We are pleased to announce that as of 12. January 2015 our head office has been relocated to new facilities in Esbjerg, shared with Maersk Training.

The new head office address is:

Maersk H2S Safety Services A/S
Ravnevej 12
6705 Esbjerg
Denmark

The change of address applies to our office, workshop and training facilities.

In April 2014 Maersk H2S Safety Services was sold to Maersk Training and now we share facilities with their training centre located in Esbjerg. The planning of our relocation started shortly after last year’s acquisition.

We see the moving of our head office premises as an important milestone in becoming an integrated part of Maersk Training. We eye great opportunities arising from our new ownership, after all our customers in the oil and gas industry all agree on their number 1 priority – safety comes first!

 

When working in confined spaces every safety aspect must be considered and all necessary precautions must be taken before entering the potential hazardous atmosphere, containing poisonous substances such as H2S.

Thanks to our highly specialized Confined Space Supervisors, we just finished such an operation, protecting workers entering spaces considered “confined”, containing highly toxic fluids and residues.

Safety Checks & Gas Free Certificates

The past 15 days our confined space specialists have supported an Italian oil center shutdown. As confined space jobs in oil plants are extremely demanding, all safety aspects and procedures were evaluated and before every tank cleaning job, a workplace assessment was completed and the safest technical solution applied.

The Confined Space Supervisors´ responsibilities entailed issuing gas free certificates, ensuring safe access to the following areas:

• Processing towers (up to 30 meters height)
• Small and large separators
• Small underground storage vessels
• Large surface storage vessels

Prepared for Emergencies

During this operation 2 emergencies were performed and in both cases the worker was pulled out of the space fast and without incidents, using our specialized rescue equipment. Our highly specialized access and rescue equipment were installed in the refinery, ready to be deployed in the least possible amount of time.

When asked about the special challenges in this operation, our Confined Space Supervisor explained “Working at 30 meters height was a big challenge for all involved in this project but at the same time it was a golden opportunity to gain highly valuable knowledge and experience in confined space jobs”.

Facts about Confined Spaces

A confined space is an enclosed space that:

• Is large enough to get a person inside
• Is not intended for human occupancy or workplace
• Could have limited or restricted entrance or exit
• Has poor or no ventilation
• May contain potential or known hazards

 

The alternate entry requirements are:

• Employees must be trained in confined space hazards
• The atmosphere in the confined space must be tested before and during entry
• Continuous ventilation must be used
• If a hazardous atmosphere is detected, or ventilation stops, the space must be promptly exited
• Use of correct PPE

It’s silent, invisible and viciously unforgiving. Sniff it and by the time you can say “hydrogen sulfide” you might be dead.

Thankfully today the offshore industry has the tools to detect it in its smallest concentration and to set off an alarm protecting those nearby before it can kill.

Heavier than air it has, in its weaker version, the foul smell of rotten eggs. It processes the menacing qualities of being corrosive, flammable, explosive and when in comparatively minor amounts, extremely poisonous. H₂S, in its formula ID, is a constant threat in three major industries, the offshore, farming and fishing.

Recently in Denmark two fishermen died, their catch rotting without ice gave off the gas, they went into the hold and that was that. Hardly a year goes by without a farmer being killed by it. Last year in Northern Ireland a rising rugby star went into a silo to rescue his overcome brother who had gone in to pull out his overcome father who had gone in after their dog. They all died within seconds of exposure. These were the result of man ignoring nature.

Offshore Takes Lead

When nature acts on its own, but provoked by man, the consequences can be even more horrific – in China in December 2003, a land drilling well hit H₂S. At least 233 people and a thousand animals died and more than 9,000 people were treated.

Constant care and diligence to their customers has meant that there have been no fatalities offshore in the 30 years that the company Maersk H2S Safety Services has been part of the industry. They are a global company supplying breathing and detection apparatus to the world and their main warehouse in Esbjerg was impressively empty the day we visited. ‘We have just shipped our biggest ever order to Brazil, 15 containers,’ says Niels Koed Hansen, General Manager Sales at Maersk H2S Safety Services.

Terminally Toxic

Not so empty were the workshops where row upon row of detectors were going through a regular check-up and routine calibration – they detect from 5ppm, parts per million. A hundred 100ppm permanently wipes out your sense of smell, 1000 wipes you out – to try and gain some perspective, that’s the same as putting one teaspoon of poison into six litres of water and every drop in the bucket becoming terminally toxic.

There’s only one thing worse than being killed by H₂S gas according to instructor Claus Thorberg Hansen, and that is surviving it. He recently had a Canadian on a course who had been subjected to 250ppm – he’d been in medication for over two years and parts of him, like his lungs and sense of smell, will never be quite the same again. This was all because he walked past a very minor occurrence. He caught a whiff, others with him didn’t, but the whiff caught him. By comparison to other survivors he got of fairly lightly.

Claus had just come from training another group of rig workers, putting them through the disorientating darkened container filled with what look like oversized animal cages. They had to feel and fumble their way to safety. A large part of the survival process is in not panicking, in order to put on safety equipment correctly so it doesn’t allow any gases to sneak past.

Old Wells, New Dangers

The main role of the company is in supplying the equipment and then making sure that everyone on board knows what to do. Because of this there is a certain amount of training on the rigs as well as a constant need for a company rep to be there in regions where the gas is even a remote possibility.

In the drilling world there are areas where you are more likely to come across the gas, it’s called anywhere. Of course there are regions where it hasn’t been present but since it is created by the bacterial breakdown of organic matter, it is virtually part of the same oil and natural gas evolution process.

H₂S can even occur in instances where it wasn’t originally present. Some of the original wells in the North Sea are being revisited because better drilling techniques now make oil and gas deposits, which were once too expensive or difficult to reach, retrievable. In the short time since they were declared non-operational, bacteria has created pockets of H₂S.

Hydrogen Sulphide is a substantial safety concern in the oil industry, but far from the only gas encountered during drilling operations. This emergency call was about high concentrations of CO gas.

The most common and toxic gasses encountered in the oil industry are H₂S, CO, CO₂, SO₂, and CH₄.

Saturday morning we received an emergency call out from a Norwegian operator, as a regular well permanent plug and abandonment job went wrong, prompting a high concentration of CO in the old mud. Inhalation of CO in high concentrations is dangerous, and even deadly in concentrations at or above 12,800 ppm.

Before the arrival of our safety supervisor, the platform mud system had been seriously contaminated with a high concentration of CO and the lack of contingency plans for the presence of CO placed the forthcoming operations under high risk. The safety supervisor’s role was to advise on proper risk assessment for the handling of CO and ensure the operations could continue without jeopardizing the safety of onboard personnel.

Exposure to CO can cause nausea, dizziness, headaches and collapse. Inhalation overexposures may be fatal.

Client Feedback

Throughout your stay on the rig you have shown a very professional attitude and have helped us get a clear understanding of the problems we have faced and how to deal with them in the best possible way. On behalf of the crew, I would like to thank you for all your good work.