BP Contests Record-Breaking OSHA Fine While Allowing 'Hundreds of Potential Hazards to Continue'

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Margaret Smith

It's shocking enough to hear that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a small subset of the U.S. Dept. of Labor, dropped a whooping $87.4 million fine on oil giant BP.

It comes as even more of a shock, though, when you find out that BP has challenged the fine, as well as the hundreds of cited health and safety violations that came along with it, as more and more of their employees are being injured due to safety accidents, some being fatal.

Yet that's what happened last Friday when BP formally contested the fines and citations imposed by the OSHA for what officials said was the company's failure to correct safety hazards identified after the 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers and injured 170 more at its Texas City refinery, the third largest refinery in the country.

The fine -- the largest ever in OSHA history -- comes after a six month investigation by the OSHA revealed 709 violations. The administration says that 270 of these were for a failure to comply with measures agreed upon by the settlement reached over the 2005 explosion, while the remaining 439 were for "new willful violations for failures to follow industry-accepted controls." The challenge will be heard by the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, an appeal panel independent of OSHA with the power to alter the fines.

The 2005 explosion occurred due to an equipment malfunction that resulted in the overflow of highly flammable liquid hydrocarbons that escaped into the air and were ignited by the backfire of a truck. Since then, the company has completed 550 corrective safety actions in relation to the settlement and spent more than $1 billion to modernize the refinery and upgrade its safety features. According to BP Texas City Refinery Manager Keith Casey, these have all been in what the company believes to be "full compliance with the settlement agreement."

"We believe our efforts at the Texas City refinery to improve process safety performance have been among the most strenuous and comprehensive that the refining industry has ever seen," Casey said in a statement. "We remain committed to further enhancing our safety and compliance systems and achieving our goal of becoming an industry leader in process safety."

BP also paid $21 million in fines to the OSHA in 2005, as well as $50 million in criminal fees to the government in 2007 for violating the Clean Air Act.

Officials at OSHA see it much differently, however, and say that the company has failed to complete a number of promised measures, such as a study of the pressure relief systems that caused the 2005 explosion, and industry standards, such as setting safety instrument systems to shut down hazardous systems automatically. In fact, BP has already seen three more accidents since 2005, one that resulted in a supervisor's death in January 2008 when the top of a large steel filter housing blew off.

"When BP signed the OSHA settlement from the March 2005 explosion, it agreed to take comprehensive action to protect employees. Instead of living up to that commitment, BP has allowed hundreds of potential hazards to continue unabated," Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis said in a statement. "Fifteen people lost their lives as a result of the 2005 tragedy, and 170 others were injured. An $87 million fine won't restore those lives, but we can't let this happen again."

At the core of the dispute is an issue over the settlement's timeline. According to OSHA, the settlement and all the corrections set by it needed to be completed by Sept. 23, 2009, a day after the settlement expired. Executives at BP say this is a change in direction from the original settlement, though, and that the company made it clear in the agreement that some corrections would take longer to finish than the Sept. 23 deadline.

In a 17-page letter sent to Houston Area OSHA Director Mark Briggs, a lawyer representing BP defended the company and said that it had "met its obligations as defined by the agreement."

OSHA officials still maintain that the Sept. 23 deadline had been in place all along, though, and that four years is long enough.

"BP was given four years to correct the safety issues... yet OSHA has found hundreds of violations of the agreement and hundreds of new violations," said acting Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA Jordan Borab. "BP still has a great deal of work to do to assure the safety and health of the employees who work at this refinery."

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

Image courtesy of OSHA.

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