Case Study: Lightning Protection in Oil and Gas Construction

The article discusses the significant threat that lightning strikes pose to refinery facilities, particularly those involved in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and salt water disposal (SWD).

Ashley Automation & Technology Inc., a company specializing in electrical, measurement, control, and telemetry installation and maintenance, has become a leading provider of construction services for SWD facilities in the Fort Worth area. They discovered that the tanks used to store waste saltwater from fracking wells attract lightning, which can cause extensive damage or even burn down the facilities.

In response to this threat, Ashley Automation added lightning protection to its list of services, offering charge transfer systems from Lightning Eliminators & Consultants, Inc. (LEC) to protect facilities from lightning strikes. Charge transfer technology, used in LEC’s Dissipation Array System (DAS®), prevents the termination of a lightning strike within a protected area by bleeding off the induced charge during a thunderstorm, reducing it to a much lower level and suppressing the formation of an upward rising streamer, thus avoiding the strike. This technology has a proven success rate of over 99.87% and is the only lightning protection system that offers a full no-strike warranty.

Ashley Automation’s clients have seen dramatic changes in lightning activity with LEC solutions. For example, during one construction project, lightning strikes were observed at a facility without DAS, but after installing DAS in an adjacent facility, lightning moved away from the protected site.

Since 1971, Lightning Eliminators & Consultants (LEC) has been equipping customers to Keep You Running Through the Storm. Today, LEC’s solutions are in place around the globe to protect the critical operations and structures of some of the world’s most recognized companies, including Federal Express, UPS, CSX Railroad, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Telluride Ski Resort, and thousands more.