Professional Documents
Culture Documents
On April 20, 2010, a sudden explosion and fire occurred on the oil rig. The accident
resulted in the deaths of 11 workers and caused a massive, ongoing oil spill into the
Gulf of Mexico. The rig was located approximately 50 miles southeast of Venice,
Louisiana, and had a 126-member crew onboard.
An August 6, 2012, release of flammable vapor led to a fire at the Chevron Refinery
in Richmond, California. The CSB released three investigation reports into this
incident - an Interim Report, a Regulatory Report and a Final Report.
An explosion and fire led to the fatal injury of seven employees when a nearly
forty-year-old heat exchanger catastrophically failed during a maintenance
operation to switch a process stream between two parallel banks of exchangers at
the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Washington
On the evening of January 12, 2009, 2 refinery operators and 2 contractors suffered
serious burns resulting from a flash fire at the Silver Eagle Refinery in Woods Cross,
Utah. The accident occurred when a large flammable vapor cloud was released
from an atmospheric storage tank, known as tank 105, which contained an
estimated 440,000 gallons of light naphtha. The vapor cloud found an ignition
source and the ensuing flash fire spread up to 230 feet west of the tank farm. On
November 4, 2009, a second accident occurred at the Silver Eagle Refinery in
Woods Cross, Utah, when a powerful blast wave - - caused by the failure of a 10
inch pipe - damaged nearby homes.
On February 16, 2007, a propane fire erupted at the Valero McKee Refinery in
Sunray, Texas, north of Amarillo. Three workers suffered serious burns, and the
refinery was forced to shut down. The fire began following a leak in the propane
deasphalting unit and spread quickly, in part because of the rapid collapse of a
major pipe rack carrying flammable hydrocarbons. Some of the rack's support
columns had not been fireproofed.
On February 23, 1999, a fire occurred in the crude unit at Tosco Corporation. Avon
oil refinery in Martinez, California. Workers were attempting to replace piping
attached to a 150-foot-tall fractionator tower while the process unit was in
operation. During removal of the piping, naphtha was released onto the hot
fractionator and ignited. The flames engulfed five workers located at different
heights on the tower. Four men were killed, and one sustained serious injuries.
On March 13, 2001, three people were killed as they opened a process vessel
containing hot plastic at the BP Amoco Polymers plant in Augusta, Georgia. They
were unaware that the vessel was pressurized. The workers were killed when the
partially unbolted cover blew off the vessel, expelling hot plastic. The force of the
release caused some nearby tubing to break. Hot fluid from the tubing ignited,
resulting in a fire.
Cause
Human factors;
Poor valve design; and
No detailed and accurate procedure on maintenance of gear box of isolation valves