Guidance for Design and Operation of Pump Rooms Following the Explosion on the FPSO Cidade de São Mateus

Abstract

On the 11th of February 2015 a pump room explosion on the Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) Cidade de São Mateus killed nine persons, injured twenty-six more and crippled the unit, requiring that it be removed to a yard to effect repairs. In 2020 the FPSO Owner confirmed that the FPSO Charter and the Services Agreements with the respective Oil and Gas Company had reached their final terms and the unit remained in lay-up in Singapore. Seven years on from this event, although the causes leading up to the incident are well understood within some sections of the oil and gas industry, along with the availability of various high-quality publications on the subject, there remains no consolidated guidance from Classification Societies, regulatory authorities, insurers nor industry advisory groups on how to prevent a reoccurrence of a similar event. Indeed, some FSO/FPSO operators have not implemented the required changes within their existing fleet or within their subsequently developed facilities. This paper provides a synopsis of the incident onboard the FPSO Cidade de São Mateus (CdSM) and the root causes of the accident. From those findings, it describes the design and operational measures some Floating Storage and Offloading (FSO)/FPSO owner/operators and oil and gas companies have implemented to further reduce the potential risks associated with the use of pump rooms. These measures are subsequently visualised by way of a bow-tie diagram. An overview of current Classification Society rules and regulatory authority requirements relating to pump rooms are shown and discussed. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates some of the flaws that still exist in the engineering and operation of contemporary FSO/FPSO pump rooms. As a continuation from those defects, several FPSO pump room incidents that have occurred after 2015, which could have led to a similar catastrophic pump room explosion to that of CdSM, are explained. Finally, the paper contains a recommended basis for design and operational guidance to owners and operators of FSO/FPSOs with pump rooms.