Ruth Edwards reports

In the high-octane world of oil exploration, drilling and production, supplying the demands of an oil-hungry world presents a vast range of unique safety challenges for the industry’s largest crude producer, Saudi Aramco.

Pumping more than nine million barrels of crude a day from beneath the desert in one of the hottest regions on earth is difficult and often dangerous work, requiring world-class fire-fighting capabilities and teams of fire-fighters trained to meet virtually any eventuality.

In order to protect its vast facilities and work force, Saudi Aramco has constructed a world class, $50,000m Aramco Fire Training Centre (AFTC) near Ju’Aymah, in Saudi Arabia. Here, fires can be simulated in virtually any environment, including domestic (workers’ accommodation), medical facilities, maritime (ships and tankers), garages, refineries, gas plants, Gas-Oil Separation Plants (GOSPs), offshore platforms, petroleum tanks with floating roofs, wellheads, as well as petrochemical process units and exterior process units.

Completed in January 2005, the AFTC is said to be one of the most sophisticated of its kind, with the ability to simulate a wider variety of fire scenarios than any other in the world.

In order to create as realistic a scenario as possible, genuine industrial equipment and fire-fighting equipment is used in fire simulations; additionally, the facility has the capacity to generate massive three-dimensional fires such as could be encountered in real process facilities.

Comprising five storeys, the simulator can generate a flowing flammable liquid fire on the third level, for example, that showers burning gasoline onto vessels, pumps, heat exchangers and other process equipment below, a highly realistic scenario that fire-fighters may very well encounter in a real industrial emergency.

The facility has been created using state-of-the-art materials. The Integrated Structural Complex (ISC) utilises a special concrete that uses a refractory-grade aggregate and the specification requires compression loads of 5,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.

The safety of personnel during training at the facility is critical. The entire fuel distribution system is controlled through a programmable logic controller, which features an Emergency Shut Down (ESD) system, with which, the Fuel Control Officer (FCO) can shut down all pumps and close solenoid valves in the fuel distribution system at the touch of a button.

The Master Fuel Control Station orchestrates simulated fires through a network of Local Fuel Control Stations, where instructors monitor student fire fighters’ reactions and adjust fire conditions accordingly.

All flammable-liquid fire areas have ‘safe haven’ areas with no vertical or horizontal fire, to which students can beat a hasty retreat; each trainee is taught how to get to safety as quickly as possible.

The fire water system has a 12,600-gallon-per-minute capability, delivering fire fighting water at 100 psi. In order to conserve precious resources, the water is recovered, treated and recycled so the annual consumption is only make-up water.

The fuels used at the training centre are kerosene, gasoline, liquid butane and gaseous butane; a typical training fire consumes in excess of one tonne of fuel.

Minimising risks

During training the fire fighting teams work in coordination, but even in a practice situation, fire-fighting can be hazardous and the potential for serious injury is always present. Comprehensive training, using nearlife scenarios, ensures that the risks are not only kept to a minimum while training, but also when encountering real fires.

At post-exercise debriefing sessions, trainers from Texas A&M University at College Station, in the US, ‘grill’ Aramco’s top fire-fighters and fire chiefs in ‘teach the teachers’ style sessions designed to reinforce the tradition of rigorous physical and mental training in future AFTC instructors.

“We spend about 30% of our time in the classroom and then we go out and do realistic exercises for the remaining 70 %of the time; I believe that’s the right balance and you learn more by doing it that way,” said one student.

The AFTC follows NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) standards. Established in 1896, NFPA serves as the world’s leading advocate of fire prevention. Its 300 codes and standards are applied at every building, process, service, design and installation in the United States, and are also used extensively as the basis for codes and standards laid down by different countries around the world.

Drawing on the AFTC faculty’s extensive fire-fighting and fire training safety experience, the facility is the perfect environment in which to test fire-fighters’ protective equipment as well a new and emerging technology in fire-suppression equipment and fire extinguishing agents.

Strategically positioned in Saudi Arabia, the AFTC offers a natural alternative to far-flung advanced training facilities located in North America and Europe, and now serves as a focal point for fire and rescue training for the entire Middle East.