A deficient safety culture and inadequate industry heat exchanger standards led to the fatal explosion at Tesoro’s Anacortes, Wash., refinery in 2010, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) said Wednesday. In its findings, the CSB said the American Petroleum Institute’s method for predicting the occurrence of high-temperature hydrogen attack (HTHA) within heat exchangers is based on ill-defined and inconsistent reported process conditions. The CSB found HTHA severely weakened the heat exchanger that ruptured, causing the blast.
The CSB also faulted Tesoro’s safety culture, reporting that management did not adequately address heat exchanger design issues or require sufficient data reporting of operating conditions.
In a statement on its findings, the CSB called for a widespread overhaul of refinery safety at both the federal and state levels. The board made similar overtures after its audit of the 2012 process unit fire at Chevron’s Richmond, Calif., facility. The CSB’s three members, however, failed to come to a unanimous vote on statewide implementation of the “safety case regime,” a model for refinery safety that requires continuous reporting of risk reduction to regulators.
Photo: Walter Siegmund
