by Malinda Seneviratne
In the last issue of the Sunday Island, Dr. Mahesha Ranasoma, Director, Supply and Operation, of Shell Companies in Sri Lanka, responded to my article titled "Shell’s shocking safety standards" which appeared in the Sunday Island of July 28, 2002. Ranasoma, as one would expect, takes issues with my allegations. Reading through Ransoma’s "defense", I couldn’t help thinking that he is either totally ignorant about the company’s operations in Sri Lanka or is unashamedly lying. I hope it is the former because that would mean there’s room for correction. The "refutations" offered by Ranasoma are both misleading and inaccurate and in some cases totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Ranasoma starts with a brag: "Shell introduced many of the fundamental safety standards adopted by the Government and made a significant investment in Sri Lanka through its import and storage terminal built at international standards and a bowser fleet and other hardware to replace old unsafe equipment". First and foremost, I didn’t know Shell was doing us a favour. All I know is that multinationals never invest out of love for a country or a people. Their primary motivation is love of profit. And I know this; there is rhetoric and there is practice. Rosy words are fine; but the proof of the pudding, they say, is in the eating.

Here is a claim: "Demurrage costs do not form part of the price build-up of Shell Gas’ agreed pricing mechanism with the government. The company does not pass them on to consumers." However, in a promotional article titled "What is Shell doing in Sri Lanka?", Shell admits the following: "Shell Gas has to import all its LPG requirements. This means paying for LPG and shipping costs at market rates in US dollars, and paying customs duties, surcharges, taxes and insurance premiums. The agreed pricing formula for Shell Gas includes all these components. It also includes a recovery element to pay for operating costs, overheads, depreciation and a profit margin" (my emphasis). Sounds like a contradiction, I am sure Ranasoma will agree.

I did not allege that Shell paid demurrage for a shipment for Laughs. The ship GAZ RED SEA had brought gas for both Shell and Laugfs. It unloaded part of its cargo for Laugfs on June 19 and had to wait outharbour for Shell until June 25 for the weather to clear.

The main thrust of my article was Shell’s safety standards, although pricing is also very important. Shell’s claims about its safety standards are actually laughable. The actual situation at the Conventional Buoy Mooring (CBM) is hazardous and risky due to bad maintenance, which has led to malfunctioning safety equipment and valves associated with the Pipe Line End Manifold (PLEM). In fact the equipment cannot be operated or monitored from shore.

The emergency shut-down and operations shut-down valves including the non-return valve on the PLEM are not functioning automatically. The only way to open and shut the valve in order to discharge LPG from ship to shore is done by a manual hand pump, connected onboard the particular ship to a long hydraulic hose which is attached to the Emergency Shut Down Valve (ESD) and the other end to the CAMLOCK at the end of the rubber hose string. This hose-string and the hydraulic hose is taken aboard the gas ship and the manual hand pump is connected to the hydraulic hose in order to open and shut the valve on the PLEM. This hand pump is meant only to top up the hydraulic system on the PLEM when the oil level goes down, and not to operate the PLEM valve for routine gas discharging operations for safety reasons.

Ranasoma talks about "a tug boat and support craft kept on standby". The "tug" used for CBM berthing operations has only 960HP in both engines. Should one of the engines fail during an emergency response to assist a gas ship in distress, for instance, 480HP would be totally inadequate.

On August 8, 2001, while the gas ship "EPSON" was being berthed, the anchoring chain of the No.2 Mooring Buoy got disconnected from its connecting shackle and the ship swung around from its position, but no damage occured since the ship was already in the berthing process. If this had happened during a gas discharging operation, the flexible rubber hose string and the hydraulic hose which is connected to the manual hand pump would definitely have come apart, making it impossible to shut the opened valves on the PLEM, since the ESD valve and the Operation Shut down Valve cannot be operated from shore. Approximately 5 tons of LPG in the pipe line would have been released.

LPG consists of 70% Butane and 30% Propane and expands to 250 times its volumes . The implications of a gas leak need not be elaborated. This is why, it is adviced that even domestic cylinders are kept outside confined spaces and that the valve is always shut off when not in use.

Ranasoma claims that "only intrinsically safe communication equipment are allowed in the vicinity of the LPG discharging operations". The safety specifications, in fact, forbid the use of cellular phones, for the 6v batteries are enough to give a spark and a spark maybe all that is needed to precipitate a raging fire, especially in a place where standards are not maintained. I am not sure if Ranasoma knows this, but we have information to the effect that cellular phones are regularly used at the CBM. Ranasoma claims that routine emergency drills are conducted at the CBM. I would like him to give me the dates on which these "routine" drills were conducted. I am assuming that each and every person involved in operations at the CBM would have been thus trained.

Shell makes much of the allegedly high quality design of its facilities. Ranasoma claims that "the CBM components are all provided with cathodic protection". The truth is that there are only zinc anodes on the PLEM structure. 65% of the PLEM is buried and the balance is covered with heavy marine growth, sealing the anodes and rendering them useless.

Ranasoma has totally distorted the true picture of maintenance and the wear on the chain links. After the report on calibration and inspection had been submitted, it had taken Shell a couple of months to request that photographs be taken. Ranasoma says this was to "determine if the chains have excessive wear and if so to replace them". Rather strange, since the figures would have told them just how much wear had taken place and if replacements were necessary since there are specifications pertaining to these things. Anyway, once this was done, there was no immediate "replacement". They merely removed the ones that needed replacement and linked the good ones together. Replacement had actually taken several months more!

Ranasoma claims that routine inspection is done of the full length of the LPG flexible hose at the CBM, all the buoys and pins of the CBM and all the buoy chains. How routine is "routine", I wonder, for technically you could check these things on January 1 every other year and this would also be "routine". Ranasoma also tells us that Shell monitors the "performance of the cathodic protection systems". Which cathodic protection system is this person talking about?, we wonder.

Shell introduces a "learning curve" plea to get around my charge that the maintenance schedule has not been adhered to. Ranasoma says, "The chart shown (in my article) is an outdated version of the original manual prepared prior to commissioning of the CBM". Apparently, after the first two years of operation, armed with "experience", Shell has now established the optimum maintenance scope and frequency at the CBM.

How is it, I wonder, that Shell contracted the diving company (through GAC Shipping Ltd., their marine managers) to stick to this "outdated schedule"? The services of the diving company were not "terminated" as claimed by Ranasoma. What really happened was that the diving company, which had carried out all diving operations at the CBM since November 1, 1999, had withdrawn its contract. The letter withdrawing from the contract has upto now remained unacknowledged by Bob Moran, Managing Director, Shell Terminal Lanka Ltd. In this letter, dated June 27, 2002, the diving company has requested that Shell return all certificates of personnel and equipment forwarded through GAC Shipping. Perhaps Ranasoma or Moran will tell us why these documents have not been returned. Perhaps too, they will give us some tangible proof that whoever is doing the maintenance work at the CBM is competent and have certificates to prove it.

Until June 27, then, the only maintenance schedule in operation was what Ranasoma calls an "outdated version". The public would be very interested in taking a look at the new schedule and would also like to know when it came into operation.

Shell, I admit, is not the only culprit. The government owns substantial shares in Shell Gas. They are responsible too. Shell is not answerable to us, but the government certainly is. At some level. The public needs some answers.

Finally, the issue of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Let me tell Ranasoma why I "dragged" Ken’s carcass into Shell’s horrible safety story. I don’t know about Ranasoma, but there are people in this world who know very well how multinationals operate. In the case of Ken, it was a matter of "naduth hamuduruwange, baduth hamuduruwange". We have lived long enough under "liberalization" to know who Freeport-McMoran are, for instance. We know about Irian Jaya. We know how many people died. Bhopal was an "accident", a tragedy that had already been scripted. Other "accidents" are more deliberate and well targetted. I was only buying insurance, you know. For myself, and everyone who gave me elements of Shell’s real standards.