Posted on 03/23/2015 10:21:37 AM PDT by thackney
The billowing canopies went up on a bare patch of the Texas City refinery grounds during a repair cycle last fall. Some workers saw the tents as just a place to eat lunch. Brian Ambrose saw a nightmare repeating itself.
He is one of the few remaining employees who encountered the horrors of 2005, when the BP unit on the same patch of earth erupted in explosions, leaving a charred mass of twisted metal, pulverized office trailers and the remains of 15 people.
Others, including many of the roughly 180 injured, have retired or moved elsewhere. Ambrose, who was assigned to the unit but didn’t work the doomed day shift, works under the new owner, Marathon Petroleum Co.
It’s not just the sacrilege of taking a coffee break on hallowed ground that disturbs Ambrose. It’s the knowledge that all across America, people in his line of work keep dying. Lessons – like keeping vulnerable buildings away from refinery units during risky maintenance, a practice that could have spared everyone here 10 years ago – keep going unheeded.
In the aftermath of the BP disaster, still one of the worst refinery accidents in U.S. history, safety experts recommended moving nonessential personnel and upgrading or eliminating outdated technology, like the stack that overflowed, spewing an explosive geyser of hydrocarbons. They urged companies to give union workers equal involvement in safety panels to identify small problems before they turn catastrophic. The reforms were intended to reduce fatalities.
(Excerpt) Read more at houstonchronicle.com ...
Have a Safe and Productive week.
http://apps.texastribune.org/blood-lessons/
INVESTIGATIVE FINDINGS
At least 58 workers have died at U.S. refineries since March 23, 2005, slightly fewer than the number the decade before.
Federal officials have tracked nearly 350 fires at U.S. refineries in the past eight years — about one every week.
Some companies continue to put tents and office trailers in danger zones at refineries, despite recommendations to limit the number of workers in harm’s way.
The death toll in the worst refinery accident since 2005 was so high because nonessential personnel were left in harm’s way. Seven were killed at a Washington refinery during a maintenance activity that required one operator.
Federal regulators lack hard data to accurately track deaths and monitor safety trends within the industry.
"The erroneous 93% reading from the defective level transmitter still indicated an ongoing safe level condition in the tower but there was still no flow of heavy raffinate from the splitter tower to the storage tank as the level control valve remained closed; instead of the hydrocarbon liquid level being at 8.65 feet (93% level) as indicated, it had actually reached 67 feet."
Pretty much speaks for itself.
Four potential scenarios could have produced this excess pressure:
(a) Vapor pressure of hydrocarbons due to excessive thermal energy
(b) Steam generation from the presence of water at high temperature
(c) Non-condensables (nitrogen) remaining from the tightness testing
(d) Improper feed to the unit or introduction of “foreign material” in the feed
(e) A combination of the above.
Several steps in the startup procedure were omitted or not followed. The Board Operator overfilled the Splitter and overheated its contents without understanding that the very high liquid level and base temperature would contribute to a high pressure. The outside operators used local practices to control unit pressure instead of a purpose-built system, without understanding the possible implications.
Supervisory staff did not verify that the correct procedure was being used or followed, and were absent from the unit during shift relief, and key stages of the startup. There was a lack of clarity around who was supervising the startup. Although the startup procedure was not up-to-date, if the procedure had been followed, or if one of several possible interventions had been made earlier, this incident would not have happened.
Several trailers were located within 150 ft of F-20 and acted as a congregating point for non-operations personnel. Management of Change processes did not consider the possibility of significant release of hydrocarbons at the stack. This potential had not been considered in any previous site study. The injured were not notified in advance of the impending startup, or alerted when hydrocarbons were discharged from the stack, which led to them remaining in place and being exposed to the hazard. Both the trailer location and not alerting personnel increased the severity of the incident.
Much more at the link
There are some refineries I feel more comfortable with than others when I call on them. I don’t visit one in particular in Wynnewood Oklahoma.
Then there is some validity to the claim that the USW strike is mainly over safety issues.
And yet the contract they agreed to, doesn’t seem to make any changes in that area. Pay increases are in the new contract, however.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/14/oils-m14.html
Following the announcement of a tentative four-year agreement with lead industry bargainer Royal Dutch Shell, the United Steelworkers union (USW) is moving quickly to push through local agreements to end the six-week strike of oil refinery workers.
The national framework, which includes miserly pay increases and promises of union-management committees instead of company commitments to address safety concerns, will form the basis for agreements aimed at ending the strikes at the local level, perhaps within days. There is no opportunity for workers to vote on the national agreement itself.
The USW hopes to ensure that any section of refinery that rejects the sell-out agreement will be even further isolated. As Dave Campbell, treasurer of the USW local covering Tesoro’s Carson, California refinery, put it: “It’s possible that action will continue. It would just continue on a local level rather than nationally.”
NO BLOOD FOR OIL!!
I am always amused when people say that. They do not realize that everyday brave people die bringing us the many things we need to live, mining and oil production being among some of the most dangerous professions.
And people think others die when fighting wars for oil, if you believe that is why they are fought. A friend of mine believed this. I asked him if driving to and from work, having the fuel to power his tools, the tractors in the field to grow his food, the trucks to bring it to his home, the energy to cook that food, if any of that is worth suffering or fighting for. I feel it is worth fighting and dying for, whether doing the dangerous work to find, extract, and refine, or to combat the crazies.
That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have better safety controls. In this example, 15 people died instead of one because safety protocols were not followed.
There were quite a few different things done wrong at the BP Texas City. Any of the done correctly would have made a large difference on the day.
Number one problem was an attitude by BP at many of the facilities that put safety at too low of a concern.
The real agenda. Notice how most of these deaths occur at unionized facilities?
“Notice how most of these deaths occur at unionized facilities?”
What do you mean by that?
Simple - almost all of the fatal disasters have occurred at facilities being operated by protected, dues paying, union workers. You don’t see this kind of thing much when the unions are on strike and the facilities are being run by managers and scabs.
Give management a free hand to get rid of goof offs, jokers, and chemical users, and the safety situation would probably improve. The Union’s proposed solution, of course, is ‘don’t make us work as hard and pay us more’.
Iteresting. Just the opposite is true where I work. Safety has been an uphill fight with management - unbelievable how far behind and they were in so many ways. I’m talking about basic things that have been taught by the National Safety Council for many years.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.