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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory
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To: croesus1111 who wrote (29333)3/24/2005 5:05:37 PM
From: Elroy Jetson  Read Replies (1) of 110191
 
The Texas regulator is now talking about a historical pattern of explosions and fires in this location in the BP plant. (you could say that about most refineries) They may eventually claim BP did not design a safe clearance between process units - which would have led to the death of the maintenance workers.

I'm a finance and econ guy, rather than a chemical engineer, but I've had ChemEs give me tours of most of Chevron's domestic refineries when I worked there 1978-83. Unfortunately my first six months with Chevron were spent working in the Richmond Refinery and chemical facilities - getting to know the engineers, equipment and their problems, in what I felt was the oil industry's version of hazing - "you're in the oil business now". When you're just out of school and have visions of a posh office and company jets, running around in casual clothes with a hard hat and safety glasses comes as an unpleasant surprise.

Then I got to handle regulatory affairs for the west coast refineries and pipeline operations from San Francisco. So every time the overly-optimistic ChemEs ran Isomax too long I was the one who paid the fines and handled the requests from regulators. Happily for me, the refinery manager got the choice job of dealing with the press. You begin to see the explosions are monotonously predictable.

Chevron's Isomax containment walls are designed to easily withstand the explosive failure of nearby equipment, and I'd bet BP's isomizer was as well - you have to. No refinery designer wants the entire refinery blowing up in one big chain reaction when a single process unit fails.

We both know the contract maintenance workers are far from the brightest people on the planet, but when the isomizer containment fails you don't need a source of ignition. Gasoline at 1,000 degrees tends to handle that on its own.
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