heade

Environmental Impact Statement in Safety

Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)
Document prepared following an environmental impact assessment. An EIS is
an integral part of an HSEIA report. It is required for all projects, facilities and
operations where there is potential for significant environmental impacts to
occur. It identifies significant environmental impacts and demonstrates how
corrective (mitigation) measures are introduced in the design process - by
using Best Available Techniques (BAT) - to eliminate or minimise the impact.
The EIS must address each of the life cycle phases i.e. project conception,
engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, operation,
decommissioning, disposal and site restoration of a project

Project life cycle phases
EIA is a life cycle process and is used as a mechanism for balancing the
environmental implications of a project against other aspects, including cost.
An EIA for projects, facilities and operations must address the environmental
impacts in each of the life cycle phases i.e. project conception, design, tender,
construction, commissioning, operation, decommissioning, abandonment and
site restoration of a project. ADNOC identifies the following four project
lifecycle stages and an EIA is required for each of these:
• Phase 1: Conceptual design and Front End Engineering.
• Phase 2: Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC).
• Phase 3: Operation.
• Phase 4: Decommissioning/disposal.

Planned and accidental environmental impact
Planned impacts
Planned environmental impacts are those caused as a natural consequence
of:
• building projects e.g. building roads, pipelines, site clearing/preparation,
socio economic;
• operating facilities or conducting operations e.g. emissions to
atmosphere through combustion or venting, effluents to surface, (land
and marine environment), effluents to ground water, cooling water,
waste products, toxic fluids/substances, noise, lights.
Planned impacts can occur continuously, intermittently or on a temporary
basis. All planned impacts must be identified and assessed for significance as
part of the EIA procedures

Accidental impacts
Accidental environmental impacts occur as a result of mishaps or failures e.g.
failure of material or equipment, procedures not being followed, unforeseen
non-routine process upsets, process equipments/processes not performing as
per design parameters. Typical examples of impacts through mishaps include,
but are not limited to e.g. spills, leaks, fires, explosions, process blow-downs.

In order to assess the significance of planned environmental impacts one must
consider the impact effect and duration. When combined, these result in the
‘Environmental Impact Severity Matrix (EISM)’


When using the matrix to determine impact significance, the following should
be considered:
• The EISM assumes that the event “is occurring or is going to occur”.
• Impact duration = Duration of event + Recovery Time (from end of
event).
• Oil spill impact effect ranking assumes spill does not reach beaches or
environmentally sensitive areas. Oil spills are accidental impacts that
may be considered in the EIA process but, if considered to have Major
Accident Potential, must be fully analysed in the COMAH report.

Group Companies must address all planned significant environmental impacts
by showing that the principles of Best Available Techniques (BAT) have been
applied in the project, facility or operations design. Alternatively, if these
standards cannot be met, Group Companies must prove that they have
minimised these planned impacts to levels which are deemed As Low As
Reasonably Practicable (ALARP) e.g. with view to cost and complexity of
reduction measures.
Planned impacts include those that are the result of routine maintenance and
operations e.g.:
• If a hydrocarbon processing facility requires to be depressurised twice
per year to permit maintenance on one of its components, then the
emissions caused by the pressure blow downs are considered planned.
• If a hydrocarbon processing facility is designed for 95% uptime and, in
the span of a year this permits an average of ten ‘routine’ process
shutdowns, then the emissions (if any) caused by these shutdowns are
considered planned.

Top Most