Lack of mechanical integrity blamed for leak at Exxon Mobil refinery

A grassroots environmental justice group in Louisiana obtained and released an uncensored Environmental Protection Agency report on an industrial accident at the Exxon Mobil refinery in Baton Rouge. The report states that last summer a leaking valve at the refinery caused the release of more than 20 tons of vaporized chemicals into the environment. One of the chemicals is carcinogenic. The refinery is located near a community that is largely African-American.

The EPA blamed the leak on the refinerys lack of mechanical integrity noting that its inspection of the refinery found several instances of piping, valve, and vessel corrosion that in some instances was pervasive. The report also said that the company during the last five years failed to inspect more than 1,000 underground pipes that carry liquid and gas flammable and that 249 required inspections were overdue.

The United Steelworkers (USW), the union of the Exxon Mobil production employees at the refinery, said that the conditions found by EPA were not exclusive to the Baton Rouge refinery but instead were prevalent throughout the refining sector and were the cause of fatal accidents at US refineries.

After neighbors of the refinery complained that the leak was causing illnesses in their community, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an environmental health and justice organizations working with communities that are close to Louisianas refineries and chemical plants, began demanding information about the leak.

When the leak happened in June, Exxon Mobil tried to downplay its severity. According to the EPA, the company informed the state police as it was required to do about the leak but did not calculate the amount of the leak because it didnt want to alarm people or set off a panic.

In July, Exxon Mobil calculated the total of the release to be 28,688 lbs of benzene, 10,882 lbs of toluene, 1,100 lbs of cyclohexane, 1,564 lbs of hexane, and 12,605 lbs of addition volatile organic compounds. Benzine is a known carcinogen and toluene can cause nerve damage.

The company, however, didnt make this information public; instead, it told the public that the gases released into the environment were minimal.

The Bucket Brigade pressed for more information and in December, the company gave the brigade an abridged report from the EPA on the incident, however the report was heavily redacted including the information about the amount of gases released in the air.

The brigade made a Freedom of Information request directly to the EPA for an unredacted version of the report and received it at the end of February.

According to the report, the company in 2009 also failed to report properly another catastrophic incident in which nine refinery workers were hospitalized after being exposed to a carbon monoxide leak.

In a statement about the report, USW said that US refineries like the one at Baton Rouge are old and need diligent inspections and timely maintenance but that companies are often lax in carrying out their responsibilities.

The problems cited at the Baton Rouge refinery facility are universal, reads USWs statement. The lack of mechanical integrity in refinery equipment has been a contributing cause in many of the worst accidents this industry has experienced. Mechanical integrity was a factor in the recent Chevron refinery fire, for which CalOSHA fined the company nearly $1 million; the April 2010 Tesoro Anacortes refinery explosion, which killed seven people; and the infamous BP Texas City refinery explosion and fire where 15 people were killed.

USW also said that the EPA report also shows that the Baton Rouge refinery did not have sufficient staff to handle emergency situations. Staffing concerns are another major issue the USW has been trying to address and that were cited as a problem at (the Baton Rouge refinery), reads the USW statement.

ExxonMobils failure to take appropriate action on items they identified as a concern disturbs us. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated issue but an industry-wide problem. When equipment is identified as being outside a safe operating range, it should be replaced or mitigated as soon as possible. To ignore these items should be a criminal offense because the company is knowingly placing workers and the community at risk, concluded the unions statement

The investigation concludes that the five-foot carbon steel component where the leak occurred failed due to thinning caused by sulfidation corrosion, which was accelerated by the low-silicon content of

the failed component. Individual carbon steel piping components with low-silicon can, and here did, corrode at an accelerated rate not readily detectable by multiple corrosion monitoring locations. We have identified what went wrong and are taking steps to prevent a similar incident in the future, said Nigel Hearne, general manager of the Richmond refinery. The causes of the incident were multifaceted. The refinerys management and our entire workforce are implementing actions to address the issues underlying the August incident and as part of our commitment to continuous improvement. The investigation team included independent scientific and engineering experts, members of the United Steelworkers Union, and Chevron technical experts. The report identifies four causal factors of the incident: Measurements performed in 2002 that indicated a piping component in the crude oil processing unit was thinning were not appropriately documented in the inspection report to help guide future decisions. Information from the industry and other internal experts concerning the chemical process that caused the pipe to fail and potential ways to guard against it, including component-by-component inspections, was not disseminated effectively to those making decisions regarding inspections.

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Inspections during major maintenance performed in 2011 did not include every component subject to sulfidation corrosion. After the discovery of a leaking pipe before the fire, response teams did not recognize the risk of rupture and ignition. The report concluded that enhanced component inspection like the program now being implemented throughout Chevron U.S.A.s refining network would likely have alerted the refinery to the potential problem. Chevron is implementing actions that will address the underlying issues identified in the report and strengthen process safety, mechanical integrity and management oversight. Specifically, the company is: Enhancing our inspection procedures. Weve inspected every component in the unit where the fire occurred, and are inspecting every component throughout the refinery used in the same type of service. We are replacing every piping component as necessary based on the results of these inspections. Strengthening internal communications and oversight of mechanical integrity-related recommendations and inspection plans. Strengthening our reliability programs for piping and equipment and our process hazard analyses to ensure that they fully cover the potential damage mechanisms to those systems. Reviewing and improving our mechanical training programs for leaders, inspectors, operating groups and engineers. Implementing a new protocol for evaluating leaks and shutting down equipment. Reemphasizing our expectations for process safety performance and the importance of incorporating process safety into decision-making. Chevron will continue to work cooperatively with government agencies that have been involved in looking into this incident. The complete investigation report is available online at richmond.chevron.com. The company has completed repairs to the crude unit and expects to resume normal refinery operations in April. ### Contact: