Sad news to hear about the fire and explosion at Baytown Refinery, especially close to holiday period.
Wish all the colleagues there well and speedy recovery. Sad to hear that such incident happened especially with our motto Nobody Get Hurt.
All the best to the Plant Manager to answer all the questions for the investigations.
32 replies (most recent on top)
@8vxl+1erunuVH Agreed of course. Management putting pressure to find time and cost savings resulting in lax enforcement of safety discipline? That’s a failure of management by my definition.
@8rql+1erunuVH I’ve seen many of those “stop” cards over my career, most are a joke and only written to fill the one a day quota.
Management is also very good at pseudo punishment for those individuals identifying issues that affect time and schedule.
@8teb+1erunuVH I’m the person you are responding to. Actually I do. I work upstream, in the field. This scenario appears to be exactly why we have safety (STOP) cards. It is everyone’s responsibility to keep each other in line and make sure tasks are being carried out safely. Everyone has the right and obligation to Stop The Job (STJ) and take a Time Out For Safety (TOFS). They may be known as other acronyms but on every rig where I’ve worked, EM rig management made it clear that all contractors are expected to participate in the safety program. One card per day.
It is absolutely a failure of management that these things were not done.
@1qsn+1erunuVH To even add something regarding anything in Beaumont for a Baytown incident if pure absurdity.... ignorance.
@1qsn+1erunuVH To even add something regarding anything in Beaumont for a Baytown incident if pure absurdity.... ignorance.
@5tpw+1erunuVH "Who's running this place" ? That question has to come from someone who has little to zero knowledge of being in an industrial facility. Any worker doing maintenance and repairs...much less (4) on the same effort, who does not know you do not use 'your wrench' as a hammer. Also, the person responsible for keeping the steam on the item says they were not doing their own job....
Nowadays and it has been for a while, everyone and I mean virtually everyone looks at Company management responsible for any incident and accident when the absolute majority of the time it is individual responsibility. Individuals not doing or refusing to do what they absolutely know how and what to do.... and not to do.
That is 40 + years in the industry and knowing first hand of worker practices. Fact of the matter is... pure fact.... there is no money to be had in 'individual responsibility'. It HAS to be someone's fault that has 'lots of money'.
LUCIO VASQUEZ | POSTED ONDECEMBER 27, 2021, 4:17 PM (LAST UPDATED: DECEMBER 27, 2021, 4:51 PM)
Houston Public Media, A Service of the University of Houston
2 injured workers file $10 million lawsuit against ExxonMobil after Baytown refinery explosion
Both men suffered head injuries, major orthopedic injury to their spines, and were burned all over their bodies, according to the lawsuit.
Two contract workers who were severely injured in an explosion at ExxonMobil’s Baytown refinery last week have filed a $10 million lawsuit against the oil and gas company.
According to the lawsuit, plaintiffs Dylan Purcell and Nicholas Moore were tasked with sealing a leaking pipe that contained Naphtha..... with two other individuals who worked for Team Industrial Services.
As the four contactors worked, a metal piece became stuck on a bolt, prompting one of the Team Industrial workers to using their wrench “as a hammer” to loosen the piece, the lawsuit read.
The other Team Industrial worker, who was tasked with ensuring that steam was sprayed on the area to prevent sparks, failed to do so, according to the lawsuit. The wrench created a spark, causing the flammable gas to ignite, which knocked all four workers down, and engulfed them in flames, according to court documents.
The lawsuit says Purcell and Moore were forced to jump down more than 20 feet to avoid further injury. Both men suffered head injuries, major orthopedic injury to their spines, and were burned all over their bodies, according to the lawsuit. Additionally, Moore suffered a broken leg due to the fall.
All four men were transported to the Texas Medical Center after the explosion. The resulting fire took emergency crews several hours to extinguish.
The Harris County Fire Marshall's office is currently investigating the incident.
The lawsuit names Team Industrial Services and Exxon Mobil as defendants, and alleges negligence and gross negligence. According to the lawsuit, the permit for the work had been issued by ExxonMobil without taking appropriate precautions while also failing to provide proper safety equipment.
Purcell and Moore are now being represented by Houston attorney Tony Buzbee, and are seeking $10 million in damages.
@5eby+1erunuVH Wow — if the claims in that suit are true, that’s totally fu----g amateur hour. Who’s running this place?
Exxon keeps Baytown refinery rates cut after last week's fire
Dec. 27, 2021 3:33 PM ET
Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM)
By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
Exxon Mobil (XOM +1.2%) says its Baytown refinery on the Houston Ship Channel continues to operate at reduced production rates following the December 23 fire at a reformer feed hydrotreater.
Exxon has not yet determined the cause of the fire but says the unit remains shut down so it can safely enter the facility and assess for any impacts on future production.
A filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said the fire occurred at Baytown's Hydro Desulfurization Unit 1.
Four workers were hospitalized due to the incident, and the company says two have been released.
And the lawsuit is in…
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-environment/2021/12/27/416341/2-injured-workers-file-10-million-lawsuit-against-exxonmobil-after-baytown-refinery-explosion/
Maybe they will promote another bonnin son, oh wait they already did, look at announcements. The old sls had no clue how to run a unit that he got PIP’d and sent to BMT to be with the tech manager. Wouldn’t be surprised if that id--t gets away with no accountability. It’s a shame the RLT turns a blind eye to this blatant nepotism. Happens in all deviaions more ovionos is Mech Div. Maybe they will promote another bonnin son, oh wait they already did, look at announcements. The old sls had no clue how to run a unit that he got PIP’d and sent to BMT to be with the tech manager. Wouldn’t be surprised if that id--t gets away with no accountability. It’s shameful RLT turns a blind eye to this nepotism. Yet again they make up roles like excellence advisors or keeping 2 sls in a similar role because one refuses to retire.
Anyone notice how something like 6 comments were deleted from this post?
It’s cause of the lockout and Exxon hire inexperienced contract operators with no nowlege or expertise. Get the qualified union operators back now
And management continues to brag on how “supervisors” are running Beaumont during the strike, this includes deferring maintenance of course.
@1psb+1erunuVH 100% right and those same SLS move through so quickly that none of them get held accountable for their decisions. People don’t seem to realize consequences may take years to show up and by then these HiPos are DHs somewhere else. That’s why all of these failures are in the end products of the company’s management and development systems.
Face it. LPS system is just what FLS use to please SLS to further progress their career while the we keep the real skeleton in the closet.
Courage of conviction is just something we say but never practiced.
@uat+1erunuVH because the intent of LPS has been lost in bureaucracy
Tragic, and a real consequence of the systemic failure of management at this company
Why didn’t LPS work here?
@mdb+1erunuVH Second incident? I didn’t hear about the first one, what happened?
The second big incident this week at Baytown. Way to go Exxon!
Unfortunately not surprised given the condition of the BTCX. We've just been lucky it hasn't been anything worse yet. Hopefully this will convince management to really look at this place and spend some money, but probably just result in an LPS bulletin and new procedures to try and limp this place along at the lowest cost possible.
I won't be suprised if more and more of these start happening. Skeleton crews at all operational levels in the company. Eventually, things will start slipping.
4 people in a process area at 1AM ... hmmm
#admin. ExxonMobil just raise the usual alarms and request to remove this post as usual but I don’t care, OK.
But admin, would you know this stuff fully? Just about two weeks, another incident was reported in the news, at a gas plant in the UK. But the company name they used for this is Esso which is indeed Exxon. Here you go, from the Health and Safety Executive -https://press.hse.gov.uk/2021/12/07/oil-company-fined-following-liquid-petroleum-gas-leak/
To all: this indicates a serious leadership problem in the company. Safety performance is also now terrible apart from the usual financial related ones such as the disastrous investments, burning cash, getting booted from the Dow Jones, historic back to back losses, the mass layoffs, etc. These safety incidents were no where near in prevalence as seen in the last few years under Dear Leader Darren. They say not to judge a book by the cover but when I really started seeing this guy more often, around the time he was being groomed to take over from Rex in late 2015, this guy does you the creeps. He was only about 50 years old at that time but looks wise he was the one that one may think is going to retire. Can he retire soon?
was it HU9 again lol??
@can+1erunuVH Good point about those horrible efforts, particularly maintenance transformation where that team is advocating for less maintenance, no schedules and operators performing maintenance rather than trained maintenance team members.
Prayers to all those injured…..
I’m in Upstream but I knew a few engineers in DS from when I hired on. They’re almost all gone now. Sad but predictable. I was pretty sure with all the offshoring and attrition it was a matter of time before this happened.
A major process safety incident in the Upstream might be around the corner too, given the staffing trends. Stay safe out there y’all in the field. I’ve got an exit and am getting out soon.
Wondering what the cause could be. Hope everyone is okay. It’s only a matter of time before the results of TMTS and other Main Transformation efforts lead to events thanks to deferred or removed maintenance on something. The training folks received downstream was always leaps and bounds above upstream....
Sad to see it happen, although not surprised.
LSR violations are through the roof (no experience to recognize they are breaking the rule and the potential consequences), OSHA recordables happening often as well everywhere, process incident was next on the list, anyone with experience would predict.
BUT XOM doesn’t value experience and I am sure upper mgmt will just come up with yet another process to place on top of every other broken process, instead of fixing the root cause. What a sad state of affairs.
My thoughts are with those who were injured. I hope for a speedy recovery.
What happens when you fire your engineers and the remainder quit on you?