what are Prohibited or Banned Areas?
Prohibited Area: is a dangerous area that should be subjected to safety instructions, to protect it from against fires and gas emissions, in addition to prohibiting any welding and maintenance jobs without a work permit.
1. Oil Facilities: all the sites and areas that drilling, production, treatment and storage of oil and its products, it includes:
a. Restricted areas within oil and gas treatment facilities, GOSPs, gas compressor stations, oil pumping stations, oil and gas manifolds.
b. Oil Tank farms and its surroundings.
c. oil products or fuel facilities such as tanks, pump stations and fuel storage.
2. Industry Areas: includes:
a. Warehouses.
b. Power Plants, and electric sub-stations.
c. Factories and industrial workshops.
d. Thermal units such as: furnaces, heat exchangers, boilers ..etc.
e. Chemical injection units and chemicals storage.
3. Gas Areas: includes:
a. flare areas.
b. gas leakage points.
c. gas compressor stations.
d. gas treatment facilities.
e. LNG and LPG plants.
what is Work Permit?
it is an official document gives a permission to do an industrial job, declaring the conditions in which the work will go safely in controlled conditions, and to take precautions required to control the hazardous involved in the working site.
the purpose behind Work Permit is to make sure that the works wanted to be done within the dangerous areas are done according to safety requirements as much as possible, and that the dangerous area has become safe before doing the required work.
Work Permit also identifies and evaluates hazards associated with any work to minimize the chance of those hazards into accidents.
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Work Permits Types:
- Cold Work Permit.
- Hot Work Permit.
- Confined Space Entry Permit.
- Excavation Permit.
- Tankers Permit: for tankers that transport oil or any of its products.
- other types: such as Working at height permits and lift permits.
Hot Work Permit:
this kind of permit is required when doing any work that involves spark ,heat or a continuous flame which is able to burn combustible materials, such as:
1. Exposed flame. like flares and gaseous flaming materials.
2. Welding Machines. and welding works.
3. Internal Combustion Machines.
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Cold Work Permit:
this kind of permit is required when doing routine works that do not need using a flame, such as:
1. disconnecting oil, gas, and water pipelines, installing spades, or connecting flanges in their different types.
2. Chemicals pipeline and equipment.
3. working on machines, pumps, heat exchangers and other equipment.
Excavation Permit:
this kind of permit is required when doing any digging works within areas that may contain any pipelines or cables, it is required to get an approval from following parties:
1. Communication Personnel: to ensure that there are no communication cables within the digging area.
2. Electrical Personnel: to ensure that there are no electricity cables or wires within the digging area.
3. a professional personnel to ensure that there are no oil, gas or oil products pipelines within the digging area.
Constricted Areas Permit :
this kind of permit is required when doing any work within constricted areas such as: manifolds, oil well cellar, maintenance work inside a tank, vessel, separator, .. etc.
finally, why Work Permit is necessary?
it is an evaluation for hazardous conditions and is required to control the hazards involved in dangerous site and project activities. so everyone in the site should understand the precautions stated in the work permit to achieve the safety.
and to better understand the whole subject, here is a sample of hot work permit: