Renegade Refiner: OSHA Says BP Has “Systemic Safety Problem”
97% of Worst Industry Violations Found at BP Refineries
By Jim Morris and M.B. Pell | May 16, 2010
“a risk taking corporation that operated in an industry with ineffective regulatory oversight.”
Two refineries owned by oil giant BP account for 97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry by government safety inspectors over the past three years, a Center for Public Integrity analysis shows. Most of BP’s citations were classified as “egregious willful” by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and reflect alleged violations of a rule designed to prevent catastrophic events at refineries.
BP is battling a massive oil well spill in the Gulf of Mexico after an April 20 platform blast that killed 11 workers. But the firm has been under intense OSHA scrutiny since its refinery in Texas City, Texas, exploded in March 2005, killing 15 workers. While continuing its probe in Texas City, OSHA launched a nationwide refinery inspection program in June 2007 in response to a series of fires, explosions and chemical releases throughout the industry.
Refinery inspection data obtained by the Center under the Freedom of Information Act for OSHA’s nationwide program and for the parallel Texas City inspection show that BP received a total of 862 citations between June 2007 and February 2010 for alleged violations at its refineries in Texas City and Toledo, Ohio.
Of those, 760 were classified as “egregious willful” and 69 were classified as “willful.” Thirty of the BP citations were deemed “serious” and three were unclassified. Virtually all of the citations were for alleged violations of OSHA’s process safety management standard, a sweeping rule governing everything from storage of flammable liquids to emergency shutdown systems. BP accounted for 829 of the 851 willful violations among all refiners cited by OSHA during the period analyzed by the Center.
Top OSHA officials told the Center in an interview that BP was cited for more egregious willful violations than other refiners because it failed to correct the types of problems that led to the 2005 Texas City accident even after OSHA pointed them out. In Toledo, problems were corrected in one part of the refinery but went unaddressed in another. Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, said it was clear that BP “didn’t go nearly far enough” to correct deficiencies after the 2005 blast.
“The only thing you can conclude is that BP has a serious, systemic safety problem in their company,” Barab said.
“And no one is ready for it. Not the Minerals Management Service, catering submissively to
BP’s laughable Gulf oil-spill “plan,” a document featuring wildly inaccurate wildlife assessments (including walruses and other species nonexistent in the Gulf) and an on-call expert who’s been dead for years. Not the scientists whose research is paid for by the oil cowboys. Not the environmental groups, who did not foresee the stupendous potential for cataclysm on oil’s farthest frontier. Not the media, who almost entirely ignored the sneak preview offered last year by the blowout of the West Atlas rig drilling in the Timor Sea off Australia-a disaster that required five attempts at a relief well and 74 days to stanch. Far offshore, far from sight, far beyond the typical royalty-paying boundaries, BP and its partners have transformed themselves into modern-day pirates, operating beyond law or conscience. Their reckless quest has endangered and perhaps condemned not just the Gulf Coast, but the largest, richest, most pristine, most biologically important, and last completely unprotected ecosystem left on Earth: the deep ocean.“Oil is toxic to most life. And Corexit is toxic to most life. But the most toxic of all is oil that’s been treated with Corexit.” (the dispersant BP is using in the Gulf) … It has continued to dispense Corexit – above and below water – when ordered to stop.
“We do know that dead dolphins are washing up along the Gulf Coast in higher-than-normal numbers. We don’t know how many more have died at sea and sunk, never to be counted.
– Julia Whitty; Environmental Correspondent for Mother Jones.
www.motherjones.com/environment/2010/09/bp-ocean-cover-up?page=1
Gov. Corruption
Coast Guard Database Makes Oil Spill Penalties Nearly Impossible to Track
By Ariel Wittenberg | June 04, 2010, 10:18 am
The U.S. government has investigated potentially thousands of BP leaks, spills and other incidents but the information is stored in a Coast Guard database that keeps key details such as investigative findings and penalties out of the public’s reach.
More than 8,000 incident reports about BP’s U.S. spills, emissions, and leaks of oil and chemicals have been filed with the National Response Center during the past decade. They range from minor clumsiness such as a tipped drum of jet fuel to the deadly April 21 explosion on BP’s Gulf of Mexico rig. The center relays each new report to the Coast Guard or other relevant policing bodies for investigation. All Coast Guard investigations are stored in the agency’s Marine Information for Safety and Law Enforcement (MISLE) database.
BP had 550 incidents in Mississippi Canyon, where the now infamous Deepwater Horizon drilling platform was located, according to Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation. But MISLE records about investigations and any resulting penalties can be obtained only by filing a Freedom of Information Act request for each individual incident. This means 550 separate FOIA requests would have to be filed to obtain details about the BP incidents in the area surrounding the site where BP’s drilling rig exploded in April, he said.
“Technically, it’s a database because you can request data from it,” Allison said, referring to MISLE. “But you can’t query or search the database. You have to already know what you are looking for in order to find it.”
This makes tracking trends in the Coast Guard’s policing of BP’s activity in Mississippi Canyon, nearly impossible, he said.
“We would like to look and see how often BP was investigated, fined, caused trouble or had penalties, but we really can’t do that the way the data is set up,” he said. “Even if we FOIA-ed, it would just get us a pile of paperwork which would be a hassle to go through compared to a query on a database.”
The MISLE reports are only accessible via FOIA requests because the Department of Homeland Security – which oversees the Coast Guard – says each report “contains sensitive personal information” of people involved in investigations, including their Social Security numbers. In addition to oil spills, MISLE also contains information about shipping accidents, vessel boardings, pollution discharges, drilling rig accidents, and search and rescue operations.
Representatives from the Coast Guard declined to specifically comment on MISLE access, referring questions to its FOIA webpage. According to the website, FOIA requests are necessary to “prevent individuals, businesses, and government from harm resulting from the release of certain information.”
Still, Allison believes there should be a way for the government to protect personal information in the database while giving the public access to investigative reports and penalties assessed to oil companies for leaks and spills.
“It’s just a silly [deliberately deceptive] way to run a database,” he said.