BP Accused of Violating Safety Regulations at US Refineries, Endangering Employees' Lives
Tuesday 04 May 2010
by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Karen Eliot, Jef Harris)BP Plc's troubles are not just limited to its Gulf of Mexico operations, where a deadly blast aboard a drilling rig two weeks ago ruptured an oil well 5,000 feet below the sea's surface and triggered a massive oil leak that is now the size of a small country.
The oil conglomerate is also facing serious charges from the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that it "willfully" failed to implement safety measures at its Texas City refinery following an explosion that killed 15 employees and injured 170 others five years ago.
The refinery is the third largest in the country and has a capacity to refine 475,000 barrels of crude oil per day. OSHA found BP to be in violation of more than 300 health and safety regulations and, in 2005, fined the company $21.4 million, at the time the largest in the agency's history. In 2007, BP paid a $50 million fine and pleaded guilty to a felony for not having written guidelines in place at the refinery and for exposing employees to toxic emissions. BP, which earned $19 billion in 2005, settled with the victims' families for $1.6 billion.
BP was placed on three years probation and the Department of Justice agreed not to pursue additional criminal charges against the company as long as BP agreed to undertake a series of corrective safety measures at the refinery ordered by OSHA.
Several investigations launched in the aftermath of the refinery explosion concluded that BP's aggressive cost-cutting efforts in the area of safety, the use of outdated refinery equipment and overworked employees contributed to the blast, which, according to John Bresland, the chairman of the independent US Chemical Safety Board (CSB), was caused "when a distillation tower flooded with hydrocarbons and was over-pressurized, causing a geyser-like release from the vent stack. The hydrocarbons found an ignition source [a truck that backfired] and exploded."
Bresland, whose organization spent two years probing the circumstances behind the explosion, said that CSB's investigation, completed in 2007, "found organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP Corporation."
"It was the most comprehensive and detailed investigation the CSB has ever done," Bresland said March 24, marking the fifth anniversary of the refinery explosion. "Our investigation team turned up extensive evidence showing a catastrophe waiting to happen. That cost-cutting had affected safety programs and critical maintenance; production pressures resulted in costly mistakes made by workers likely fatigued by working long hours; internal audits and safety studies brought problems to the attention of BP's board in London, but they were not sufficiently acted upon. Yet the company was proud of its record on personnel safety."
Since then, according to OSHA, BP has not only failed to comply with the terms of its settlement agreement, it has knowingly committed hundreds of new violations that continue to endanger the lives of its refinery workers.
"When BP signed the OSHA settlement from the March 2005 explosion, it agreed to take comprehensive action to protect employees," Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis said in a statement last October. "Instead of living up to that commitment, BP has allowed hundreds of potential hazards to continue unabated."
"BP was given four years to correct the safety issues identified pursuant to the settlement agreement, yet OSHA has found hundreds of violations of the agreement and hundreds of new violations. BP still has a great deal of work to do to assure the safety and health of the employees who work at this refinery," added acting Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA Jordan Barab, whose agency conducted a six-month review of BP's Texas City refinery operations to determine if the oil company complied with provisions of the settlement. "The fact that there are so many still outstanding life-threatening problems at this plant indicates that they still have a systemic safety problem in this refinery."
Specifically, OSHA said it found 439 new "willful" violations by BP related to "failures to follow industry-accepted controls on the pressure relief safety systems and other process safety management violations."
According to OSHA regulations, "a willful violation exists where an employer has knowledge of a violation and demonstrates either an intentional disregard for the requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act of 1970, or shows plain indifference to employee safety and health."
OSHA imposed a record $87 million fine against the company, surpassing its previous record in 2005, which was also leveled against BP. A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to questions as to whether BP's alleged failure to comply with its settlement agreement would expose the company to further criminal charges.
Last October, however, Angela Dodge, a spokeswoman for the US attorney's office in Houston, said DOJ "will take all appropriate actions to ensure the plea agreement is not violated and cannot comment further at this time."
Some of the new violations BP for which was cited, according to OSHA, have already resulted in additional fatalities at the refinery.
On July 22, 2006, OSHA said a contractor was crushed between a "scissor lift and a pipe rack." On June 5, 2007, another contractor was electrocuted "on a light circuit in the [refinery's] process area." On January 14, 2008, an employee was killed when the top head of a pressure vessel blew off. BP received four citations from OSHA regarding continued violations over process safety management. And on October 9, 2008, a contractor, who was hit by a front-end loader and pinned between a guard rail and the bucket of the loader, died from his injuries.
BP has vehemently denied the charges alleged by OSHA and has formally contested the proposed penalties.
"We continue to believe we are in full compliance with the Settlement Agreement ... we strongly disagree with OSHA's conclusions," said Texas City Refinery Manager Keith Casey on October 30, 2009, the day OSHA announced that BP continued to skirt safety regulations. "We believe our efforts at the Texas City refinery to improve process safety performance have been among the most strenuous and comprehensive that the refining industry has ever seen."
BP, which says it invested $1 billion on safety and operational improvements at the refinery, claims that a vast majority of OSHA's allegations against the company are not true violations, but, instead, are related to a misunderstanding over the timing of its compliance under the terms of its settlement agreement, according to an October 5, 2009, letter BP attorney Thomas Wilson sent to Mark Briggs, an official with OSHA's Houston branch.
BP "pursued the actions plans as outlined in the [agreement it entered into with OSHA], including actions plans related to four recommendations that have completion dates beyond September 22, 2009," Wilson wrote. "It was not until a meeting in late 2008 that OSHA expressed verbally a differing interpretation of the date for completion of auditor recommendations and it was only in the OSHA letter of August 3, 2009 that BP Products first received written indication that OSHA expected all action plans to be complete by September 23, 2009."
BP may end up fighting the charges in federal court.
Widespread Safety Issues at US Refineries
Still, as highlighted in a January 2007 report issued by a panel chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker III, systemic issues related to process safety were not limited to the firm's Texas City refinery. In fact, they were widespread.
And that continues to be the case, as evidenced by a separate set of charges OSHA leveled against BP in March for even more "willful" violations that took place at its Husky refinery in Toledo, Ohio, "including 39 on a per-instance basis, and 20 alleged serious violations for exposing workers to a variety of hazards including failure to provide adequate pressure relief for process units," issues that appear to be identical to those that lead up to the refinery explosion in 2005.
The Husky refinery is a 50-50 joint venture between BP and Canadian-based Husky Energy, Inc.
"OSHA has found that BP often ignored or severely delayed fixing known hazards in its refineries," Solis said. "There is no excuse for taking chances with people's lives. BP must fix the hazards now."
BP entered in a similar settlement with OSHA in 2007 over safety issues at Husky. Last September, during an inspection to determine if BP was in compliance with the terms of the agreement, OSHA found BP was compliant. However, OSHA found "numerous violations at the plant not previously covered" by the settlement.
"The inspection revealed that workers were exposed to serious injury and death in the event of a release of flammable and explosive materials in the refinery because of numerous conditions constituting violations of OSHA's process safety management standard," OSHA said in a March 8 news release. "OSHA has issued willful citations for numerous failures to provide adequate pressure relief for process units, failures to provide safeguards to prevent the hazardous accumulation of fuel in process heaters, and exposing workers to injury and death from collapse of or damage, in the event of a fire, to nine buildings in the refinery. Additional willful citations allege various other violations of OSHA's standard addressing process safety management."
What's notable about the nearly two dozen of the alleged violations at Husky, is that one matches allegations first leveled against BP a year ago by a whistleblower who said the company had been operating its Gulf Coast drilling platform Atlantis, the world's largest and deepest semi-submersible oil and natural gas platform, located about 200 miles south of New Orleans, without a majority of the necessary engineering and design documents, a violation of federal law.
As Truthout reported last week, the whistleblower said BP risked a catastrophic oil spill, far worse than the one that began two weeks ago after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, because BP did not have updated or complete Piping and Instrument Diagrams (P&IDs) for the Atlantis subsea components. P&IDs documents form the foundation of a hazards analysis BP is required to undertake as part of its Safety and Environmental Management Program related to its offshore drilling operations. P&IDs drawings provide the schematic details of the project's piping and process flows, valves and safety-critical instrumentation.
In OSHA's list of alleged violations at Husky, the agency said BP failed to "assure the accuracy of P&IDs ... and proper documentation of pressure relief design information."
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
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Jason Leopold is the Deputy Managing Editor at Truthout. He is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller, News Junkie, a memoir. Visit newsjunkiebook.com for a preview.
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Good arcticle - but as we
Tue, 05/04/2010 - 16:28 — Anonymous (not verified)Good arcticle - but as we can see, it takes "explosions" and "massive environmental damage" before a muted, defanged, politically paranoid, nearly disabled agency slumps into the press. OSHA. (Fact, lots of workers die every year.)
Is this any different across the entirely compromised spectrum of agencies that behave as if (and are) on the Corporate payroll? When, oh when, will this constant smoke screen lift from any and all media: The lie that some bureaucratic Conquistador will save the day, (after the waste, the bodies and the damage is already done)Finally some statements that
Tue, 05/04/2010 - 22:00 — Anonymous (not verified)Finally some statements that appear to be kind of factual
By Dwight Baker
May 4, 2010
Dbaker007@stx.rr.comBP knows why the blow out occurred, but they aint telling. All the ‘other bailey who goings on’ reminds me of a carnival sideshow.
Under-balanced drilling looks to be the single source causing the blow out. In the article it was said that the shear ram bop could not cut the collars, that would have occurred during a trip to change bits or otherwise. Pipe rams are too small to close over drill collars and should the annual BOP failed to hold back the 20,000 plus pressure then as last resorts the shear ram or rams BOP would have used. Thus in the article it was said the shear rams would not cut through the drill collar.
As a fact any annular BOP regardless of the flange size made to fit BOP stacks will not hold more than 5,000-PSI pressure.
Therefore it is my belief that BP drilling personnel in charge that fatal day made the age-old flaw of not keeping the hole full of heavy enough fluid to hold back the gas and oil as they tripped out of the hole.
Now the next huge flaw that I see with the dome they are planning to use is that to send the oil and gas to the surface to SELL------ will bring about more huge problems. The Pressure of the oil and gas zone is estimated to be 20,000 PSI or more. The water pressure at the depth where the dome will be placed is plus 20,000 PSI. That is a push and that is good ---- cement the dome in place and forget about trying to send it to the surface ----- for every foot that column of oil and gas comes to the surface the more dangerous it becomes. Once it reaches atmospheric pressure all hell will break loose with 20,000 PSI of flowing gas and oil from a virgin oil find. Just the surface equipment needed to separate the gas and oil with that kind of flowing pressure would occupy a huge footprint.
Hence I believe the reporters got some thought to be good news that was not complete or not stated right.Yet there are many other things about this un-raveling story that defies understanding but in the end between our government officials, and all others who job is on the line for not knowing what is going on ---- little by little the TRUTH will finally come out. Maybe too late for the good folks and all other living things on the gulf whose lives and jobs are on the line?
Remember back to the day the Challenger blew up and fell to all over East Texas on a try for re-entry. All news was garbled, the Federal Government and NASA weren’t telling so that is just the way things are.
The biggest problem with BP
Wed, 05/05/2010 - 12:55 — Anonymous (not verified)The biggest problem with BP is common to most British corporations, in that once anyone in the management class reaches a certain level they no longer have any interest in doing the job properly. Their only concerns are salary, status and the perks of the job. And too many in the country seem to "ape their betters." This is why the UK is in such a decline since the end of WWI. Without a slew of conquered people to actually do the work they can't manage.
BP(British Petroleum) is
Wed, 05/05/2010 - 15:20 — Anonymous (not verified)BP(British Petroleum) is dumping toxic chemicals in to the Great Lakes.
The Great Lakes is the largest group of fresh water lakes in the world.
At risk from BP's toxic chemical dump is Lake Michigan, source of drinking water for millions of Americans.
Ban BP(British Petroleum) from the United States!
A simple way to clean up the
Sat, 05/08/2010 - 06:26 — Anonymous (not verified)A simple way to clean up the oil spill ~ you are going to be amazed at the simplicity of this...
via truthout.org
Jason is doing what the
Tue, 05/04/2010 - 15:15 — David (not verified)Jason is doing what the mainstream media refuses to do, which is to investigate the corporate corruption, greed and criminal neglect that led to the Gulf spill, other BP disasters, and the Massey Energy disaster. And the government is in bed with large corporations; that's why regulators are slow to close down energy-industry operations. One other thing- Americans who use petroleum toys such as leaf blowers, jet skis, weed whackers, ATV's and other wasters need to immediately cease such use. All of us can do our part to reduce our own personal petroleum addiction. It's not just BP's fault- it's the world economy, and individual choices, that spur the death petroleum inevitably causes.