Katherine Stapp

NEW YORK, Mar 30 2005 (IPS) — As federal investigators sift through the ruins of a Texas oil refinery where 15 workers were killed and more than 100 injured in a Mar. 23 explosion, watchdog groups say the accident raises questions about the safety of chemical plants around the United States.

The refinery, operated by BP Amoco, is the largest in the country, employing 2,000 workers and producing three percent of the nation’s gasoline. It appears that the blast occurred when a flammable liquid and vapour were released and then ignited in the plant’s isomerisation unit, which boosts the octane level of petrol.

There is no evidence that chemicals escaped into the surrounding communities, but industry oversight groups say that may have been pure luck.

The Texas City facility, just outside the southern state’s capital, Houston, is just one of about 560 that each put at least 100,000 people at risk from the release of hazardous chemicals.

And according to the Washington-based group OMB Watch and others, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed to introduce policies to reduce these risks as far as possible.

For example, nearly a third of the petroleum refineries in the United States use hydrofluoric acid in their processing or store it on-site. According to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, altogether these refineries endanger more than 15.6 million people living in surrounding communities in 20 different states.

But hydrofluoric acid can be replaced with sulphuric acid, which is much safer and ultimately cheaper.

“Generally, when facilities switch to safer chemicals and processes, their long-term costs go down,” said George Sorvalis of the Community Right to Know project of OMB Watch, “in part because they don’t have to adhere to certain federal regulations.”

“The EPA has the authority under the Clean Air Act to make companies use safer technologies, but even in cases where you have these huge vulnerabilities (to contamination) of the surrounding communities, there are no uniform chemical safety standards in place.”

“Chlorine and hydrofluoric acid, for example, are both heavier than air and would form a low-hanging cloud that spreads with the wind direction,” he said.

Exposure to hydrofluoric acid can result in devastating burns, and inhalation of fumes can cause symptoms ranging from severe throat irritation to pulmonary edema.

Although the Texas City refinery stored 800,000 pounds of hydrofluoric acid, according to BP Amoco reports to EPA, accident investigators have not found any evidence that it leaked into the air.

An EPA spokesman said in an interview that the agency sent a team to the refinery as soon as the accident was reported on the afternoon of Mar. 23, and immediately began air monitoring to look for volatile organic compounds like sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide and benzene – chemicals typically associated with refineries or petrochemical factories.

“We began air monitoring within a radius of three to four miles from the factory to see if we could detect chemicals in the ambient air that pose a threat to human health,” said David Bary of the EPA’s Region Six office. “We did not find any of these chemicals.”

The fire extinguished itself quickly and the team returned the next morning.

“We came in closer and downwind to determine if there were hazardous constituents,” Bary told IPS. “On Saturday, we began to detect small amounts of benzene that had apparently leaked from a 125,000-gallon storage tank damaged in the explosion.”

“The levels made it hazardous in the immediate area of the accident, but nothing we found off the site caused concern.”

The EPA team demobilised on Mar. 27, and has been replaced by investigators from the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Last week’s explosion may have been the worst accident at the plant, but it was hardly the first. Over the last six years, the Texas City facility reported over 100 incidents to the National Response Centre, which tracks unverified initial reports of spills, releases and other accidents ranging from minor to serious.

Asked about the refinery’s safety record, Bary said that BP Amoco had entered into a settlement with the Justice Department for violations of the Clean Air Act at eight of its U.S. facilities in 2001 – including the Texas City refinery.

The deal gave the company leeway to “take the necessary steps to meet the terms of the consent decree”, he said.

These included cutting nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide emissions by 49,000 tonnes annually by 2004, and by an additional 6,000 tonnes by 2008, improving leak detection and repair practices and improving safety for workers and local communities. BP Amoco also agreed to pay a 10-million-dollar fine.

Bary declined to comment on the adequacy of EPA oversight of the chemical industry as a whole. A programme called the National Refinery Initiative does exist to address hazardous chemical leaks, but industry reformers complain that it is voluntary and lacks teeth.

While BP Amoco did not return phone calls for comment, the company issued a statement saying that criticism of its record is “misleading” and that many of the accidental chemical releases “occurred because pressure safety valves installed to ensure the safety of workers in our facilities worked as intended.”

It said such releases to the environment have declined by a third in the last two years.