New BP Safety Allegations Could See Loss of Oil Jobs or Lives
The US government organisation, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), has new fears over the risk of further accidents on the site of the oil giant BP's Texan refinery. The information has been leaked recently in a letter that could lead to the loss of oil jobs, stating that BP has failed to meet the requirements of the 2005 settlement agreement following the blast that killed 15 and injured hundreds more in 2005.
The letter between Mark Briggs, OSHA's director for the Houston South Area Office and Keith Casey, BP's business unit leader at the Texas refinery, voiced concerns the OSHA director had for the ongoing on-site safety of the refinery. In the letter leaked August 6, Mark Biggs wrote, "We believe that there are certain areas of concern and want to bring them to your attention," including, "...systemic deviations from industry standards." Such as, "...pressure loss on spring-loaded relief valves," and concerns regarding the "alarm functions."
"Based on the information that we have so far, it is our understanding that BP has identified a large number of uncontrolled or unmitigated hazards involving instrumentation that have resulted in substantial 'residual risk' in affected systems throughout the refinery." And, "...there still exist a large number of identified unmitigated risk scenarios".
OSHA's testing concluded that, "...for some identified hazards, BP has either not specified or allocated the specific layers of protection needed," or that, "...the specified instrument controls have not been installed or are not operational".
BP was warned that failure to rectify the issues would result in a failure to comply with the settlement terms agreed on in 2005.
A BP issued statement retaliated by saying, "BP Products has completed more than 550 OSHA citation abatement requirements and process safety-related recommendations and has significantly reduced hazards on-site and off-site. We believe we are in full compliance with our commitments. We continue to work with OSHA through the appropriate processes to resolve any expressed concerns," and had, "...made substantial investments at Texas in our people, our work processes, and in upgrading our facilities," since the 2005 agreement.