Texas City refinery operations

FIGURE 17.28 Initial results of commercial LoTO operation at Marathon s Texas City Refinery. (With permission from Belco Technologies.)... 

The writers of the ZIO standard should appreciate the widespread recognition of the significance of the standard, particularly this Management Review section. On March 23, 2005, a serious workplace disaster occurred at the BP Texas City refinery. It resulted in 15 deaths and more than 170 injuries. A blue ribbon panel, consisting mostly of known experts, was created for the sole purpose of assessing the safety culture at U.S. refineries operated by BP. 

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. ... 

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 ... 

After repairs and a further period of operation, BP sold the Texas City refinery to Marathon Oil in October 2012. This follows a worldwide trend of major oil companies exiting refining - there is an excess of refining capacity, and refining has become less profitable than oil production. 

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. 

Sharing of past major incidents with other oil and gas industries provides useful input data for similar process industries in order to identify the most critical barriers and improve their safety processes. One poignant example highlights this matter. In 1998 there was an accident in the gas compression stage of a Middle East oil and gas plant which caused 7 dead as a result of fuel accumulation and vapor cloud explosion which was very similar to the Texas City Refinery disaster on March 23, 2005 in which a distillation tower was overfilled and an uncontrolled release of hydrocarbons led to a major explosion and fires. Fifteen people were killed and 180 were injured in the worst disaster in the United States in a decade. In both incidents, excess hydrocarbons were diverted into a pressure relief system that included a blowdown stack. In the Iranian case, it was equipped with a flare, but one which the operator didn t ignite in Texas City the blowdown stack was not equipped with a flare to burn off hydrocarbons as they were released. As a result, the flammable overflow from the tower entered the atmosphere. Ignition of the escaped hydrocarbons was enabled by startup of a nearby vehicle resulted in the explosion and subsequent fires (Hopkins, 2008). This example shows the repetitive patterns of accidents, and root causes of events all over the world in this sector. The lesson of this paper is that accidents in one country, where the scenarios are very similar, can and should serve as lessons to prevent the same scenario being actualized in other countries. 

It is clear from the analysis that the Deepwater Horizon operation had many lines of defence (safety barriers) that were breached. This view is supported by research on the Texas City refinery disaster report (Holmstrom et al. 2005) which identified several deficiencies in observability and diagnosability of the condition of safety barriers in the refinery s isomerisation unit. 

LC-Fining, as developed by ABB Lummus Crest, represents a branch of the HRI technology, which saw its first commercial operation come online in 1984 at BP, Texas City refinery in the United States. The BP LC-Fining unit was the first three-stage ebullated-bed unit. The meaning of LC is Lummus Corporation, the process developer company. 

To demonstrate the connection between observability / diagnos ability and the safety performance of the isomerization unit of the Texas City, BP Refinery within the DES framework, it suffices to model the accident sequence using nominal and hazardous states oidy. In particular, we assiune that initially the system was operating safely and according to the standard procedures (nominal state A).The accident (state... 

On March 23,2005, at a BP Products North America-owned and -operated refinery, a fire and explosion resulted in 15 deaths, 170 injuries, and extensive property damage. An investigation team led by BP employee J. Mogford released a report titled Fatal Accident Investigation Report, Isomerization Unit Explosion Final Report, Texas City, Texas, USA. The 192 page report may be accessed at the website listed in the end-of-chapter references. 

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. 

So, two accidents and one company, within just over 5 years the most expensive accident of any sort ever, and one of the most expensive refinery accidents ever. However, as we shall see further on, the differences between the two accidents greatly outweigh any similarities. The Texas City accident was at an old refinery, carrying out routine production operations. The Ma.caaAo-Deepwater Horizon accident occurred on a state-of-the-art drilling rig while exploring for oil in very deep seawater-right at the boundaries of current technology. 

Crane access is usually required for most process areas to support periodic maintenance activities, replace worn equipment, and support possible upgrades and expansions. The step up and use of cranes requires large areas for their utilization, therefore it is incumbent during a plant design to account for such use where this is expected to occur. The lifting of objects over operating plants should be avoided as the load could be dropped, which has occurred in the past and led to a major hydrocarbon incident (i.e., dropped crane load on a vessel in refinery, 1987,Texas City,Texas). 

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 "... 

I have asked this question at many plants in the past years. The majority still have safety reliefs venting to the atmosphere even though everyone in the United States refinery industry knows what happened in Texas City in 2004. To summarize, when considering the safe operation of relief valve systems, the following assumptions should be made ... 

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