Introduction

The value chain for any given chemical/process facility is a relatively complex set of activities involving the company and its fixed manufacturing sites, as well as various shippers and their transportation and storage facilities. Value chain activities for a typical chemical/process facility generally consist of multiple pathways for both inbound and outbound materials. These may comprise hundreds or even thousands of individual shipments over a year's time. Performing security vulnerability analyses (SVA) for all of these individual shipments or even pathways in the same manner would be cumbersome and probably waste SVA resources. This paper proposes a method for mapping the various incoming and outgoing material pathways for potential target materials for a fixed facility and then using those results to choose which pathways require unique SVAs, which pathways can be adequately analyzed using generic SVAs, and which pathways do not require a SVA.

The Nature of Value Chain Activities in the Chemical/Process Industries

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) defines the value chain of chemical/process facilities as consisting of the following activities (Reference 1.):

  • Design

  • Procurement

  • Manufacturing

  • Marketing

  • Distribution

  • Transportation

  • Customer support

  • Use

  • Recycle

  • Disposal

However, for the purposes of this paper, those portions of the value chain involving transportation and distribution activities of inbound and outbound materials to and from fixed chemical/process manufacturing sites (including waste disposal) will be covered. Those portions of the value chain dealing with design, manufacturing/operations, marketing, and customer support will not be analyzed.

The transportation and distribution part of the value chain includes:

  • Receipt of feed materials by multiple modes of transportation, including ship, barge, rail, truck, air, and pipeline.

  • Distribution of products and waste materials by multiple modes of transportation, including ship/barge, rail, truck, air, and pipeline. The distribution of materials from fixed sites can include:

    • Transportation of products directly to a customer

    • Possible interim storage of products

    • Transfer of products between carriers

    • Transportation of samples to potential customers

    • Tollers

    • Distributors

    • Packagers

In addition to a host of possible companies and organizations being involved, there are ownership and regulatory responsibility issues associated with the distribution of chemical products and feed materials. For any given shipment, ownership or custody of the materials may transfer at the originating site, at the receiving site, or at some location in between. Multiple transfers of custody and/or ownership may occur for any given shipment. The material is likely to be transported in containers or vehicles that are owned and operated by companies that are different from the company that offered the material for transportation (generally the manufacturer or seller). For feedstock materials, the fixed site manufacturer is the final recipient; however, transfer of ownership to the manufacturing company that will receive the material may have occurred before arrival onsite (i.e., FOB at the supplier's facility). Additionally, distributors, freight forwarders, consignees (receivers of shipment), interim storage operators, repackagers, and others organizations may be involved with shipments to or from the fixed manufacturing site.

Keywords:
pathway, manufacturing site, pipeline, transportation, infrastructure, sva methodology, river, shipper, value chain, sva
Subjects:
Safety, Security, Information Management and Systems, Data and communications security, Data security
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2005. American Society of Safety Engineers
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