HOUSTON (Reuters) – A deadly Friday fire at Tesoro Corp's Anacortes, Washington, refinery was due to a catastrophic failure of a heat exchanger, sources familiar with the investigation said on Monday.
The heat exchanger that failed was in operation and was not the exchanger seven workers were working on when they were caught in the near instantaneous eruption of the blaze, the sources said.
A Tesoro spokesman said it was too early to determine causes of the fire.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100405/us_nm/us_refinery_fire_tesoro_anacortes_1
For those who have never been around them, these refineries are controlled explosions anyway. They need to be shut down periodically and rebuilt to keep them from blowing up.
The current depression conditions in the refining industry, driven by low margins and the collapse of the jet fuel and diesel markets are forcing some of these companies to defer this stuff up until the absolute last minute. I do not happen to believe that these people would deliberately endanger the lives of themselves and their employees, but if the survival of the company is at stake, which in the case of Valero and Tesoro might be true, there is a terrible decision to have to make. Is it immoral? Of course it is. It's taking a known risk that one of these explosions will happen. Is it done anyway? Of course it is.
If you do not want these situations to happen, then re-regulate this industry. Require the companies to adhere to maintenance standards, and enforce a fixed refining margin to assure them of a reasonable rate of return so there is a safe, stable refinery system with much reduced risk of failure and so that the nation has a secure energy supply. Yes, that means you will have to pay more for gasoline, and the government will be inspecting every nook and cranny of these places. Is that what you want? It's socialism, of course, and I am sure that 90% of the readers of this would have no stomach for it.
So the situation is going to continue
No comments:
Post a Comment