State Impact Pennsylvania reported:
An outdated piece of pipe that had corroded so much its sides were the width of half a credit card led to the catastrophic explosion and fire at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in June, according to a new report out Wednesday by the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein spoke with Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastain, another Philadelphia area refinery owner, but the topic of explosions did not come up. Rubenstein interviewed Bastain a month before the CSB finding was released.
“The PES refinery is 150 years old,” she said. “The piping component that failed was installed in the 1970s, and although parts of the piping circuit had been inspected as recently as 2018, the specific component that failed has not been inspected for corrosion in the past 45 years.”
“The CSB continually points out that the most obvious causes of a major incident, such as a corroded pipe, are not what actually caused the incident,” Wilson said. “Major industrial failures like this are nearly always the consequence of management decision-making and the way safety is prioritized or not.”Mr. Rubenstein has not been deposed but former Carlyle joint venture executive, Lord John Browne was forced to give deposition in the Texas City refinery explosion that killed fifteen people and injured another 500.
After refusing to testify for almost 3 years, Lord John Browne, former CEO of British Petroleum at the time of the Texas City explosion, was recently forced to give a deposition to attorney Brent Coon of Brent Coon and Associates, by the Texas Supreme Court. Mr. Coon, who argued before the Supreme Court in October of 2007, was finally allowed to depose Browne for one hour on April 4th 2008. “He fought, wrangled and appealed the courts requests every step of the way,” said Mr. Coon. “We wondered what he was hiding…and now we know.”Carlyle hired Browne with full knowledge of safety lapses under his watch. Lord Browne's deposition was the opposite of the hand's on leader who challenged the Texas City refinery to cut maintenance 25%.
Insisting that he had only ever visited Texas City twice, Browne said it looked the same as any other refinery and that he did not perceive it to be dilapidated: "I didn't see that it was unusually - I didn't come away with an impression that is lasting with me that it was unusually different."Browne did acknowledge Carlyle being his sponsor in the deposition.
When asked about an internal document suggesting that he was personally monitoring accident statistics at Texas City because he knew of its poor safety performance, Browne gave a qualified denial: "Well, certainly to the best of my recollection, this is an inaccurate statement. I don't recall doing this."
Browne did, however, accept that a survey of employees' worries at the site was "disturbing" and he accepted responsibility for company-wide cutbacks which were blamed by certain victims for falling safety standards. "It was necessary to reduce costs to get [BP] competitive with others and to bring a degree of discipline into the management of the firm," he told Brent Coon, a lawyer for bereaved families and injured workers.
Browne said he had never read a report into the tragedy's causes by the Chemical Safety Board.We will see if history buff David Rubenstein's reads the CSB report on the PES refinery explosion. I expect it to be de-riveting.
Update 12-15-19: Philadelphia Inquirer reported bankrupt Philadelphia Energy Solutions is seeking a new round of bonuses that would pay seven top executives millions of dollars, depending upon the success of a plan to reorganize or sell the company. Board member Mark Cox could get millions, employees zip. This is on top of $4.5 million in retention bonuses paid two weeks after the massive explosion.
