Beyond Texas City: The State of Process Safety in the Unionized U.S. Oil Refining Industry

The March 2005 British Petroleum (BP) Texas City Refinery disaster provided a stimulus to examine the state of process safety in the U.S. refining industry. Participatory action researchers conducted a nation-wide mail-back survey of United Steelworkers local unions and collected data from 51 unioni...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:New solutions 2009-11, Vol.19 (3), p.271-288
Main Authors: McQuiston, Thomas H., Lippin, Tobi Mae, Bradley-Bull, Kristin, Anderson, Joseph, Beach, Josie, Beevers, Gary, Frederick, Randy J., Frederick, James, Greene, Tammy, Hoffman, Thomas, Lefton, James, Nibarger, Kim, Renner, Paul, Ricks, Brian, Seymour, Thomas, Taylor, Ren, Wright, Mike
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
British petroleum company limited
Disaster Planning - organization & administration
Disasters
Emergency preparedness
Extraction and Processing Industry - organization & administration
Guidelines as Topic
Hazardous materials
Humans
Inservice Training - organization & administration
Labor Unions
Maritime industry
Occupational Health
Occupational safety
Petroleum
Petroleum industry
Petroleum refineries
Refineries
Regulation
Respondents
Safety
Safety Management - organization & administration
Safety systems
Training
Unionization
United States
United States Occupational safety and health administration
United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration - organization & administration
Working conditions
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Summary:The March 2005 British Petroleum (BP) Texas City Refinery disaster provided a stimulus to examine the state of process safety in the U.S. refining industry. Participatory action researchers conducted a nation-wide mail-back survey of United Steelworkers local unions and collected data from 51 unionized refineries. The study examined the prevalence of highly hazardous conditions key to the Texas City disaster, refinery actions to address those conditions, emergency preparedness and response, process safety systems, and worker training. Findings indicate that the key highly hazardous conditions were pervasive and often resulted in incidents or near-misses. Respondents reported worker training was insufficient and less than a third characterized their refineries as very prepared to respond safely to a hazardous materials emergency. The authors conclude that the potential for future disasters plagues the refining industry. In response, they call for effective proactive OSHA regulation and outline ten urgent and critical actions to improve refinery process safety.
ISSN:1048-2911
1541-3772
DOI:10.2190/NS.19.3.a