Amoco Texas City Refinery

Figure 45.1 shows the design of my alkylation unit depropanizer relief valve at the Amoco Texas City Refinery in 1975. The tower pressure control was on steam flow to the reboiler. 

Figure 7.14 Storage tanks for crude oil can be huge. These handle 750,000 barrels, about the size of one oil tanker and perhaps two days supply for the oil refinery. A floating, expandable top enables minimal pressure variation with temperature. (Courtesy of BP Amoco, Texas City, TX)...

Refinery operations at Texas City refinery had been taking place since 1934. The refinery had been owned by Amoco until it merged with BP in 1998. Under Amoco s ownership, at least three opportunities had been missed to carry our modifications that would have prevented the accident ... 

Personnel involved in operating Texas City refinery were mainly ex-Amoco employees. Personnel operating Deepwater Horizon were mostly from Transocean or Halliburton, with a few BP people and other contractors. 

The March 23, 2005 explosion at the BP Amoco Texas City, Texas refinery, which was reported to represent about 3 percent of U.S. refining capacity provides a basis for this estimate of impact. Washington Post. 2005. Blast cuts refining capacity, March 25, p. EOl. 

The mechanical seal of a centrifugal pump in hydrocarbon service is the weak point for any process unit. In 1974, when 1 was the operating superintendent of the Amoco Oil Sulfuric Acid Alkylation Plant in Texas City, 1 discovered two truths about refinery operations ... 

In 1974,1 was promoted to the position of operating supervisor at the Amoco Refinery in Texas City. I had four tall distillation towers on my alkylation unit. The towers had relief valves at the top of the tower. These relief valves vented to the atmosphere. Over-pressuring was common and I saw the white plume blowing from the valves on many occasions. Never did I stop and think, "What will happen if a relief valve opens when a tower is in fully developed flood "... 

The process vessels were uprooted in 1955 and shipped to the Amoco Refinery in Texas City. Odd bits of piping and valves have sunk into the swamp. A half century of gentle, but persistent effort by Mother Nature has partly reclaimed this bit of earth for the natur world. 

---