VitalAccurateThinking

BP Duh Moment from Fed

Umm...all I can say to this is "Duh!". Really, you think so?

Regulators say different equipment could protect refinery workers

Federal investigators today urged the nation's petroleum industry to eliminate the use of atmospheric vents like the kind involved in last year's fatal blast at the BP Texas City refinery.

Further down, the director of the Chemical Safety Board had this to say:

"The experience of BP should serve as a cautionary tale to every oil and chemical company that hears this message," CSB Chairman Carolyn Merritt said in a morning press conference. "The problems at BP are not unique to one refinery, to one division or to one corporation."

This is the same woman who said on 60 Minutes that this catastrophic failure could have been predicted at BP. Perhaps so, perhaps not. We cannot go into the past and see what failures were predicted. However, I would then challenge Ms. Merritt to specifically predict the next catastrophic failure at the next chemical plant.

This is just me talking here. I have 15 years experience working in chemical plants and have witnessed and investigated a few chemical plant incidents. This is what I think:
-Throw a rock at a chemical plant and you will find a worker that predicts "some" horrible accident will happen. Of course, they are never specific other than "things are bad here. Something bad is going to happen."

-Most predictions of catastrophic failures never come true.

-Most people who think deeply about accident prevention and have a top 10 most likely scenarios. They never predict that future accident will happen.

Of course, I am not saying BP did enough to prevent this particular incident. They earned all the bad press and 60 Minutes scrutiny. However, when idiots from the press and government boards make uniformed statements regarding the unpredictable events, I have to speak out. Don't paint the entire chemical industry with the same brush that you are painting BP. Most of us do the best we can to keep our plants and communities safe. As an industry, we are much safer than most, and yet, we get scrutiny because our incidents provide such great video tape.

That's all I am saying.

posted by Jim VAT @ 8:02 PM