MARCOGAZ Activity Report 2012-2013

Task force on a survey for external safety - Policies & Practices

Due to the different policies between Countries regarding external safety a Task Force has been created with the aim to perform a survey of external safety policies, a survey of operational practices applied by companies, and finally a survey of trends in the European Union. The results of the survey are as follows: • Most respondents believe harmonised legislation and standards for pipeline safety can be achieved at EU level; • Almost all respondents endorse that harmonisation should be goal setting and only give basic outlines, national rules providing with the technical details; • There is a slight preference for a quantitative risk standard; • MARCOGAZ role is firstly to inform its Members about ideas the EC develops regarding pipeline safety; • MARCOGAZ should be the spokesperson for its Members regarding harmonization. Protection measures for pipelines are currently being studied. Additional measures (not only safety distance) could emerge from the study. “Protect the pipeline from the people, not the people from the pipe”is the philosophy. Theodorisation report and theodorisation tableprepared in 2012 by the MARCOGAZWG Odorisation were used during the discussions on the Network Code on Interoperability. MARCOGAZ did not made recommendations on odorisation since practices are different in Europe (e.g. centralized versus decentralized). Cost/benefit analysis will be necessary prior to any decision. Results will depend on many factors, one of them being the number of DSO’s in the Country (from 1 to 700+). WG Odorisation has just launch a new study about the current odorisation practices in Europe. This study would report about how odorisation processes aremade (odorant concentration, methodologies, amount of injection points, costs, back-up systems …). Odorisation

MARCOGAZ Activity Report 2012 - 2013

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