plant explosion in Westlake, LA

[PondPopper]

I work in Oil and Gas.

Cool.. In an actual plant/refinery or in an office building in Houston?

Sorry start here..
Page 157 of the BP CSB Investigation..
9.4.2 Study Follow-up: "Lack of Investment Compromised Safety"

[ElfEyes]

I can see the smoke from Port Arthur, I agree with Ttaxi that most places run their equipment into the ground chasing profit especially smaller companies.

[gekko man]

Prayers for all involved!

[slayr]

Cool.. In an actual plant/refinery or in an office building in Houston?

Sorry start here..
Page 157 of the BP CSB Investigation..
9.4.2 Study Follow-up: "Lack of Investment Compromised Safety"

I was in a Chem plant and refinery for 16 yrs….started as a contractor, then wage, then salary and, yes, now I sit in our headquarters.

There’s no doubt in the BP incident that the company had neglected maintenance issues, but there was also human errors which contributed to it, too.

Folks makes mistakes everyday, just like you and I do. Yes, I’ve seen companies keep their facilities running with ‘duct tape’ holding it together (metaphorically speaking), but most all of your major players in O&G take risk management pretty seriously, which includes equipment strategies, etc. Companies still have to make profits (or else we don’t have jobs), but I think we are 100% aligned that they should never put profits in front of safety, whether it be personnel or process safety.

Should have explained myself better earlier.

[trophy8]

Let’s don’t paint with that broad of a brush. As we both know, several factors involved in that incident.

Incident rates have been on a steady decline in the petro industry over the 2-3 decades. There are stats out there you can fact check with…AFPM, IOGP, ACC, etc. Each of those publish industry stats on an annual basis. Are these places safe havens where absolutely no one is going to get hurt…no, but they’re much safer than some of the other industries out there.

From your article:

‘ 1.5 Key Technical Findings
1. The ISOM startup procedure required that the level control valve on the raffinate splitter tower be used to send liquid from the tower to storage. However, this valve was closed by an operator and the tower was filled for over three hours without any liquid being removed. This led to flooding of the tower and high pressure, which activated relief valves that discharged flammable liquid to the blowdown system.’

Operators are getting younger. You rarely see those guys that have huge amounts of experience like I saw when I started (I’m only 11-12 years in). I’ve trained a LOT of operators. Very very few give the effort and have the work ethic to do good at it. Most are lazy and just try to get by. With that comes some significant risk in high stress situations. I’ve seen some extremely bad decisions made by operators. Fortunately there’s an insane amount of built in safety’s in these facilities, but if one fails it can be disaster.

My opinion is these companies don’t take care of the employees like they should. They don’t offer the in depth training like they should. They run short handed. They try and get operators “good enough” instead of “GOOD”. And as time goes on, the situation snowballs.

I’m not in a huge refinery. But I can see the same thing happening in our plants as I can in those big facilities.

Profit margins have also overshadowed proper maintenance. It cost a lot of money to run these plants. Some of the folks that make the decisions don’t know the process well enough to know how critical some of these repairs are. This is NOT in all facilities. Just things I’ve seen over the years.

[Duckologist]

Bingo. This plant was the same one that had the release during Laura.

No it's not

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[Duckologist]

Luckily it was lunch time and most folks were in for lunch. Contractors for Turner were cutting bolts off the tank with a sawzall and lit it off. Obviously were not following their procedure and or permit. My cousin was in the shop eating when the roll up doors blew in and ruined lunch. I think he said the boom was so loud he sharted

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[Greenheadless]

Let’s don’t paint with that broad of a brush. As we both know, several factors involved in that incident.

Incident rates have been on a steady decline in the petro industry over the 2-3 decades. There are stats out there you can fact check with…AFPM, IOGP, ACC, etc. Each of those publish industry stats on an annual basis. Are these places safe havens where absolutely no one is going to get hurt…no, but they’re much safer than some of the other industries out there.

From your article:

‘ 1.5 Key Technical Findings
1. The ISOM startup procedure required that the level control valve on the raffinate splitter tower be used to send liquid from the tower to storage. However, this valve was closed by an operator and the tower was filled for over three hours without any liquid being removed. This led to flooding of the tower and high pressure, which activated relief valves that discharged flammable liquid to the blowdown system.’

Don’t feed the troll……..or in this case, the village idiot.

[Bayouboy]

Some of you are talking out your arse.

Lots of what some of you are saying is apples to oranges. Stop comparing major operations to minute facilities. Even as a union psm/health and safety rep I will say things have gotten safer. Perfect? Hell no. But, companies are held a lot more accountable now than years ago.

And, speaking of the isom incident at BP. There was a lot more to it than what Google has to say.

Argue all you like about companies not giving a ****. Mostly what I see these days is half arse wanna be craftsman not giving a **** about the quality of their work. Along with krappy engineering, short cuts, and poor quality materials.

[Lungbustr]

I've been in this industry since 1988.. These plants(no matter the company)are getting older and there is entirely to much "acceptable risk" these days.. This acceptable risk can have catastrophic consequences at times. The can gets kicked down the road year after year.. Maintenance on equipment, mainly piping and vessels, is dollar driven instead of safety driven.. The bottom line is all about the profits and bonuses..

Yep.

They blow up one unit, osha comes in and starts poking around. Next thing you know they start shutting down other units making repairs they have delayed for years before osha catches on to the paper trail that they are about to have the same failures and explosions.

Its pretty sad.

[Lungbustr]

How about the management moves a lot of these companies make just like BP? That was a major contributing factor in the BP incident.

They just move managers around every few years, and put a whole lot of pressure on them not to blow the budget.

The units are in very bad shape and in desperate need of downtimes and repairs. But if the repairs get made it is very expensive due to downtime and costly to do the actual work so the budget is blown.

So now the managaers just accept the risk and try to advance their careers and hope a major incident doesnt happen in the short time they are there over that area.

This behavior is encouraged by the company and is just part of the culture.

[PondPopper]

How about the management moves a lot of these companies make just like BP? That was a major contributing factor in the BP incident.

They just move managers around every few years, and put a whole lot of pressure on them not to blow the budget.

The units are in very bad shape and in desperate need of downtimes and repairs. But if the repairs get made it is very expensive due to downtime and costly to do the actual work so the budget is blown.

So now the managaers just accept the risk and try to advance their careers and hope a major incident doesnt happen in the short time they are there over that area.

This behavior is encouraged by the company and is just part of the culture.

The scenario you describe above is exactly what happens and that is why I used the phrase "kicking the can down the road".. They kick it long enough to pass problems off to the next person yet hoping and praying nothing bad happens on their watch.. No long term ownership.. Temporary..

[trophy8]

Argue all you like about companies not giving a ****. Mostly what I see these days is half arse wanna be craftsman not giving a **** about the quality of their work. Along with krappy engineering, short cuts, and poor quality materials.

This is pretty well what I just said.

But I’m sure you know alllll about operations from your safety man office lol. It’s a 2 way street. And it began with companies not taking care of employees and investing time into them. FYI I started with one of the biggest midstream companies on the planet. And was there to watch it go downhill fast and it started with upper management in Denver making some very poor decisions.

[CLR]

Company I work for had a EDC tank blow up . It was being taking out of service. EDC goes boom very easy. I work with it almost every day at work .

That tank had 5% level in it. I was there also.

[jaime1982]

That tank had 5% level in it. I was there also.

Ouch! Hate to hear about this.