Archive for June, 2010
Will CSB investigate the BP Transocean Deepwater Horizon accident?
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June 9, 2010- The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) which is an important agency in the government that investigates accidents in the chemicals, oil & gas and similar industries, is being urged to investigate the BP/ Transocean oil rig (Deepwater Horizon) fire and sinking. Chairman John Bresland of the CSB issued the following release given below
Statement from CSB Chairman John Bresland Regarding
House Committee Request to Investigate BP Deepwater Horizon
I have received the letter from Chairmen Waxman and Stupak of the of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, requesting that the CSB investigate the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout. It is my desire that the CSB do everything it can to facilitate the request and to undertake the investigation and determine what factors led to the explosion and failure of the blowout prevention system.
The CSB, a small agency, is currently engaged in numerous investigations consuming all of our investigation staff. However, I will be consulting immediately with the rest of the board and with key staff to determine how we may put together a high-performing investigation team.
The CSB thoroughly investigated the BP Texas City refinery explosion of 2005 and issued a lengthy report and hour-long CSB Safety Video following our investigation, and as the letter from the committee chairmen states, we would be in a unique position to address numerous questions about BP’s safety culture and practices, and to answer the questions outlined in the House committee letter today. The CSB investigation report and safety video may be viewed at www.CSB.gov.
In addition, at the CSB’s urgent recommendation in 2005, BP convened a special panel under the leadership of former Secretary of State James Baker to evaluate the safety culture at BP’s North American refineries. That report was published in January 2007.
We will be making key decisions on the matter in the next few days and we thank the Committee on Energy and Commerce for its interest in and support of CSB investigation activities
Gas Monitoring Procedures around Hazardous storage tanks
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Washington, DC, June 7, 2010 – The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) today released a 14-minute safety video warning of the hazards of welding and other hot work activities in and around storage tanks containing flammable materials.
Entitled “Dangers of Hot Work,” the video presents key lessons from the CSB’s hot work safety bulletin, released on March 4, 2010, in Wausau, Wisconsin, near the Packaging Corporation of America (PCA) facility where three workers were killed in July 2008 during a hot work-related explosion.
Hot work is defined as burning, welding, or similar spark-producing operations that can ignite fires or explosions. Since the release of the CSB hot work safety bulletin last March, there have been at least an additional eleven hot work accidents resulting in five fatalities and 14 hospitalizations. Included in these events is the explosion and fire at the Navajo Refining Company that killed two workers and injured two others in Artesia, New Mexico, where a crew of insulators was reportedly working on a crude oil storage tank.
The video uses 3-D computer animations to depict three hot work accidents at Partridge-Raleigh, an oil production site in Central Mississippi; the Bethune Waste Water Treatment Plant in Daytona Beach, Florida; and the Motiva Enterprises Refinery in Delaware City, Delaware.
The video also features an interview with John Capanna, who suffered burns over ninety percent of his body following a hot work accident while he performed maintenance activities at a refinery in New Jersey in 1979.
Mr. Capanna warns: “Don’t think that something this tragic couldn’t happen to you or somebody you love. This could happen to anybody.”
Also featured in the video is Casey Jones, the wife of crane operator Clyde Jones, who was fatally burned at the Bethune Waste Water Treatment Plant in January 2006.
Mrs. Jones says, “As a wife, I just assumed that he had a normal, everyday 7:00 to 3:30, Monday through Friday job, safe as my job. I would have never dreamed in a million years he would have been killed in an explosion.”
Hot work accidents occur throughout many industries in the U.S., including food processing, pulp and paper manufacturing, oil production, fuel storage, and waste treatment. CSB Investigations Supervisor Donald Holmstrom states in the video, “We typically hear about hot work accidents weekly. It has become one of the most significant types of incidents the CSB investigates, in terms of deaths, in terms of frequency.”
Emphasizing key lessons from the safety bulletin, Chairman Bresland states, “Hazard assessments and combustible gas detectors should be routinely used to identify and monitor for flammable atmospheres before and during hot work. Effective gas monitoring will save lives.”
You can watch the video here.
Union Carbide Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster-seven people convicted
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June 07, 2010- Finally after 25 years or so, Union Carbide’s Bhopal Gas accident case (perhaps the worst chemical industrial accident until now involving the release of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) that killed thousands of people and maimed or disabled thousands) has finally resulted in convictions. Seven people were judged “guilty” due to negligence. They include the then Chairman of the company, the then Vice President of Manufacturing and other such worthies, including a plant shop floor supervisor. The number of Union Carbide executives and employees that were being prosecuted were actually eight, but one of them died of natural causes during the long winded trial.
The punishments seem petty in comparison with the scale of the disaster. Two years of prison plus a $2100 fine. The convicted persons can appeal to a higher court. News reports quoted Sati Nath Sarangi, an advocate for the victims, as “the world’s worst industrial disaster reduced to a traffic accident”, since the charges that were brought to bear were defined as “death due to negilgence” (often cited in fatal traffic accidents in India). Human Rights groups and others advocating the victims interests wanted more stringent laws to apply.
Though the punishments may seem minor, but they do seem to have set a trend-that of holding the company’s top management at that time responsible for accidents in the plant. This should stir into action, many such chairmen and members of the boards of chemical companies (and others that also have hazardous processes like nuclear power) to audit their own backyards. Some of them are only vaguely aware of what goes on in their plants on the shopfloor, they being more concerned with quarterly results and the opinion of stock analysts. They should put some talented people back into engineering and operations, which have seen a steady deterioration in many companies.
Opinions and comments are welcome as usual!
World Environment Day-Some thoughts
June 5, 2010 -So today is World Environment Day. We’re in the midst of an oil leak and spill disaster, so now is a good time to think where we’re moving. Is the planet less polluted today than some decades ago, before the environment was given its due importance. We think no, todays pollution levels seem far below the levels that were seen in the 1950s and 1960s. This is because of more stringent norms, government oversight through organisations like the EPA and other “non-state” actors like environmental watchdogs like Greenpeace and others. Today the smoke belching, gas spewing factory may be a rarity, but is it because of the above mentioned things or is it because most of these have shifted to China? BTW there you can still witness these smoking chimneys and soot that hangs in the air, especially during winter when it all turns into a thick smog and haze.
As far as disasters are concerned, the BP incident is a rare event these days-more of a black swan event-not that I am saying that it could not have been predicted or that the response could not have been better, but that it was really perhaps the first incident in which a blowout preventer failed. Or was it really the first one, as BP claims? Have there been other incidents in the past when these devices failed? Perhaps someone in the Oil and Gas industry should come out with statistics.
But, I digress here. Today on the occasion of World Environment Day, we should all pause to think whether we are really making the environment a better place over the years or worse? Is todays economic model sustainable? For how long? What legacy should we gift our children and grandchildren? A polluted planet and tons of Collaterized Debt Obligations (CDOs)? Can’t we do any better? We better think seriously about it now.
Comments are welcome!
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