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Friday, 21 November, 2008, 20:50 GMT | more >>

Texas pipe blast 'avoidable'



By Upstream staff 

A July 2005 blast at BP's Texas refinery could have been prevented, saving the company about $30 million, a Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board study has found.

A routine X-ray check or a missing information tag would have confirmed the pipe's composition, preventing it from being installed in the wrong place by a contractor during a February 2005 overhaul at the Texas City refinery, the board's investigation found.

One worker suffered minor injuries in the incident.

The July explosion came four months after another blast at the refinery killed 15 workers and injured 180 other people, one of a string of mishaps that have led to questions about BP's ability to manage its refining and production assets, Reuters reported.

The 460,000-barrel-per-day complex was hit by another fire in August, triggering an unprecedented Chemical Safety Board (CSB) request for BP to probe the safety programmes at its five US refineries.

"BP has recognised that there is an unhealthy safety culture at this facility that contributed to these accidents," CSB Chairman Carolyn Merritt told reporters yesterday.

BP spokesman Neil Chapman said the company agreed with the CSB's findings, which match those of an internal investigation.

"We have recognised there were things that needed to be fixed," Chapman said. "We are taking action. We have been doing that for a very, very long time now."

BP has implemented programmes to X-ray and tag materials used on machinery at the refinery, Chapman said.

The carbon steel pipe was placed on a residual hydrotreater at the refinery instead of a similar alloy steel part, the board said. The pipe was then weakened by the high-temperature hydrogen passing through it.

BP should have used an X-ray machine at the refinery to identify the elbow pipe's composition, the board said.

A tag that should have been attached to the pipe identifying its composition was lost before the contractor doing the overhaul, JV Industrial Companies, put it on the hydrotreater, the report found.

Monday, 16 October, 2006, 00:16 GMT  | last updated: Tuesday, 17 October, 2006, 00:24 GMT

Under scrutiny: a study found a small but expensive blast at BP's Texas City refinery could have been avoided through routine safeguards
 

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