GULF COAST OIL SPILL DISASTER

A major explosion occurred at BP’s Texas City Refinery in March 2005, killing 15 workers and injuring 180 more. The explosion occurred in a unit that manufactured jet fuel. The explosion was caused by a broken gauge and flammable hydrocarbons that were overflowing from an octane processing tower, which lacked a flare system to burn off volatile vapors. Those escaping vapors were ignited by the backfire of a nearby truck.

The Texas City refinery had a troubled history long before the blast. In the 30 years before the explosion, a worker had died in an accident at the Texas City refinery on average of once every 16 months. The 2005 tragedy would eventually be blamed on aggressive cost cutting by BP.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board found that BP senior management knew of “significant safety problems” at the Texas plant and 34 other BP facilities months or years before the explosion but that “unsafe and antiquated equipment designs were left in place, and unacceptable deficiencies in preventative maintenance were tolerated.”

In October 2009, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined BP $87 million – the largest in the agency’s history – for failing to fix problems identified after the Texas City explosion. The fine was more than four times the size of any previous OSHA sanction. Federal officials said the penalty was the result of BP’s failure to comply in hundreds of instances with a 2005 agreement to fix safety hazards at the refinery.