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2 November, 2009
A full four years after BP paid US$21.3 million in penalties and made promises to the US government to correct safety deficiencies at its Texas City, Texas, oil and petrochemicals refinery, the British energy company is still not in compliance.
On 30 October, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the US Department of Labor slapped BP with a further US$87.4 million fine for failure to rectify safety problems identified following a deadly March 2005 explosion at the east Texas refinery.
The fine is four times higher than any previous safety fine issued by OSHA in its 39-year history. The previous high was the US$21.3 million penalty assessed BP in September 2005 when the company reached a settlement agreement with the agency to fix the causes of the 23 March 2005 explosion, which killed 15 contract workers and serious injured another 80 workers.
The US trade union representing workers at BP’s former Amoco refinery at Texas City, ICEM affiliated United Steelworkers (USW), warned of the industry’s reluctance to seriously undertake efforts to improve safety and health in the downstream sector during US collective agreement negotiations early in 2009. Then, the union had made safety the primary issue in negotiations, but the industry stonewalled the union and workers on joint approaches to improve safety.
USW Vice President Gary Beevers
“Hopefully, Friday’s non-compliance fine will serve as a wake-up to the public and industry that oil and gas companies must get serious on safety,” said USW Vice President and ICEM Executive Committee Gary Beevers. “We intend to continue working closely with BP to improve process safety at all their US facilities.”
Late in 2007, the USW and the Tony Mazzocchi Center for Health, Safety and environmental Education published a book entitled “Beyond Texas City: the State of Process Safety in the Unionized US Oil Refining Industry.” The book critiques operating practices in 51 US refineries and offers sets of “Urgent and Critical Actions” needed to improve safety. The pdf version of “Beyond Texas City” can be found here.
The US OSHA agency last week issued BP with 270 notifications of failure to stem hazards that caused the 2005 explosion, with total fines of US$56.7 million. Each notification represents a penalty of US$7,000 times 30 days, the period that that the condition have gone unabated. In addition, the US government identified 439 new willful violations for failures to follow industry-accepted safety standards, resulting in further fines of US$30.7 million.
BP said it would formally contest these latest violations and fines before a review commission of OSHA, which can amend and reduce the violations.
Stated US Acting Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA, Jordan Barab: “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.”
The 23 March 2005 deadly blast was caused by a broken gauge and flammable hydrocarbons that overflowed from an isomerisation tower used to boast octane levels of petrol. Those vapors were ignited from the equipment of contract companies that were operating too close to the isomerisation unit.