PEI Committee Brings Aboveground Focus

RP800 geared to set industry standard for bulk storage plants.

ng in the United States. Bulk plants have used high-capacity aboveground storage tanks (ASTs) without fanfare for decades, but with the EPA stepping up enforcement of Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) regulations on aboveground tanks, bulk storage is back in the spotlight. The industry needs a reference for safe, effective and cost-efficient bulk storage, and PEI's RP800 committee is stepping up to the challenge.

Formed in August 2006, the RP800 committee is led by Chairman Terry Cooper, president of P.E.S., Inc. of Marion, Iowa. The committee's mission is to draft a Recommended Practice document that will set industry standards for bulk plant installation and construction. “We need to set the standard by which everybody in the industry is going to build,” Cooper says. RP800 will promote bulk plant practices that:

• Maximize system efficiency
• Prevent surface and groundwater contamination
• Minimize environmental hazards
• Reduce safety hazards
• Avoid practices that will needlessly increase installation costs.

One could make the case that RP800 is the logical successor to RP100, PEI's original Recommended Practice document. First published in 1986, RP100 established guidelines for the proper installation of underground storage tanks (USTs). RP800 will refer back to its predecessor for most matters dealing with underground storage, supplementing information particular to bulk plant installations. “Aboveground and underground are the two main categories of petroleum equipment distribution,” notes Cooper. “RP100 was the document for underground, and RP800 is the document for above-ground.” RP800 will not include field-erected ASTs, which are outside the scope of the committee's work.

Cooper knows the practices his committee recommends must be practical as well as effective. To that purpose, the RP800 committee includes representatives from several segments of the petroleum industry, including bulk plant operators and tank manufacturers. He says, “We rely on industry input from the people who are actually going to be affected by this. We don't build anything out of gold.”

A Shift in the Industry
According to Cooper, the need for RP800 stems from a fundamental shift in the focus of the petroleum industry. At the end of the 20th century, most of the attention—both business and regulatory—was on underground tanks. EPA regulations required owners to safeguard their USTs with overfill protection, leak detection and containment, and corrosion-resistant materials, while aboveground tanks largely escaped scrutiny. “Because they're above the ground and you can see them, there wasn't much concern about environmental impact,” Cooper says. “The aboveground world was mostly left alone.”

(from left) John Steward, Rick Zillig, Bill Morgan, Chairman Terry Cooper, Dan Campion, Roy Creley, Brian Savage, Dave Mac Donald, Wayne Geyer and Georges Boyazis. Not shown are committee members Doug Jones, Mark Lipa, and Charlene Numrych.

Not anymore. Because aboveground tanks aren't subject to size restrictions, bulk plants are using ASTs to efficiently store huge amounts of gasoline. Shop-fabricated ASTs can hold up to 60,000 gallons of fuel—triple the maximum legal capacity of an underground tank. The size advantage is prompting more distributors and bulk plant operators to choose aboveground storage solutions. “The business has been shifting in the last few years from underground to aboveground storage,” says Cooper.

Simultaneously, government regulations on ASTs are becoming more stringent. “The Environmental Protection Agency is starting to enforce SPCC regulations, which place requirements on aboveground bulk plants,” Cooper says. “They're starting to look at the above-ground world.” He also points out that many petroleum marketers are opposed to the extent of the regulations, which they say are too strict and expensive to comply with. The EPA has extended the SPCC compliance deadline several times, most recently on May 10. Owners and operators of most oil storage facilities now have until July 1, 2009, to update their systems—and time to consult RP800 once the document is released. “We're both ahead of and responding to the aboveground trend,” says Cooper. “The regulations have been around for a long time, but a lot of the work has yet to be done.”

At older bulk plants, aging equipment can be a liability. “Most bulk plants are 30 to 50 years old,” says Cooper. “They were done with the best practices at that point in time, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were built to today's standards.” As an example, he cites a common issue with older vertical storage tanks—corrosion erodes the base of the containers over time. Now, that problem can be solved with the help of products and technologies that weren't available before. “There are techniques that can be done today with coatings and with tank rings to eliminate the corrosion at the bottom of the tank,” says Cooper.

While new technologies can help overcome old problems, they pose fresh challenges as well. Innovations in fuel technology have driven some of the research conducted by the RP800 committee. “We've seen the advent of some new fuels, ethanol and biodiesel specifically,” Cooper says. “We've also learned a lot about which products—valves and fittings—can handle those fuels.” As new products change the landscape of the industry, the committee will revisit RP800 and revise the document for future editions. Whatever that future holds, RP800 will be at the center of safe and effective installation of bulk storage plants.

Cooper projects that the draft version of RP800 will be released for public review this fall, and the final version is on schedule for publication in January 2008.

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The PEI Journal • Third Quarter 2007 • Volume 1, No. 3 • Contents are Copyright © Data Key Communications, Inc.
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