US chemical safety chief says ‘all is not well’ at BP

10 November 2005 21:48  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--A top US federal safety official said on Thursday that “all is not well” at BP and charged that BP “allowed serious deviations from good safety practice to exist,” leading to the 23 March refinery blast that killed 15 workers.

Carolyn Merritt, chairwoman and chief executive of the Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), told a special investigative panel in Houston, Texas today that CSB’s own preliminary investigation of the explosion and fires at BP’s Texas City, Texas refinery “uncovered evidence of serious management problems” at the site.

In addition, said Merritt, “We began to realise there might be systemic issues of management culture and oversight that are not localized to one site. These management problems set the stage for a catastrophic and tragic incident.”

In addition to the 15 workers killed, about 170 other workers were injured in what Merritt termed “one of the worst workplace disasters in 15 years.”

Merritt addressed the opening session today of an independent, 11-member commission established by BP to investigate safety measures at BP’s North American refinery operations. The commission, headed by former US Secretary of State James Baker, was established by BP in response to an urgent request from the CSB.

Merritt said the mistakes at BP’s Texas City refinery “have their roots in decisions made by managers at the facility and the corporate level, sometimes years earlier.”

She said CSB’s investigation, which is ongoing, found that some operators at Texas City had worked 12-hour days for 30 consecutive days, that there was no supervisor with appropriate experience overseeing the fatal start-up and that a single board operator was responsible for simultaneously running the controls of three different complex process units, including the one that exploded.  She also noted that the blowdown drum and stack at the Texas City refinery was “half-century old technology … which was by then recognised as antiquated and unsafe.”

The CSB’s findings, she said, “are indicative of management culture issues at BP.”  The findings “also raised serious concerns about the effectiveness of mechanical integrity programs, hazard analyses, management of change programmes and incident investigation programmes.”

She said the special BP panel's year-long inquiry “can have a profound impact on many corporations who will be awakened and warned” by the panel’s results.

By: Joe Kamalick
+1 713 525 2653

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