BP refinery probe cites poor OSHA oversight

updated 3:20 p.m. ET March 20, 2007

HOUSTON - The U.S. agency responsible for worker safety failed to inspect plants with enough care and frequency to prevent an accident like the 2005 explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery that killed 15 people and injured 170, a government report said Tuesday.

The final report on the nation’s worst industrial accident since 1990 also blamed BP for cost cutting that left the plant vulnerable to catastrophe.

In a 335-page report, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said although the Texas City plant had had several fatal accidents over the last 30 years, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration had done only one process safety management inspection at the refinery — in 1998.

The report said the agency made other, unplanned inspections after accidents, complaints or referrals — it didn’t say how many — but that those visits were typically narrower and shorter than planned inspections.

“OSHA’s national focus on inspecting facilities with high injury rates, while important, has resulted in reduced attention to preventing less frequent, but catastrophic, process safety incidents such as the one at Texas City,” the report said.

Nationally, the CSB found OSHA had done few inspections between 1995 and 2005 that are supposed to ensure compliance with OSHA’s process safety management standard — the type of inspections designed to prevent disasters such as explosions.

Don Holmstrom, the CSB’s lead investigator of the Texas City blast, said the investigation showed OSHA did only nine such inspections in targeted industries over the 10-year period — and none in the refining sector.

Holmstrom said the two agencies worked well together in the immediate days after the accident. But after the CSB learned of other major accidents and fatalities at the Texas City site and began to request material on specific incidents, OSHA didn’t always comply, he said.

Still, Holmstrom said, “available evidence indicates that OSHA has an insufficient number of qualified inspectors to enforce the (process safety management) standard at oil and chemical facilities.”

An OSHA spokesman did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

In a statement Tuesday, BP said it has accepted responsibility for the accident, worked diligently to provide fair compensation to those injured and to families of those who died, and cooperated fully with the CSB.

“Notwithstanding the company’s strong disagreement with some of the content of the CSB report, particularly many of the findings and conclusions, BP will give full and careful consideration to CSB’s recommendations, in conjunction with the many activities already under way to improve process safety management,” the statement said.

CSB clearly pointed a finger at London-based BP for causing the explosion, noting in particular that “cost-cutting in the 1990s by Amoco and then BP left the Texas City refinery vulnerable to a catastrophe.”

BP acquired the refinery when it merged with Amoco in 1998. Soon after, the report said, BP ordered a 25 percent, across-the-budget cut in fixed spending at its refineries. In a preliminary investigation of the accident released in October 2005, CSB said the Texas City plant fostered a culture of bad management and failed to recognize and correct problems.

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