Texas City Refinery Explosion
On March 23, 2005, a fire and explosion occurred at BP's Texas City Refinery in Texas City, Texas, killing 15 workers and injuring more than 170 others. BP was charged with criminal violations of federal environmental laws, and has been subject to lawsuits from the victims' families. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration slapped BP with a then-record fine for hundreds of safety violations, and subsequently imposed an even larger fine after claiming that BP had failed to implement safety improvements following the disaster.
The Texas City Refinery is the second-largest oil refinery in the state, and the third-largest in the United States. BP acquired the Texas City refinery as part of its merger with Amoco in 1998. It had an input capacity of 437,000 barrels (69,500 m3) per day as of January 1, 2005.
The explosion occurred in an isomerization unit at the site, resulting in the deaths and injuries. According to a report issued after the accident, actions taken or not taken led to overfilling the raffinate splitter with liquid, overheating of the liquid, and the subsequent overpressurization and pressure relief. Hydrocarbon flow to the blowdown drum and stack overwhelmed it, resulting in liquids carrying over out of the top of the stack, flowing down the stack, accumulating on the ground, and causing a vapor cloud, which was ignited by a contractor's pickup truck as the engine was left running. The report identified numerous failings in equipment, risk management, staff management, working culture at the site, maintenance and inspection, and general health and safety assessments.
In 2011 BP announced that it was selling the refinery.
Read more about Texas City Refinery Explosion: Explosion, Aftermath, Subsequent Incidents, Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words texas, city and/or explosion:
“Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, brown, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners “on the lone prairie” gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers’ hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Frau Stöhr ... began to talk about how fascinating it was to cough.... Sneezing was much the same thing. You kept on wanting to sneeze until you simply couldn’t stand it any longer; you looked as if you were tipsy; you drew a couple of breaths, then out it came, and you forgot everything else in the bliss of the sensation. Sometimes the explosion repeated itself two or three times. That was the sort of pleasure life gave you free of charge.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)