BP Texas City Incident

U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazards Investigation Board. Anatomy of a disaster, a 56 minute DVD on the BP Texas City incident. Available on CSB website, March 2008. 

Human and organizational faetors are also important and these were addressed in Recommendations 19-22. Recommendation 19 provided key characteristics of high reliability organizations. They eehoed the discussions in the Baker Report on the BP Texas City incident and CSB reports which covered that 2005 incident (see previous chapter). Finally, Recommendations 23-25 dealt with broader strategic objectives relating to sector leadership and safety culture, essential to ensure continuing progress [9],... 

This concludes the brief treatment of the BP Texas City disaster. For additional information see the 374-page skillfiilly developed and pubhshed Baker Report. Please also review a later chapter in this text entitled A Strong Safety Culture is Essential. A quick review of the Baker Report will make ai one a believer of the strength and value of safety culture. dewing the excellent CSB deo of this tragic incident entitled Anatomy of a Disaster Explosion at BP Texas City Refinery is a must. It is also beneficial to read the CSB s Executive Smmnary Report on this tragedy. 

John Mogford, at the time senior group vice president, safety operations, for BP, conceded this blind spot in 2006 in his speech to the Center for Chemical Process Safety, 2nd Global Congress on Process Safety Do not get seduced by personal accident measures they have their place but do not warn of incidents (Editor s note such as the BP Texas City refinery explosion). There is a need to capture the right metrics that indicate process safety trends. ... 

Phillips Pasadena (1989), BP Texas City (2005), Buncefield, UK (2005), Puerto Rico (2009), and Deepwater Horizon/British Petroleum (2010) have aU amply demonstrated the loss of life, property damage, extreme financial costs, environmental impact, and the impact to an organization s reputation that these incidents can produce. 

March 23, 2005, Texas City, TX. Explosions and fires occurred at the BP refinery. The incident killed 15 people and injured 180 others. The financial loss was more than 1.5 billion. (See also Case 9-3.)... 

Fatal Accident Investigation Report - isomerization unit explosion, interim report Texas City, Texas, Incident March 23, 2005. Date of Report May 12, 2005, http //www.root-causelive.com/Files/Past%20Investigations/BP%20Explosion/texas city investigation report.pdf [accessed 17.09.14]. 

Over the past 30 years, a number of incidents have occurred that have quietly changed the chemical processing industry forever. Incidents such as those in Bhopal, Alaska (the Exxon Valdez o spill), and Texas City (involving BP) have made us aware of the potential for catastrophic events... 

It is easier to write about a culture that includes safety as a core value than it is to factually describe a situation in which the culture deteriorates over time, the effect the deterioration has on increasing risk and the position in which such deterioration places a safety professional. The following are excerpts taken from a report that was internally produced by BP Products North America (2005) pertaining to a fire and explosion that occurred on March 23,2005, at an owned and operated refinery in Texas City, Texas. As a result of that incident, 15 people were killed and over 170 were harmed. It is important to note that these excerpts, taken from the Executive Summary— Fatal Accident Investigation Report, represent a self-evaluation. 

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