Sam Fletcher
OGJ Online
HOUSTON, Apr. 17 -- Investigators began sifting through the damage Tuesday to determine what caused Monday's explosion and fire at Conoco Inc.'s 230,000-b/d Humber refinery in northern England.
Early cursory examination indicated relatively little damage to the plant's crude processing, gasoline refining, and coking units, said Jim Nokes, Conoco's vice-president for global downstream operations, in an interview with reporters.
Most of the fire damage apparently was limited to the small saturate gas unit where the initial explosion is thought to have occurred, he said. Nokes also reported collateral damage to a heater on the adjacent No. 2 coker at the plant.
The saturate gas unit, which collects light materials from the cokers, is not essential to daily refining operations, he said.
Conoco's Humber refinery, on a 480-acre site on the Humber River in north Lincolnshire, is one of the largest in Europe and the world's largest producer of needle coke, used in the manufacture of electrodes for electric arc steel furnaces.
Because of the Easter holiday in the UK, only 200 people were at the plant when the explosion occurred Monday afternoon. None of the workers were at the saturate gas unit at the time, Nokes said.
One worker was treated for minor injuries following the explosion, while a nearby resident was treated primarily for shock, he said.
Conoco employs about 700 people at the plant. However, the refinery was scheduled Apr. 28 to begin a 4-5-week seasonal turnaround that would have put 2,500 contract workers at the facility. Conoco officials are considering whether to include the necessary repairs as part of that scheduled turnaround or to postpone the turnaround to complete the repairs.
At any rate, Nokes said, the refinery will remain shut for 3 weeks as company and government investigators determine what caused the accident. "This was a serious explosion and fire. We will find the cause and address the problem," he said.
The Humber refinery has been the recipient of government awards for safety. At the time of the explosion, workers at the plant had compiled 10 million man-hours without a lost-time injury.
Because of the planned turnaround, Conoco had built inventories of refined products both in the Humber plant and at other European locations. As a result, the company anticipates no major disruption of supplies to customers, although some spot sales may be suspended.
Relatively little of the refinery's production is exported to the US, officials said.
Contact Sam Fletcher at [email protected]
