US says BP knew of Texas City refinery dangers

30 October 2006 16:55  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--Federal investigators said on Monday that BP managers had been warned repeatedly of life-threatening safety problems at their Texas City, Texas refinery where 15 workers died in a March 2005 explosion and fire.

The Chemicals Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) said in a statement that several internal BP reviews between 2002 and 2005 warned of “significant safety problems” at the refinery.  The most recent, completed only eight days before the fatal blast, warned that the problem-plagued Texas City refinery should be dealt with before it “kills someone in the next 12-18 months.”

The board also said it found that BP failed to perform safety reviews required by federal law that likely would have led to replacement of the equipment that failed, triggering the disaster on 23 March last year.

The explosions and fires at the Texas City facility also injured 180 workers. The safety board termed the incident “the worst US industrial accident in more than a decade.”

In its interim report issued on Monday, the board said a 2003 BP internal audit found the infrastructure and assets of the Texas City refinery to be poor and that managers had “a checkbook mentality” that restricted risk management and improvements.

“Stringent budget cuts throughout the BP system caused a progressive deterioration of safety at the Texas City refinery,” the board said.

BP did initiate several safety initiatives at Texas City, the board noted, but those efforts “focused largely on improving personnel safety - such as slips, trips and falls - rather than management systems, equipment design and preventive maintenance programmes to help prevent the growing risk of major process accidents.”

Responding to the CSB statement, BP spokesman Ronnie Chappell said, "We agree with the CSB that the explosion and fire at Texas City was a preventable tragedy."

He added, however, "We do not understand the basis of some of the comments made by CSB."

Chappell said the safety issues at the 460,000 bbl/day Texas City refinery were years in the making but added that BP had increased maintenance spending at the refinery by 40% during the five years prior to the plant explosion.

BP had reduced personnel injuries at the refinery by 70% prior to the blast but that reduction may have lead some to believe that conditions at the refinery were safe, Chappell said.

BP was spending $1bn (€787m) to upgrade and refurbish the refinery, Chappell said. The company was eliminating the use blowdown drums (the continued use of such equipment was cited by the CSB as a factor in the 2005 blast) at all of its US refineries by 2008, he said.

The safety board said its final report on the investigation - the agency’s largest and most costly undertaking at $2m (€1.6m) so far - will not be ready until March next year but that it was issuing Monday’s interim report because “it was important for the public and the rest of the industry to remain informed on what the investigation has found.”

(Additional reporting by Brian Ford)

By: Joe Kamalick
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