Kooi E., Spoelstra M., Uijt De Haag P., 2013, QRA Method for Land-Use Planning around Onshore Natural Gas Production and Processing Plants, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 31, 67-72.
In the Netherlands, companies that handle or store large amounts of hazardous substances must carry out a quantitative risk assessment (QRA) for permitting and land-use planning purposes. The outcomes of the QRA determine at what distances objects such as houses and schools are tolerable. A directive for such QRA calculations is already in place for the risks generated by general chemical industries. A new methodology has been proposed for on-shore sites for production, injection and processing of oil and gas. This method is presented in the current paper with a focus on gas production and processing. The method includes an identification of release scenarios and release frequencies, and an assessment of the consequences and impact of a release. As the outcomes are used for public decision making, transparency and validity of the assumptions used are important conditions for the development of the method. The outcomes of the method will be evaluated against a set of realistic cases in 2013. Implementation in legislation is scheduled for 2013 but depends on the outcomes of the case evaluation.
