On March 23, 2005, a fire and explosion occurred at BP's Texas City Refinery in Texas City, Texas, killing 15 workers and injuring more than 170 others. BP was charged with criminal violations of federal environmental laws, and has been subject to lawsuits from the victims' families. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration slapped BP with a then-record fine for hundreds of safety violations, and subsequently imposed an even larger fine after claiming that BP had failed to implement safety improvements following the disaster.
The Texas City Refinery is the second-largest oil refinery in the state, and the third-largest in the United States.[1] BP acquired the Texas City refinery as part of its merger with Amoco in 1998.[2] It had an input capacity of 437,000 barrels (69,500 m3) per day as of January 1, 2005.
The explosion occurred in an isomerization unit at the site, resulting in the deaths and injuries. According to a report issued after the accident, actions taken or not taken led to overfilling the raffinate splitter with liquid, overheating of the liquid, and the subsequent overpressurization and pressure relief. Hydrocarbon flow to the blowdown drum and stack overwhelmed it, resulting in liquids carrying over out of the top of the stack, flowing down the stack, accumulating on the ground, and causing a vapor cloud, which was ignited by a contractor's pickup truck as the engine was left running. The report identified numerous failings in equipment, risk management, staff management, working culture at the site, maintenance and inspection, and general health and safety assessments.
In 2011 BP announced that it was selling the refinery.[2]
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The refinery had been in operation since 1934, but had not been well maintained in several years. Consulting firm Telos had examined conditions at the plant and released a report in January 2005, reporting of "broken alarms, thinned pipe, chunks of concrete falling, bolts dropping 60ft and staff being overcome with fumes", and the report's co-author stated "we have never seen a site where the notion 'I could die today' was so real".[3][4] The refinery had also had five managers in the six years since BP inherited it in its 1998 merger with Amoco.[5]
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board investigating the incident found that operators had started up the raffinate splitter tower (which separates light and heavy gasoline components) of the ISOM unit (which increases the octane rating of gasoline) and begun filling it with hydrocarbon fluid (i.e., gasoline components) without beginning timely discharge of product. The operators started the tower while ignoring open maintenance orders on the tower’s instrumentation system. An alarm meant to warn about the quantity of liquid in the unit was disabled.
Once the lack of draw-down from the tower was recognized, operators opened the discharge valve. This worsened the problem, because the hot discharges passed through a heat-exchanger that pre-warmed incoming fluids. The resulting increase in temperature caused the formation of a bubble of vapor at the bottom of the raffinate tower that was already overly full and overheated. The tower burped the vapor bubble and the liquid above the bubble into the overhead relief tube of the tower.
The relief tube was connected to a disposal system for relieved discharges. The particular type of disposal system serving the raffinate tower was a blowdown drum with an atmospheric vent stack, rather than an inherently safer and more environmentally sound knock-out tank and flare system. Because of the overfilling of the raffinate splitter tower and the burp of both vapors and liquids to the undersized blowdown drum with an atmospheric vent stack, a “geyser-like” emission of hot flammable vapors and liquids was expelled from the vent stack.
A new white diesel pick-up truck, owned by a contractor, was parked near the blowdown stack. While BP operators were running to turn off furnace burners, to remove sources of vapor cloud ignition, the truck's owner returned to his truck and proceeded to crank the engine, in an attempt to move his new truck out of the area. Due to a high hydrocarbon content above the Upper Explosion Limit (UEL), the truck would not start. As the man continued to crank the engine, operators ran to him in an attempt to get him to stop. Once the hydrocarbon content in the surrounding air came down to the UEL, the truck provided the source of ignition for the Vapor Cloud Explosion.
The people in the trailer located near the process unit's battery limit were holding a meeting, and were unaware of the ISOM's unit startup condition. The people on the side of the meeting table with their backs to the process unit were killed, due to blunt-force trauma. A number of people on the side of the table facing the unit survived the blast.
The CSB report found that BP had failed to heed or implement safety recommendations made before the blast. Among them were:
As a result of the accident, BP said that it would eliminate all blowdown drums/vent stack systems in flammable service. The CSB, meanwhile, recommended to the American Petroleum Institute that guidelines on the location of trailers be made.
OSHA ultimately found over 300 safety violations and fined BP $21 million—the largest fine in OSHA history at the time.[5]
On February 4, 2008, U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal heard arguments regarding BP's offer to plead guilty to a federal environmental crime with a US$50 million fine. At the hearing, blast victims and their relatives objected to the plea, calling the proposed fine "trivial." So far, BP has said it has paid more than US$1.6 billion to compensate victims.[6] The judge gave no timetable on when she would make a final ruling.[7]
On October 30, 2009, OSHA imposed an $87 million fine on the company for failing to correct safety hazards revealed in the 2005 explosion. In its report, OSHA also cited over 700 safety violations. The fine was the largest in OSHA's history, and BP announced that it would challenge the fine.[8]
On August 12, 2010, BP announced that it had agreed to pay $50.6 million of the October 30 fine, while continuing to contest the remaining $30.7 million; the fine had been reduced by $6.1 million between when it was levied and when BP paid the first part.[9]
After the March explosion, other safety incidents occurred at the plant:
Following the 2005 incidents, on August 17, 2005, the CSB recommended that BP commission an independent panel to investigate the safety culture and management systems at BP North America. The panel was led by former US Secretary of State James Baker III. The Baker panel report was released on July 16, 2007. The principal finding was that BP management had not distinguished between “occupational safety” (i.e., slips-trips-and-falls, driving safety, etc.) versus “process safety” (i.e., design for safety, hazard analysis, material verification, equipment maintenance, process upset reporting, etc.). The metrics, incentives, and management systems at BP focused on measuring and managing occupational safety, while ignoring process safety. BP confused improving trends in occupational safety statistics for a general improvement in all types of safety.
Additionally, the panel created and administered, to all five of BP’s North American refineries, an employee survey focusing on various aspects of “process safety.” From the survey results, they concluded that the Toledo and Texas City plants had the worst process safety culture, while the Cherry Point Refinery, located in Birch Bay, Washington, had the best process safety culture. The survey results also showed that managers and white-collar workers generally had a more positive view of the process safety culture at their plants when compared with the viewpoint of blue-collar operators and maintenance technicians. The director of the Cherry Point refinery was promoted to oversee better implementation of process safety at BP.
The head of BP (Lord John Browne) retired early, amid the various problems plaguing BP in 2005 and 2006 (including the problems at Texas City, the shutdown of the Alaska pipeline, allegations of propane market manipulation, and start-up delays of the Thunderhorse project in the Gulf of Mexico).
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