The United Steelworkers (USW) Union on Monday said that the US refinery industry has failed to learn from past disasters.
The USW said that its 2007 report, Beyond Texas City: The State of Process Safety in the Unionised US Oil Refining Industry, is more relevant than ever in light of the April 2nd Tesoro explosion and fire that killed five workers and critically injured two others.
‘It is totally unacceptable that the refining industry continues to fail in securing the safety of workers, surrounding communities and our nation’s energy supplies,’ said USW Vice-President Gary Beevers, who is in charge of the union’s oil sector.
‘We can no longer tolerate industry’s failure to follow OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations and its inability to learn from recurring disasters, and its refusal to commit the resources necessary to prevent these tragedies.’
Nine months following the March 23, 2005 explosion and fire at BP’s Texas City refinery that killed 15 workers and injured 180 others, the Tony Mazzocchi Centre for Health, Safety and Environmental Education joined with the USW to survey and examine potentially catastrophic conditions at 51 refineries across the US.
The industry-wide survey showed refiners were not following the letter and spirit of OSHA’s process safety standard.
When survey respondents rated 16 process safety systems for start-ups or shutdowns, 87 per cent said the overall management of process safety systems at their sites was less than very effective – a level deemed necessary for such dangerous operations.
The report concluded:
• There remains an alarming potential for future refinery disasters.
• The refining industry has stubbornly resisted opportunities for learning and improvement from years of disasters.
• The highly hazardous conditions similar to those found at BP Texas City were still pervasive in US refineries months following that disaster.
• Industry response since Texas City has been anaemic.
• The letter and the spirit of OSHA’s Process Safety Standard remain unfulfilled.
• Should an emergency occur, refineries are not sufficiently prepared.
While the USW noted in the report that strong proactive OSHA regulation and enforcement are essential, it also called on the industry to take urgent critical actions to address major deficiencies.
Included among these were ensuring that all non-essential personnel are outside of hazardous areas (vulnerability zones), especially during start-ups, shutdowns, or other unstable operating conditions.
The union also called on refiners to develop and implement policies requiring full safety reviews prior to all process start-ups and scheduled shutdowns.
‘Our union will fight as long and hard as it takes to gain real protection for the lives and health of every worker,’ said Beevers.
Earlier, the USW condemned remarks made by oil industry trade associations in the aftermath of the April 2nd Tesoro refinery explosion and fire at Anacortes, Washington.
‘It is obvious that this industry still has not learned from other refinery disasters and near-misses,’ said USW Vice-President Beevers. ‘They are more concerned with their image than taking appropriate action on safety.’
In newspaper reports last weekend, American Petroleum Institute (API) officials said the industry isn’t getting the credit it deserves when it comes to health and safety.
They cited OSHA injury and illness rates for the sector that have dropped in the last decade.
National Petrochemical & Refiners Association officials also bragged that the industry has a lower injury rate than the US manufacturing sector as a whole.
‘It’s incredible this industry brags about its safety record just after five more people were killed in a refinery explosion,’ said USW President Leo W Gerard.
‘The problem is the injury and illness rates the trade associations cite are misleading and do not give the full picture of health and safety within the refining sector.
‘The recordable injury rates that OSHA collects measure items like slips, falls, sprains and fractures, not poor safety practices that lead to incidents like explosions and fires. There’s a difference between a sprained ankle and an explosion that kills five people,’ Gerard added.
The fact that the industry trade groups keep dragging out these injury and illness rates every time there is an accident angers USW officials.
‘I sat on an API committee with representatives from the oil companies for months and we all agreed that OSHA injury rates were not a measure of refinery safety and that data should not be used, yet the API keeps publicly bringing up these injury rates whenever there is an accident,’ said Kim Nibarger, a refinery safety expert in the USW’s Health, Safety & Environment Department.
‘It makes me think they are more concerned with the industry’s image than they are with fixing the problems,’ he added.
The API disagrees that refinery accidents reflect systemic problems within the industry despite evidence to the contrary provided by the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) investigations, an independent review panel that looked into the safety culture at BP, and OSHA’s rigorous refinery inspection programme after the BP disaster in Texas City.
‘What determines whether a refinery is safe or not is how a refiner handles process safety,’ Beevers said.
Process safety refers to the replacement and maintenance of equipment; having systems in place to insure that pipes and machinery are in top condition; adequate training for employees; staffing so that workers don’t do too much overtime that they get fatigued and make mistakes; maintaining adequate records and information on possible hazards to workers; and, making sure that changes to a process are recorded and shared with workers.
‘The refiners aren’t paying enough attention to the releases of toxins that occur when flaring is done or to fires that occur where nobody gets hurt or to equipment failures that don’t result in explosions,’ Beevers said.
‘There is a lack of preventive maintenance and too much emphasis on running processes full out until something breaks down completely,’ he warned.
These process safety events happen on a daily basis. The USW is keeping track of these events at www.oilbargaining.org (a web site that serves the union’s National Oil Bargaining program, national oil health and safety campaign, and features news and information on issues within the oil industry).
‘The API would be better served if it addressed these issues and others like it that exists in every refinery across the country, instead of spending millions of dollars on PR that tries to fool the American people that everything in their refineries is fine,’ Beevers said.
‘Five more people dead does not equate to everything is fine,’ he concluded.
