On Wednesday, 20 March 2024, DESFA hosted a readiness exercise at its premises in the LNG Terminal in Revithoussa under the coordination of the Megara Fire Brigade. During this exercise representatives of all entities worked together, analysing and coordinating actions, as well as ensuring the optimal communication between them for effective prevention and compliance with safety protocols. In particular, the readiness exercise involved, in addition to DESFA, representatives from the Fire Service of Megara, the Traffic Police of Megara, the Megara Police Department, the Elefsina Port Authority, the Municipality of Megara, the Region of Attica, the Civil Protection, the neighbouring facilities of HELPE and the Pachi Military Airport, Olympia Odos, the partners of DESFA in safety and firefighting training, as well as representatives from the Truck Loading Service users, BlueGrid, DEPA Commercial and Coral Gas services.
The purpose of the exercise was to enhance the cooperation and readiness of all involved stakeholders, as well as to inform them about the organization, roles and procedures - existing or new - that will be used to assess a security incident involving a liquefied natural gas (LNG) truck. In addition, the participants focused on identifying and preventing any issues that could arise during the response to a similar incident.
LNG Truck Loading is the process of loading specially designed trucks to transport LNG. It is a flexible solution for transporting quantities of LNG to areas and users that do not have access to the grid. In this way, the security of supply is significantly increased, and new areas and users are supplied with natural gas.
The LNG trucks are state-of-the-art and meet international safety standards by design. For its part, DESFA has set a series of increased technical requirements for the users of the Truck Loading service, including that the vehicles must not only have high technical safety standards, but also certifications such as double insulation on the walls of the LNG transport tank, High vacuum multi-layer insulation, inspection certificates from an independent third party inspection company and finally, their drivers are required to have specific certified experience.
