CSB Issues 20th Anniversary Report on BP Texas City Refinery Disaster

Yesterday the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) announced the publication of an ‘investigation digest’ for the 20^th anniversary of the explosions and fires at the BP Texas City Refinery on March 23^rd, 2005. The incident resulted in 15 deaths and 180 personnel injured. The new document (and CSB has listed extensive documentation on it’s website for this incident) summarizes the recommendations made by the CSB as a result of its investigation of the BP Texas City disaster and discusses some of the steps that have been taken by BP and the industry. It specifically takes OSHA to task for its failure to adequately respond to the one remaining open recommendation (of 26 recommendations issued) on revising its Process Safety Management (PSM) regulation to require that a management of change (MOC) review be conducted for organizational changes that may impact process safety.

This report would have been more effective, and certainly more complete, if it had included a response from OSHA on why that agency has not adequately addressed the issues listed in 2005-04-I-TX-R9. In the July 25^th, 2013 (latest) status update for that recommendation, the Board reported that:

“OSHA stated that the PSM standard already requires employers to develop and implement MOC reviews to determine the adequacy of all contemplated changes with respect to their safety and health impacts as they relate to process chemicals, technology, equipment, procedures, and facilities, including the types of changes described in the CSB recommendation. OSHA committed to providing compliance officers with guidance on the application of 29 CFR 1910.119 (I) to organizational changes in the form of a memorandum to Regional Administrators.”

Perhaps it is time that the CSB acknowledged that it and OSHA have two different outlooks on this issue and change the status of this recommendation to “Closed – Unacceptable action”.