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Explosion/fire at Shell plant in Deer Park

bernorange

By bernorange
in Daily Texan

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Patricio Swayze

Patricio Swayze 17058

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Seeing things like this is why I am so glad I got out of oil and gas.  These companies preach safety but profit is the driver.  You get a phone call from the business unit downtown and all of a sudden people are doing some weird ass things.

I have worked in O&G for over 15 years (second career). And you are right, they preach safety. Most companies also claim that anyone has a right to stop operations because of a safety violation. I am willing to bet a lot of money that most people who do that will lose their job if they do that.

I’m glad I work in the office, but fear for my colleagues in the field.
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Schulz2.0

Schulz2.0 29011

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43 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

I am willing to bet a lot of money that most people who do that will lose their job if they do that.

Not at the place I'm at, but it's union and you better have a good reason to stop work.

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NotActuallyALonghorn

NotActuallyALonghorn 4977

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We aren't union, and there won't be any real repercussions other than engineers and managers complaining about having to do extra work and the extra down time because of it. That in and of itself is enough of a deterrent for a lot of folks to let small things slide. But as they say, if the holes in the Swiss cheese all happen to align, then even a small thing could be what allows or prevents a big incident. That said, we get a lot of safety protocols to follow that were clearly thought up by someone just trying to look like they are doing something, and many of them actually make things less safe when you think them fully through.

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Patricio Swayze

Patricio Swayze 17058

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Nice to hear opinions from actual boots on the ground type folks vs the oil baron making money off y’all’s back type shit. I take this shit serious because I work heavily with operations now and one of my dearest friends in this industry is a turn around supervisor.

I just feel like a lot of the safety shit that is expressed in the office isn’t reality in the field, because of bottom lines.

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Captainant

Captainant 27770

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4 hours ago, YChang said:

Hard to imagine it’s not the usual suspect… toothless regulations from TCEQ and lax safety protocols from the company.

Must not have enough budget for safety what with the record profits this quarter and all that

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NotActuallyALonghorn

NotActuallyALonghorn 4977

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51 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Nice to hear opinions from actual boots on the ground type folks vs the oil baron making money off y’all’s back type shit. I take this shit serious because I work heavily with operations now and one of my dearest friends in this industry is a turn around supervisor.

I just feel like a lot of the safety shit that is expressed in the office isn’t reality in the field, because of bottom lines.

Here's an example of something I consider misguided. There was an incident several years ago where a loader stepped off one of the platforms to access the top of a railcar while doing something else and fell between two cars that another person happened to be moving down at the time. He luckily rolled out of the way of the moving rail cars in time to avoid becoming an amputee or worse. One of the solutions that management thought up was to disallow stepping between two railcars while on top of them, despite the fact that there is a special platform made for that very thing and the incident in question had nothing to do with that. So now loaders have to instead go down a set of stairs to the base of the rail car they were on and then up another set of stairs to the one right next to it instead of simply stepping across the platforms made for that very thing.

On the surface, this seems like a reasonable regulation, but consider that slips, trips, and falls are usually one of the top causes of industrial accidents. There has never been an incident of someone missing that step between cars, yet every year there are incidents involving someone having a slip trip or fall while traversing elevation changes, often involving stairs. And a fall down a catwalk stair is not going to be a pretty one.

Then you add to the fact that there are often times when everything is happening at once just due to the chance of when cars fill up, etc. and the loader is scrambling and basically having to run up and down these stairs to avoid a loss of primary containment and you really amplify the chance of an incident.

Is stepping across the platform on top of two rail cars risk free? Of course not. But is causing the loader to have to run up and down a bunch of stairs to avoid casually stepping across two cars safer? Probably not.

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Captainant

Captainant 27770

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3 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Is stepping across the platform on top of two rail cars risk free? Of course not. But is causing the loader to have to run up and down a bunch of stairs to avoid casually stepping across two cars safer? Probably not.

I betcha what drove it was that the insurance provider said they needed to change policies to protect against it, otherwise their premiums will go up. Management doesn't give a single fuck about safety or worker happiness or workplace usability - they just want the line to go up. So as long as targets can be met, they don't care that it's a worse solution that makes the job harder, because they kept the line going up 

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Patricio Swayze

Patricio Swayze 17058

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Here's an example of something I consider misguided. There was an incident several years ago where a loader stepped off one of the platforms to access the top of a railcar while doing something else and fell between two cars that another person happened to be moving down at the time. He luckily rolled out of the way of the moving rail cars in time to avoid becoming an amputee or worse. One of the solutions that management thought up was to disallow stepping between two railcars while on top of them, despite the fact that there is a special platform made for that very thing and the incident in question had nothing to do with that. So now loaders have to instead go down a set of stairs to the base of the rail car they were on and then up another set of stairs to the one right next to it instead of simply stepping across the platforms made for that very thing.
On the surface, this seems like a reasonable regulation, but consider that slips, trips, and falls are usually one of the top causes of industrial accidents. There has never been an incident of someone missing that step between cars, yet every year there are incidents involving someone having a slip trip or fall while traversing elevation changes, often involving stairs. And a fall down a catwalk stair is not going to be a pretty one.
Then you add to the fact that there are often times when everything is happening at once just due to the chance of when cars fill up, etc. and the loader is scrambling and basically having to run up and down these stairs to avoid a loss of primary containment and you really amplify the chance of an incident.
Is stepping across the platform on top of two rail cars risk free? Of course not. But is causing the loader to have to run up and down a bunch of stairs to avoid casually stepping across two cars safer? Probably not.

Bureaucracy run amuck. I assume insurance and liability plays a big role.
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FartingMonk

FartingMonk 3608

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I was an inspector (smart pigging) then I became a operator.  Some of the heavy hitters like Exxon and Chevron would rather eat a 10 day shut down than end up on the national news.  Others love to roll the dice.  But I think the entire industry has fallen in love with opportunity crude and getting caught with punting turnarounds.  Oil is expensive let's defer so we can maximize profit.  Oh shit gas is too cheap.  We don't have it in our budget.  Stuff breaks.  The scary parts these days are going to be vessel ruptures.  Most of the giant tanks and vessels are 50-60 years old.  You can say you inspected it but you can't really inspect all of it.  It takes that little flaw to cause a big hole.

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freyguy

freyguy 4289

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our Plant design prof hammered into us the importance of safety.  I think it was that Philips blast from 89.  Was that the lockout tagout fuck up?  Told a story of a young engineer he knew that went running toward the problem when everyone else was running away.  They had to identify her with dental records.

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FartingMonk

FartingMonk 3608

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The inspection side makes you worry.  Plant managers and turn around managers hate you.  They are already behind. Because all turnarounds run behind.  We showed up to a place in Corpus one year.  We smart pigged their pipes and oh boy.  They should have been retired years ago.  We did the heads up call to the plant contact and he was like no fucking way   That next morning we were about to do our close out meeting and the Director said hey fuck this.  I'm so goddamn mad right now.  Why won't any one of you tell me why we could have died.

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FartingMonk

FartingMonk 3608

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Then you go into another place and you say yo bro.  Here's our findings they say oh so we still have .001 until we meet requirements.  I as the project manager always say.  We are not here to say what you should do or what you can do but can you wait 5 hours until my team gets on an airplane 

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FartingMonk

FartingMonk 3608

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7 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

Fire reignited 

they have serious serious out there 

The problem is they make us plant fire fighters.  They send these dudes to TEEKs for a week and they come back thinking they know how to fight a real fire.  

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castolon

castolon 193

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The problem is they make us plant fire fighters.  They send these dudes to TEEKs for a week and they come back thinking they know how to fight a real fire.  

You mean you don’t feel qualified to fight a refinery fire after doing 45 minute drills on props in college station where half the guys you work with get shit faced every night?

Yeah, me neither.

And if you think the big boys are bad, which many are, let me tell you about farmers that decided they wanted to run ethanol plants.
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Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock 7376

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The problem is they make us plant fire fighters.  They send these dudes to TEEKs for a week and they come back thinking they know how to fight a real fire.  

*TEEX

And to your point, unless you train consistently for this kind of fire, and also have the understanding of why it is burning it's gonna be a long day. I can teach a nutless monkey how to put out a house fire; that's easy shit. Teaching someone the how, why, and when to properly applying the correct amount of foam is not as simple task of a task as it sounds.
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UT_OB1

UT_OB1 2225

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1 hour ago, FartingMonk said:

Shut off the gas valve right.  Show me a gas valve in any plant that it won't take you 10 minutes to shut.  Now show me the same one that is on fire

10 minutes?  How big is your cheater pipe?

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Captainant

Captainant 27770

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5 hours ago, FartingMonk said:

The inspection side makes you worry.  Plant managers and turn around managers hate you.  They are already behind. Because all turnarounds run behind.  We showed up to a place in Corpus one year.  We smart pigged their pipes and oh boy.  They should have been retired years ago.  We did the heads up call to the plant contact and he was like no fucking way   That next morning we were about to do our close out meeting and the Director said hey fuck this.  I'm so goddamn mad right now.  Why won't any one of you tell me why we could have died.

Because it's their job to make sure that shareholders see a steady quarterly growth. Without fail. Always. You are replaceable as a laborer. A lost quarter of profits is lost forever. That's just capitalism, baby!

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