Nitrogen+Syngas 373 Sept-Oct 2021
30 September 2021
Ammonium nitrate after Beirut
AMMONIUM NITRATE
Ammonium nitrate after Beirut
The ammonium nitrate explosion in Beirut in August 2020 has once again focused minds upon the potential risks associated with the chemical.
It is now just over a year since the terrible explosion in the port of Beirut that killed over 200 people and injured over 5,000 others, and devastated the heart of the city. Over 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer had been impounded from an unsafe transport ship moored in the port and transferred to a dockside warehouse. However, there it languished for seven years while legal cases related to the ship and its cargo dragged on, with customs officials and courts swapping letters but no move made to transfer the cargo to a safer location. Eventually, it is believed that sparks from welding ignited the AN, and the subsequent fire further denatured the product until it finally detonated.
The tragic incident is of course merely another in a series of high profile ammonium nitrate accidents that include a similar explosion at the port of Tianjin, China in 2015, which killed 173 people, and the fire and explosion at West, Texas in 2013, where 15 where killed. Once again it placed an unwelcome spotlight upon the industry and how AN is stored and used.
A number of countries announced reviews into current storage and handling practises for ammonium nitrate. By and large these appear to have found no serious concerns. The sole upshot in New Zealand appeared to be the removal of AN from a storage site at Sawyers Bay near Dunedin to Macraes, 90 km away, closer to a mine site where it was used. In Australia, Orica faced questions about the storage of AN at Orica’s Kooragang Island site near Newcastle, NSW, though the company insists that it meets all safety requirements. Australia is in the process of drafting an Explosives Bill, which went for public comment earlier in the year, in order to streamline and rationalise what had been old and slightly disparate state-based regulations on authorisation and licensing of the industry, and it touches on ‘Security Sensitive’ AN (defined as AN mixtures with >45% AN by weight), but this is largely a harmonisation exercise.
China
One of the most notable consequences of Beirut has been a proposed tightening of ammonium nitrate regulations by the Chinese government. Following the explosion, the Chinese government set in train a new round of safety inspections on hazardous chemicals, focusing on ports, wharves, warehouses, and chemical industrial zones. Permissible inventory levels were lowered and many AN producers were forced to idle production – Chinese AN producers are now allowed to only store 1-3 days’ of production on-site.
In May 2021 China’s Ministry of Emergency Management published a draft circular on stricter safety control of ammonium nitrate to solicit comments. The comment period ended in June 2021. The ministry noted in its circular that the draft has been developed to enhance the safety control over the production, use, etc. of ammonium nitrate, in direct response to the explosion in Beirut. It proposes stricter licensing criteria for construction projects involving ammonium nitrate; projects not complying with occupational safety laws and other rules will be denied a license. It also sets tighter national limits for chloride ion and organic compound content in AN products, and specifies that solid AN must be stored in isolation from other chemicals in accordance with Section 6.5 of the Rule for Storage of Chemical Hazards. Regarding sale and use, ammonium nitrate producers and sellers must obtain a civilian explosive sale license to be allowed to sell or purchase it. There is also to be stricter supervision by government bodies; if a government body for emergency management finds that a company producing or dealing with ammonium nitrate does not meet the production safety requirements, it will suspend or revoke the company’s production license. There is also a quantity limit on export sales.
Regulatory gaps
One of the issues that Tianjin and Beirut has exposed is the status of ports, which can be legal ‘twilight zones’. Ships carrying dangerous materials fall under the jurisdiction of the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO’s) Dangerous Goods Code (IMDG Code), a product of the 1960 Safety for Life at Sea Convention, updated most recently in January 2021. However, there is currently no standardised legislation for ports across the globe, and implementation of existing standards can be extremely patchy, as Beirut showed. Since the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990, Beirut’s port has been managed autonomously by a Temporary Committee which does not report to any government agency. This led to the back-passing between courts and customs officials over the AN shipment.
The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has published various frameworks for national risk reduction, most recently the Sendai Framework. However, a law to implement such a risk reduction body has been stuck in the Lebanese parliament for 20 years. If Beirut was primarily a regulatory failure, as with the West, Texas disaster it has highlighted the need for better coordination between bodies with responsibility for enforcing regulations on safe chemical storage and handling.
