US refiners are applying lessons learned from the Mar. 23, 2005, fire and explosion at BP America Inc.’s Texas City, Tex., refinery to improving existing operating practices and standards and developing at least one new recommended procedure, American Petroleum Institute officials said Mar. 16.
Their statements to reporters came in a teleconference days before the US Chemical Safety Board’s scheduled Mar. 20 release of its final report on the causes of the fire and explosion that killed 15 people and injured another 180. The US House Education and Labor Committee also scheduled a hearing on Mar. 22 to examine the accident and its worker safety implications.
CSB said many of the victims were in and around trailers near an atmosphere ventilation stack, which experienced a geyser-like release after a distillation tower was flooded with highly flammable liquid hydrocarbons. The procedure that API is developing will deal with where trailers and other temporary structures should be located at refineries, said Ron Chittum, API senior refining associate.
“The thrust of the document that’s being considered is for companies to consider multiple issues, run a risk analysis, and consider blast and dispersion potential. There’s another alternative under consideration where it would be possible to determine, very simplistically, where to site a trailer based on your unit’s configuration without going through such an extensive analysis. This is all subject to the committee approval process,” he said.
Chittum said the report of an independent panel, commissioned by BP and led by former US Sec. of State James A. Baker III, raised issues that the industry will need to address. He expects CSB’s final evaluation will do the same. “Whether these will become recommendations to [the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration] for new regulations will be determined later, and the industry will certainly want to participate in their formulation,” he said.
Concern with Congress
In the meantime, said Bob Greco, API’s downstream director, the trade association is concerned that Congress might take actions that don’t look at the best available data involving refinery configurations and layouts. “We will learn from the Texas City incident and make appropriate changes to our existing suite of standards and practices,” Greco said. “Beyond that, we will work with Congress and regulatory agencies. But we also want to educate Congress about the robust nature of our industry standards.”
Chittum said pressure-release systems such as the blowdown drum which exploded at BP’s refinery are safety devices designed to deal with unplanned pressure buildups. “We think there are situations in a refinery that use of a blowdown drum may be the right approach, and eliminating them in favor of a pipe flaring system may be inappropriate,” he said.
Chittum said API does not know how many blowdown drums are still being used at US refineries, but said API has formed a taskforce to address this and other recommendations already made by CSB.
“Companies already are using the Baker report as a mirror against their internal procedures and identifying gaps that need to be filled,” Chittum said. “The industry also has set up a multiassociation coalition of experts to discuss what was learned from the Texas City incident, but it’s still fairly early.” he said.
Greco said US refining is one of the nation’s most heavily regulated industries with extensive, and sometimes overlapping, regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, OSHA, and other federal agencies. API has its own standards and practices program on top of that, including 150 recommended procedures dealing with process safety management, he continued.
New safety guidelines
“We are aware that OSHA is planning to roll out a national emphasis program,” Chittum said. “Our understanding is that part of that will be increased enforcements and visits to refineries. Obviously, there will be more OSHA inspectors knocking on the door and going through records in detail to make sure everything is being done right. Our members expect that, and will work with them,” he said.
Meanwhile, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ Center for Chemical Process Safety said that it is preparing to issue new safety guidelines later this month to help refinery and chemical plant operators avoid accidents such as the Texas City refinery accident.
The new guidelines will be contained in a book, Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety, and will address many of CSB’s findings as well as BP’s internal and independent investigations, CCPS Director Scott Berger said in New York on Mar. 16.
The group was working on the new guidelines before the BP refinery incident occurred with the intention of capturing experience gained during the last 15 years of process safety management, he indicated. “The high degree of openness in the BP, Baker, and CSB investigations enabled CCPS to also incorporate the lessons learned in Texas City as the guideline project progressed,” Berger said.
