Control Engineering

Peter Welander

Tough day for BP: $343 million in fines
October 26, 2007

In this morning's Chicago Tribune, an article outlines a series of settlements that BP has accepted that involve the oil giant shelling out $343 million in fines for problems associated with the Texas City explosions, an Alaska oil spill, and propane price fixing.

While the price fixing and oil spill discussions are interesting, you can read the details of those in the Tribune. The story line most relevant to Control Engineering is the Texas City disaster. (If you don't remember the details, here is an article from our archives.) As part of the settlement, the Justice Department will not pursue any additional criminal investigations against BP, but key individuals might still be on the hook. The investigations are described in the article as "the first criminal prosecution and highest-ever fine arising from enforcement of the Clean Air Act."

That in itself is eye opening, but here's what Robert Malone, BP North American president, had to say on the topic: "If our approach to process safety and risk management had been more disciplined and comprehensive, this tragedy could have been prevented. We did not provide our people with systems and processes that would have enabled them to appreciate the risk of a catastrophic release from the F20 blowdown stack and understand the danger of placing occupied trailers so close to it. We deeply regret the loss of life, the injuries and the community disruption caused by the explosion."

According to a BP press release,"BP Product's response to the Texas City explosion and fire has been guided by the recommendations of its own incident investigation and by the findings and recommendations of OSHA, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and the BP U.S. Refineries Independent Safety Review Panel, led by former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker, III.

"At the Texas City refinery, BP Products eliminated the use of blow down systems like the one involved in the March 2005 explosion and removed temporary occupied structures (office trailers) from process areas. The refinery is expected to return to near full production by the end of 2007 after a 25-month, $1 billion renewal program that included the inspection and refurbishment of every major process unit in the refinery and extensive re-training of refinery personnel."

Posted by Peter Welander on October 26, 2007 | Comments (0)