US Unions briefing on Process Safety

The USW union of the US has briefed the US Congress about health and safety problems in the oil industry. As per a news article,"USW Health and Safety Specialist Kim Nibarger outlined five fatal flaws at the briefing on where the oil industry needs to improve its health and safety record: process safety, mechanical integrity, management of change, incident investigation and control room alarms and instrumentation. “When things go bad in a refinery, they go really bad and people die,” he told the briefing. “Focusing on personal safety—the wearing of hard hats and safety glasses, slips, trips and falls—says nothing about how safe a refinery is for workers and the surrounding community. BP had a low personal injury rate at its refineries, but the 2005 explosion and fire at its Texas City plant showed it failed miserably in terms of process safety. Fifteen people were killed and 170 were injured in the 2005 accident as a result of this failure. “The oil companies are playing Russian roulette with their equipment,” Nibarger said. “They are doing quick, stopgap fixes, like placing clamps on pipes instead of replacing the pipe. They’re extending the time between unit shutdowns when all the equipment is checked. When there is a shutdown they’re not always repairing or replacing critical equipment. When they do repair equipment they’re not bringing it up to current RAGAGEP (Recognized and Generally Accepted Good Engineering Practices) standards.”
If the above sound familiar to you, take a hard look at your PSM program!
Read the full article in this link.