Steelman– Your truck needs an oil change, the furnace needs annual maintenance, and gas plants and oil batteries need turnarounds.
In this case, the venerable Steelman gas plant, owned and operated by Plains Midstream Canada, was due for its turnaround in September.
These periodic maintenance projects, sometimes called shutdowns, are done to make sure everything is working, what needs to be fixed is fixed, and no maintenance issues will arise to cause either a safety issue or loss of production.
Turnarounds are a preventative maintenance program, according to Earl McLaren. He’s Plains’ district manager for LPG assets, including their gas plant at Steelman, northeast of Bienfait. Certain items, like those regulated under the Technical Safety Authority of Saskatchewan (and its predecessor, the Saskatchewan Boiler Branch), have mandated inspection intervals.
The ultimate purpose, McLaren said, “Is so that everything stays in the pipe, and the vessels and associated equipment.”
As the plant operates, periodic inspections throughout the year like ultrasonic testing of vessel wall thickness can identify areas requiring attention during the next shutdown. Even if the ultrasonic testing has no indications of issues, there still must be visual inspections of many items, from the inside, in vessels that are not built for typical human occupation.
For vessels that have an interior coating (not all do) to provide a corrosion protection barrier, that coating needs to be looked at. It might require the coating to be replaced.
McLaren noted they are trying to get away from shutdowns every year in favour of larger, but less frequent shutdowns.
On Sept. 15, Plains Midstream began its 10 day annual turnaround at its Steelman area gas plant. The facility is one of the oldest of its type in the Saskatchewan oilpatch, having begun operations in 1958 and seeing substantial updates in 1981. In recent years it had been operated by BP, but it was acquired along with other midstream assets by Plains Midstream in 2012.
The facility at one time processed up to 50 million standard cubic feet of natural gas per day, but that number is lower now as the plant has changed over time. For instance, there was once a rail siding for shipping out product. Now the track is gone, but there are 19 storage bullets and a pipeline to the nearby Enbridge terminal just down the road which allows for the shipping of C3+ natural gas liquids.
Driving up to the Steelman gas plant, it’s easy to tell the facility is in a shutdown. That’s because very prominent flares can be seen at batteries all around. When the gas plant they normally feed into is shut down, that means gas that would otherwise be processed at the gas plant must be flared or diverted to another plant. Some batteries may choose to do their own turnarounds at the same time.
While some gas is shunted to Plains’ Glen Ewen plant, and additional gas is sent to the Nottingham gas plant run by a third party, there’s not enough capacity in the system to deal with it all during a major gas plant shutdown without flaring.
Steelman gas plant is at the centre of a very large web of pipelines that run right across southeast Saskatchewan. It takes two-and-a-half hours to drive from one end of the network to the other, according to Wayne Irwin, Plains’ environmental, health and safety advisor at Steelman and Pipeline News’ guide during this turnaround.
“Over 100 facilities feed our 18 compressor sites which feed the Steelman and Glen Ewen plants,” Irwin said. “We have roughly 1,200 kilometres of pipe in the ground from three to 16 inches in diameter.”
“We’re going through our whole plant. This turnaround is scheduled for 10 days,” Irwin said. That means all vessels, pumps, compressors, safety devices and electronics will be inspected, repaired, and put back into working order in that time. However, the periodic maintenance interval is not yet up for the bullets this year, so they will be left out. Typically six bullets are done at a time.
Vessels are cleaned and inspected. Welds are buffed and inspected with mag particle inspection. Ultrasonic inspections are also done, determining things like wall thickness. Inspectors from regulatory authorities will look over what they need to see.
In addition to the work done at the primary site, a portion of all 18 compressor sites spread throughout the countryside will be inspected and serviced as well. The network collects gas from as far as Oungre. Indeed, their own mechanics could be seen loading up compressor components for maintenance at their Steelman shop.
The visit starts off in the new office located about a half mile off the site. The office functions were moved off-site to provide much more room. They also provide a safe area outside of the range of any potential blast zone in the unlikely event there was a catastrophic explosion in the plant. The new office became operational in December 2014.
To that end, the operations room within the plant has been moved, and will be moved again once upon the completion of renovations to create a blast-resistant area within the on-site offices.
“We did an emergency exercise a week ago,” Irwin said, pointing to an organizational flowchart on the wall of the boardroom in the new office. The exercise included local RCMP, local ambulance and fire services, as well as the rural municipality. They used the same incident command system the federal government uses.
“In total there are 30 people in our operation,” Irwin said.
It’s an all hands on deck affair. Usually these turnarounds are done in June, but work at another Plains plant in Empress, Alta, bumped the turnaround at Steelman to September.
At the primary facility, plant operators like Aaron Klyne look after specific areas. On this day, Klyne was overseeing a vessel cleaning on the north end of the plant.
“This is my 22nd turnaround,” he said, adding he’s worked there for 22 years.
Klyne’s first turnaround, under different ownership, was a little different, as they used cleaning techniques which did not work so well. The next year they got CEDA and had better success.
Estevan-based CEDA, a company which specializes in this sort of work, had its workers rigging up their Gama Jet. That’s a special high pressure spray head which was about to be placed inside the vessel in question to wash it out. Think of one of those old-style rotary water sprinklers, then beef it up by a factor of a thousand.
CEDA is one of the numerous contractors on site, with its pressure trucks and hydrovac located here and there, often with flagging marking off restricted areas.
There are 120 extra people working on this turnaround, Irwin noted, contractors with the expertise to do the job and do it well. Some, like Maple Leaf Environmental and Safety, the high-angle rescue company on site, he’s known and worked with for a number of years.
Most of those contractors received their orientation the night before the work began, others at other times. An emergency medical technician at the gate logs people in and out. Upon orientation, everyone gets a numbered card. That’s their pass in and out of the facility.
Irwin noted they try to bring the same people back year after year due to their expertise and familiarity with the facility.
“We ask for the same people. They’re familiar with our operations. We ask for them by name. It’s much better,” Irwin said.
At lunch time caterers supply a hot lunch for the crews, with ham and potatoes as the main entrée. It’s a welcome warm-up on one of the first cool and windy days of the fall.
There are workers visible in almost all areas of the plant – a crane here, a pressure pumper there, a welding truck driving by. A yellow telehandler drives by, escorted by a man on the ground. Irwin points out that is a requirement of all equipment moving around the facility.
A safety briefing takes place before a worker from Maple Leaf in full rigging goes inside a confined space with probes to test the atmosphere inside. Numerous checks and sign-offs are done. Irwin ensures the pipes leading to the area are “blinded and blanked,” which means nothing potentially hazardous can find its way into the confined space.
Just a few feet over electricians from Techmation have taken apart a large panel with substantial bundles of wires leading into it. On the other side of the panel, combustion experts from Estevan Meter put a valve back together.
A few hundred feet to the east, one of the more physically challenging projects is underway. The burner tip on the flare will be replaced on this turnaround. That necessitated a worker from IRISNDT in a full climbing harness quickly ascending the 290 foot tall flare stack. Two other IRISNDT workers standby on belay lines, spread out so the lines don’t tangle.
Travis Packer, crane operator with SkyLift Services of Estevan, maneuvers his 245-ton crane to bring a man-basket into play once the climber has reached the top. Throughout the afternoon you can see from afar the basket running up and down. (When SkyLift purchased this crane, its largest, not too long ago, one of the capabilities cited was exactly this sort of work. It takes all but 34 feet of the crane’s available boom, and that includes two-swing-away extensions and the jib. The total extension was 334 feet.)
Maple Leaf rope rescue technicians were right there, ready to jump in at a moment’s notice in case something went wrong.
Back at the north end of the plant, CEDA was setting up to clean that aforementioned vessel under Klyne’s supervision.
It’s quite evident there’s teamwork from numerous contractors, all working together to get the turnaround accomplished.
Through it all, safety and local operations staff will make multiple rounds of safety checks throughout a typical day during a turnaround, making sure everything is okay. Plains staff are normally on site at at 6 a.m. to help open the gate and do a safety sweep with Maple Leaf rescue technicians before anyone starts work. This is to ensure the site is safe for all workers if something changed overnight at the site.
If all goes according to plan, those flares at nearby batteries will go out and production will resume as usual, safe and secure, until the next turnaround.
