BP Refinery Blast: Fourth incident at Texas City in a year

24 March 2005 14:51  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (CNI)--BP’s Texas City oil refinery, which was rocked by an explosion and fire on Wednesday resulting in the loss of at least 14 lives, has suffered three other serious incidents over the past 12 months, CNI learned on Thursday.

 

In March 2004 an explosion and fire in a furnace at the plant forced the closure of a gasoline production unit. No-one was injured in the blast.

 

In August there was a flash fire at the site which was quickly extinguished. Again, there were no deaths or injuries. News of the fire helped push crude oil prices to a then record.

 

An 80,000 bbl/day ultraformer at the site was closed in September following an accident in which three workers suffered burns while working on a steam line.

 

The latest, and by far the most serous, incident coincided with maintenance work on the 1,200 acre (486 hectare) site houses 30 refinery units which have the capacity to process about 470,000 barrels of oil a day. The site produces 30% of BP’s North American gasoline supply and 3% of the entire US supply.

 

BP also has significant chemicals capacity at its Texas City facility. Products include benzene, toluene, styrene, metaxylene, paraxylene, propylene and sulphuric acid (see table below for capacities).

 

Yesterday’s explosion was the fourth significant incident at the Texas City site in the past year.

 

 

BP’s chemical capacity at Texas City, Texas

 

Product	Capacity (tonne/year)	Processes employed
Benzene	770,000	Reformate extraction, pygas extraction, TDP
Toluene	800,000	Reformate extraction, isomerisation and fractionation, pygas
Styrene	530,000	Benzene alkylation
Metaxylene	125,000
Paraxylene	1,220,000	Isomerisation and fractionation, TDP
Propylene	320,000	FCC offgas recovery
Sulphuric acid	315,000

 

Source: CNI Plant Database

 

Gasoline, crude oil and naphtha prices rose on news of the explosion and benzene prices jumped. 

By: Mark Whitfield
+44 20 8652 3214