On March 23, 2005, explosions and fire swept through the BP refinery in Texas City, Texas — the third-largest oil refinery in the United States. The blasts began at about 1:20 p.m., during the startup of the plant’s isomerization unit after a maintenance shutdown.
During the startup, the unit’s raffinate splitter tower was overfilled for hours without the operators realizing: the level gauge read incorrectly and independent high-level alarms failed to sound. Flammable liquid gushed from the top of an antiquated blowdown drum — a vent stack that discharged directly to the atmosphere — and formed a vapor cloud that spread over the plant and found an ignition source, most likely an idling vehicle nearby.
Fifteen workers were killed, all of them in or near temporary work trailers that had been sited close to the unit, and 180 people were injured. It was the worst American refinery accident in decades.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s investigation (report 2005-04-I-TX, March 2007) found organizational and safety deficiencies at every level of BP: cost-cutting and production pressure, a poor safety culture, fatigued and inadequately supervised operators, instrumentation known to be unreliable, and a trailer-siting practice that placed buildings full of people beside a hazardous process. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined BP $21.4 million, then the largest fine in its history, and BP later pleaded guilty to a federal environmental crime.
The accident drove industry-wide change: new guidance on where temporary buildings may be placed at refineries, wider replacement of atmospheric blowdown drums with closed flare systems, and an independent panel under former Secretary of State James Baker that reviewed BP’s safety culture across its American refineries.