Protection system against atmospheric discharges in offshore oil platforms

Currently, lightning protection codes and standards do not directly address the requirements for protecting Offshore Oil Platforms (OOP). However, starting from the principle that triggers an atmospheric discharge, offshore oil installations have the same elements than on shore facilities, that is to say, there are electrically charged storm clouds, a reference plane with opposite charge to the clouds charge and structures emerging from reference plane, hence these might become damage prone due an impact of an atmospheric discharge. Because of the great risk of fire and explosions in the OPP, it is very important to protect them against atmospheric discharges, by designing a reliable lightning protection system, altogether with a suitable grounding system. In this work, a lightning protection system designed to avoid the damage produced by atmospheric discharge on OOP is presented, along with important considerations for a grounding system design.