Hmmm...
From your posts, I get the ‘feeling’ of “No big deal - nothing to see here”, - how does that square with these details from the article??
” outages that led to shelter-in-place emergency alerts and the cancellation of public schools Tuesday in Texas City.”
” A second shelter-in-place alert, advising residents to stay indoors, was issued around 5:30 a.m. “
” Around 4:40 a.m. Tuesday, electricity was lost at the Valero and Marathon Oil refineries, which activated their flare systems,”
” BP spokesman Michael Marr said a fire broke out at the refinery “
“There was constant monitoring going on at all times and it did not reveal anything, although there’s a strong smell of hydrocarbons in the air,”
///
Even though, apparently, everything was pretty much brought under control, these details seem, to me, to add up to something more than “no big deal”.....
Refineries don’t have very efficient off switches.
There is a lot of product moving through the systems at significant heat and pressures. Some of those refineries have combined chemical units that have toxic components.
Sending large amounts to flares is the reality of an unscheduled shutdown.
Normal shutdown to avoid the flares would take a couple shifts for a whole refinery at the fastest.