On 29 October, a tactical fire drill to extinguish a fire at the Atyrau pump station tank farm in the Republic of Kazakhstan was organized under CPC’s program of drills, exercises, and training to respond to accidents, oil spills, fires, and other emergencies at CPC sites in 2020. Drill participants included fire crews of Atyrau pump station volunteer firefighter units, FAO Ort Sondirushi fire brigades, the Firefighting and Emergency Response Service of the Atyrau Region Emergency Situations Department (ESD), and KPO fire service units. The drill involved a total of 75 people and 14 fire, specialist and support vehicles.
According to the drill’s simulation story, a floating roof was damaged and sunk into crude oil followed by a vapor-air mixture explosion and a full tank surface oil fire on an RVSPK-20000 tank. When an alarm signal was received on a fire & gas alarm mimic panel and the fire was confirmed by operating C&I personnel, an Atyrau pump station shift supervisor activated a general alarm siren phoned and radioed fire notifications following an emergencies communications chart to the Atyrau Region ESD Firefighting and Emergency Response Service control center and the Eastern Region Management, and followed up on an automatic pump station shutdown. BAS LLC security contractor personnel evacuated a total of 61 stations and contractor personnel not involved in emergency response through the northern, central, and southern pump station gates.
Upon receiving the fire alarm signal, two fire trucks drove up to the simulated tank fire and started to cool down the walls of the twenty-five thousand cubic meter tank on its northern and southern sides. A quickly-formed site fire response command center led by a deputy pump station manager ordered the tank farm to be de-energized, portable radios to be provided to arriving KPO and ESD crews, and additional quantity of foam agent to be brought in to ensure the firefighting substances continued to be supplied without interruption to extinguish the simulated tank fire.
By combined efforts of the pump station fire crews and the newly-arrived reinforcements, three firefighting areas were formed to cool down the walls of the simulated fire tank and block valves, to cool down the walls of a neighboring tank, to protect personnel and equipment, and to extinguish the simulated fire in the oil tank. Within 20 minutes after the fire alarm was received, specialist firefighting equipment was deployed around the tank and an order was given to start a foam attack. For 10 minutes, foam was supplied onto the top of the burning oil tank from a Purga-80 foam monitor installed on a PP-50 foam tower truck, then the fire was reported to have been contained and an order was given to continue the foam attack until the fire fully stopped. The simulated fire was extinguished 10 minutes later.
It took 40 minutes for the simulated fire at the Atyrau pump station tank farm to be fully extinguished from the time it started. The Atyrau Region ESD and CPC-K leadership carried out a drill debrief and assessed the response actions as “excellent”. The Atyrau Region ESD and the CPC-K management made no criticizing comments. Mukhit Mazhenov, the CPC Eastern Region Manager, summarized the drill results and thanked the drill participants for the drill’s success, commending the medical service readiness to provide paramedical care, high discipline of site personnel and security guards, and interaction and cohesion between the drill participants.
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The CPC Pipeline System is one of CIS largest energy investment projects that involves foreign capital. The length of the Tengiz – Novorossiysk pipeline is 1,511 km; this route moves over two thirds of all Kazakhstan export oil along with crude from Russian fields including those in the Caspian region. CPC Marine Terminal is equipped with three Single Point Moorings (SPM) that allow to load tankers safely at a significant distance offshore, also amid poor weather conditions.
CPC Shareholders: Russian Federation (represented by PJSC Transneft ” – 24% and CPC Company – 7%) – 31%; Republic of Kazakhstan (represented by KazMunayGaz ” – 19% and Kazakhstan Pipeline Ventures LLC – 1.75%) – 20.75%; Chevron Caspian Pipeline Consortium Company - 15%, LUKARCO B.V. - 12.5%, Mobil Caspian Pipeline Company - 7.5%, Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures Limited - 7.5%, BG Overseas Holding Limited - 2%, Eni International N.A. N.V. - 2% and Oryx Caspian Pipeline LLC – 1.75%.