April saw DNV Energy in France host DNV's first Arctic Design and LNG Seminar in Paris. The meeting's aim was to offer a forum for designers, operators and service providers in the energy industry to talk about key aspects of this area of current global focus.

About 50 delegates represented many of DNV Software's key customers in France working in the fields of LNG and Arctic Engineering - including Total, Technip, Saipem, Gaz de France, Doris Engineering, and EDE.

As the use of fossil fuel sourced energy moves from high dependence on oil towards cleaner natural gas, the process industry needs to adapt to what is a very demanding physical, political, economical and technically challenging environment.

Arctic Design has special engineering needs where factors such as ice loading need to be considered. A further topic covered at the seminar introduced the concept of probabilistic design of Arctic pipelines. The DNV Software Sesam product family was introduced, highlighting handling of specific design requirement in cold climates.

The Safeti suite of software products offers support for analysis and assessment of hazardous events associated with processing activities. Onshore LNG terminals serving the Arctic region are located in various countries, including Russia, Canada and Norway. Varying localised legislative compliance must be considered by operators and such regulatory frameworks were introduced and discussed.

An example - Quantitative Risk Assessment of the Snøhvit/Hammerfest LNG Terminal, carried out by DNV - was presented to highlight the specialist considerations involved in Arctic LNG activities and the gas leakage and explosion hazards which they present.

The Safeti software products Phast was presented to demonstrate its capabilities in modelling hazardous releases of LNG. Examples of release cases were presented assisted by information on model validation to describe Phast's strengths and weaknesses when modelling LNG releases in cold climates.