Olanife Adeoye (Petroleum Marketer)
Olanife Adeoye (Petroleum Marketer)
Every expired tanks must be rehabilitated, DPR should monitor the tank farms, training is important for the development of human resources in this area with regards to handling the products because of the sensitive nature, we need modern fire-fighting equipment, most of the ones we have are outdated because if we watch most of these cartoons that are used for these rescuing operations, you will see modern way of fighting fire which we are not even adopting here. They are developing the inspiration of the children for the future, I have seen a lot on the cable, apart from these, the DPR men at various depots should be properly taken care of by the NNPC in order not to continue demanding money from the depot owners or petroleum owners, the DPR should be properly funded and also there should be another supervisory body to be monitoring the DPR workers themselves to make sure they perform their duties as required of them in each of the Depot because if there is no one to monitor them. they will go astray since we are all human beings.
Aisuodiononoe Ose Fidel (Petroleum Marketer)
If human personnel by the government are taken into consideration properly and the right equipment to fight fire is available, it cannot get to the disastrous level because the people are knowledgeable, they know what to do. Also, the material to fight the fire will be readily available, and the equipment needed to make those materials go to where they are being needed will be there for application, then if there is fire outbreak it will be brought under control in 5mins or 10mins, so the degree of damage would be highly reduced, because fire could come from explosion, faulty equipment, it could come from spark, it could be as a result of human error, and sometimes as a result of sabotage.
Chris Iyasere (Stakeholder)
Everybody in this industry should know a little bit of HSE, fire prevention, safety of the equipment, the facilities because human beings are important to the running of the business. Everybody should be able to identify the source of fire by identifying smoke, when smoke is coming out from a certain place which may have been due to melting of wires, generators, taking precautions of not taking handsets close to the generators, naked flames should not be allowed close to an industry like that. Smoking should be avoided completely; the use of lighter and matches should be avoided completely. People should be trained to be at alert at all times because of the vulnerability of the environment that we are operating in. However the fire-fighting equipment we have is obsolete, some have been dormant for months and you will even see that cobwebs have taken over the fire stations as if they are not in existence. So also, there is what we call arrestor, if there is smoke anywhere, the arrestor will not allow the fire to explode in a big way until the fire fighters will now come around to put it out.
Omotayo Popoola (Deputy Chairman, ASCON’s NUPENG)
In an enclosure like a ship carrying petroleum products, if there is anything like trying to scoop fuel, it should be polymath materials like plastics because the ship is built of metals, those compartments are built of metals, just as the trucks we see, in short the ship is an enlarged truck, the vessel that carries petroleum product is just an enlarged truck, it equally has a tank, a moving engine, it has a propeller attached to the engine, so when you use metal in such a compressed environment, where there is already a vapour of petroleum products already circulated and saturated, when you use metal, there is a tendency of such metal when brought together to ignite a spark and when that happens the grip of vapour becomes ignited, and at times that is the source of fire. Therefore metallic objects should be avoided around petroleum products.
Chris Immuolen (Oil and Gas Academy)
The accident that happened in MRS is still under investigation, there is something we call accident investigation and safety. Proper accident investigation is what is needed at the moment which we believe should be carried out by competent hands and professionals, it is upon this investigation that recommendations to prevent further occurrence can be gotten, because the purpose of this investigating accident is to avoid the re-occurrence. After the investigation, the result will show the cause of the accident, and then a very good implementation of the recommendation will now be a way of preventing the re-occurrence of accidents. I know that an accident is caused by a breach of safety rules, so safety should be first and everything that will ensure that the re-occurrence of such accidents do not happen in future should be put in place.
Captain Matthew Ishola (Master Mariner)
We cannot speculate since investigations are still ongoing, I will only say as a practitioner and having been in the industry for long that three things happen before a fire can happen, you need the material that will burn, you need fuel that will make the material burn and then you need air, those are the three components, pick one out, then the fire will be out. It means we now need to look into what will bring fire, petrol itself could bring fire, and not only the petrol itself, but the gas produced by the petrol that could bring the fire and it depends on what they are using to transfer the fuel, is it a safe pipeline? They don’t use just flexible hose to do these things, it should be intrinsically safe made of materials, then it depends on the pre-safety awareness of people around too, there should be no smoking, has anybody been smoking, has anybody used naked fire, this we wouldn’t know because these are possibilities. Then is anybody doing welding, any hot work at that time, these are also possibilities, was there anyone who must have used any connective torch that is also not safe, anything that could cause spark or that can create static electricity, all these are also possibilities. There are a thousand and one things that could cause fire.
Owolabi (ASCON/NUPENG)
I cannot pre-empt since they are still handling investigation, after the investigation, the recommendation would now be given priorities as regards how such fire could be avoided. You can however say safety procedure is very paramount, people should be aware of what fire is and their various causes. I will say that proper pre-caution should be the very first option. In cases whereby metallic objects are being used when trying to scoop fuel or transferring of fuel should be avoided and the likes of lighters or matches should also be avoided as well.
Discussion about this post