Operation of fuel retail outlets – only a safety-focused approach will suffice

Following the tragedy of June 3, a number of actions are ongoing by government actors that many see as knee jerk. Prominent among these actions are those of Hon. Mahama Ayariga, the Environment Minister, going round to supposedly inspect fuel stations. This cannot be the substitute for establishing a dedicated national institution or organisation that is solely responsible for the safety of industrial practices.

In Ghana, the operations of fuel retail outlets are supposed to be regulated by the National Petroleum Authority (NPA). The process through which the NPA carries out this regulatory function is not apparent from the authority’s Website. However, two observations can be made from the information on the website:

• The object and functions assigned to the NPA in the 2005 Act 691 setting up the authority are predominantly focused on the commercial and economic aspects of the retailing business rather than safety.
• The processes one has to go through to obtain a permit for constructing and operating a fuel retail outlet require that one obtains documents and approvals from several different agencies - Town and Country Planning, EPA, Ghana National Fire Service, etc. - thus making the entire process very cumbersome and with the real risk of some requirements falling through the cracks between the different agencies.

There appears to be no dedicated focus on safety. It is therefore proposed that a specialist regulatory body that also develops competencies in the areas of the agencies mentioned above should be set up to police the safe operations of fuel retail outlets. Such a body should be staffed by professionals and should be given the power to prosecute operators who fall foul of safety regulations.

The new Regulator, when set up, should bring together industry players and experts to draft specific Licence Conditions (LCs) that fuel station operators must comply with. The LCs should address the risks presented by operations (i.e. the hazards, who and what is at risk, the tolerability of these risks and the required reductions) as well as the environmental impacts.

To identify the hazards, the operations of fuel retail outlets should be divided into distinct process steps. Such process steps could include:

1. Receipt and unloading of fuel;
2. Storage of fuel;
3. Retailing of fuel; and
4. Maintenance and washout of storage tanks

Each of these process steps has associated hazards that the industry should identify to form the bases of the licence conditions. Further, there are impacts of the environment on the operations and the operations also have impacts on the environment. These impacts should be identified to be incorporated into the License Conditions.

The licence conditions so established must ensure that proposals submitted by those seeking to construct and operate fuel retail outlets provide answers to the following:

1. What are the proposals to ensure that operations function normally and how do they propose to design and engineer the various structures, systems and components to ensure that?
2. What are the processes embedded in the operations of the fuel station that can potentially go wrong and lead to a public safety or environmental incident?
3. What instrumentation is to be provided to give advance warning that operations are deviating from normal and what equipment and procedures are being proposed to prevent or control abnormal operating conditions or to mitigate their effects?
4. What external threats are there to the normal operations of the station? These will include those within the control of the management of the premises (such as naked flames and collisions from out-of-control vehicles) and those outside their control. After the events of June 3, flooding will definitely be one of such events outside the control of management that should be considered.
5. What proposals are being made to control and mitigate the effects of the external threats?

To deal with these questions would require both ‘hard’ engineering measures as well as safe operating procedures and instructions. The responses to these questions must be presented in a pre-construction safety report, which the Regulator then has to review prior to giving approval for the construction of the said fuel station. During construction, the operator must liaise with the Regulator to ensure that what has been proposed and approved is actually what is being built and installed.

The Regulator should also have the role of permissioning the start of operations. Hence its inspectors should be part of the commissioning of a new fuel station. Commissioning is the stage where installations, instrumentation and equipment are tested to ensure that they perform when called upon and as required by the design.

Finally, the operators must be required to capture the design, construction and commissioning experience in an operational manual which will form the basis of training the staff. Such a manual should give guidance on: normal operations, how to spot excursions into abnormal conditions, and what to do when abnormal conditions are detected. Once all is satisfied, the Regulator then gives the approval for operations to commence.

With the operation of any system, conditions degrade with time. This may be due to:

• Wearing and tearing;
• Instrumentation requiring re-calibration; and
• Operators becoming complacent and cutting corners;

Due to the possibility of degraded conditions, the Regulator should require operators to develop and submit their maintenance schedules. Also, at regular periodic intervals a report must be submitted to the Regulator that demonstrates that operations continue to be safe. It should show that operating conditions, plant, equipment and structures have not degraded and that they continue to deliver safety.

To summarise, the operation of a fuel retailing outlet must be taken through all stages from proposals to construction to operations to identify hazards to underpin licence conditions. A dedicated Regulator for this special industry should be set up to ensure compliance with the safety requirements implied by the licence conditions. These licence conditions are broad considerations; they should be further drilled down into ‘deemed to satisfy’ provisions, in codes of practices, for the operators to adopt.

The ad hoc nature of what Mr Ayariga is doing is populist, short term and will not ensure future safety; only a systematic safety-focused approach will do. I hope these humble suggestions could be of help in the search for safe operations of fuel retail outlets in Ghana.

Dr Yaw Ohemeng