MIDSTREAM FACILITY CASE STUDY

An Emergency Response Keeps an Oil and Gas Company Online During a Crisis

Effective planning doesn’t mean that an emergency response is never necessary. What it does often provide is a buffer: a little bit more time to figure out a way forward before a facility faces bigger losses.

As is the case for every emergency call we receive, we knew time was of the essence for one recent client. The difference was that they hadn’t completely lost power – yet.

It was up to us to find a solution that would allow our client to maintain their operations in the face of an imminent outage.

The Client: A North-American Midstream Services Company

With locations across Canada and the United States, this client provides the many facilities and services required to connect oil and gas producers with refiners and other fuel customers.
They handle the transportation, storage and marketing solutions for both crude oil and natural gas liquids (NGL) producers, and possess a near 2-decade-long track record of delivering excellent, and safe, results.

The Challenge: An Ice Storm Leads to an Imminent Outage

When an ice storm hit one of this client’s facilities, their substation was damaged and the facility went into “limp” (heat and light) mode. They were able to continue operating temporarily with a limited capacity, but a complete outage was likely to happen soon.

Our client needed 2MW of 2400V generation as quickly as possible in order to maintain their current level of operations, and they simply couldn’t afford to lose power completely.

Our Approach: A Coordinated After-Hours Response

The Trinity team received the emergency call from our client after-hours, and got to work immediately.

Using our power broker model in tandem with our own large inventory, we were able to source a complete solution from four different locations across the province. The equipment we delivered included:

• Four 500kW synchronized generators
• A 3125kVA 480-2400V step-up transformer
• 200 feet of HV and LV cable
• A 25,000L fuel tank

Our logistics team, which is experienced in coordinating emergency shipments, worked to ensure that all of the equipment from each of the four locations, would arrive on site within hours of each other. This would allow our client to begin installation as quickly as possible.

We also coordinated generator technicians to complete the final connections to the fuel tank and to parallel and commission the generators.

The Result: Business Continuity That Provides Peace of Mind

The best outcome in any emergency scenario is that everyone is safe, and business operations are able to continue. Because of our client’s advance preparation and Trinity’s coordinated response, both of these scenarios were achieved. The facility will now be able to continue to operate until the damage from the storm is repaired.