Gas release from choke valve stem

Cause & Consequence

• Uncontrolled release of a flammable gas or liquid

Incident Location

Fixed Installation

Incident Activity

Production operations

Specific Incident Equipment

Choke valve

Lessons Identified

• After activation of an ESD it can be hard to find the cause for detection activation as the process is no longer in a steady state and the cause itself may also be dynamic in nature.
• Despite of yearly infrared imaging leak surveys by an external party, sufficient time has passed for a 0.4 gram per second leak to form due to wear.
• Leak rates which can be unacceptable from an environmental point of view may still be too small to be picked up by the Fire and Gas detection system.

Incident Recommendations

When potential leak paths are identified which can develop to excessive emission within the leak survey interval, those items should be considered for additional periodic testing, e.g. by gas leak soap test.