The Texas City injury lawyers at Denena & Points understand that 48,380 residents of La Marque and Texas City have slapped BP with a $500 billion lawsuit based on illnesses they claim they’ve contracted due to a long-term release of toxic pollutants from the oil company’s Texas City refinery. On April 6, 2010 a troublesome compressor broke down on BP’s ultracracker unit at the refinery.
While attempts to repair the compressor failed, decision makers at higher levels of BP reportedly ignored requests for money for repairs and improvements to the unit. Because of the broken down compressor, BP decided to vent gases like the carcinogen benzene mostly through a flare while it operated at a slightly lower capacity.
The 300-foot flare is designed to burn away toxins, but our Texas City injury lawyers realize that not every pollutant can be captured or burned off. The flaring of the gases officially lasted until May 16, 2010 though an email reporting that the compressor resumed operation on May 22, 2010 suggests that the massive toxin release may have continued until that date.
BP reports that at least 538,00 pounds of pollutants, including 17,371 pounds of toxic benzene, went through the flare during the period while the compressor was down. Most local residents remained unaware of any danger from the pollutants throughout the entire 1.5-month period.
At the time, the explosion of BP’s Deep Water Horizon rig out in the Gulf of Mexico vastly overshadowed the failure of a single compressor at the Texas City refinery. And BP, while required to notify Texas officials within 24 hours of the gas release, no requirement existed to notify the public at all. With its hands full with the Deep Water Horizon disaster, BP did not, in fact, notify the public while the gas release occurred.
Our Texas City injury lawyers emphasize that the amount of pollutants released and not consumed by the flare could have been significantly higher than the already alarming numbers reported by BP. Those numbers make the benzene release one of the 3 largest between 2009 and 2011. But the executive director of environmental group Air Alliance Houston mentioned that BP’s air quality monitors have repeatedly failed to register major gas releases from the plant.
And a fair amount of data indicated the ultracracker flare used to process the released gases while the compressor was down at the BP refinery might have operated at significantly less than the standard of 98% efficiency. BP emails from as far back as 2007 point to a far lesser efficiency in that flare. Our Texas City injury lawyers point out that this means that far more toxins might have been released into the surrounding environment than claimed by BP.
BP continues to maintain that the flare operated at 98% efficiency while in use. But tests of the flare by the U.S. EPA in 2007 showed that it only operated at 50% to 90% efficiency and emissions were 6 times greater than what BP was reporting. And tests by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality pointed to an efficiency of only 38% to 79%.
Our Texas City injury lawyers want you to understand that each 1% drop in efficiency could mean up to a 100% increase in chemicals released, according to the Environmental Integrity Project. So even at 90% efficiency rather than 98%, the flare might have spewed 400% to 800% more toxins into the local environment, leading to severe health consequences among susceptible individuals.
While BP emails indicate some concern about the flare within the company in 2009, no steps were actually taken to improve its efficiency between 2007 and April 2010. Requests for money to repair and improve it went repeatedly unfulfilled. And a BP environmental specialist had said that the flare tip’s old design contributed to its inefficiency.
BP’s decision to continue to operate the Texas City refinery ultracracker unit, though at a lower capacity, while the compressor was out reportedly generated between $6.7 and $13 million in revenue. Yet in December, BP settled a lawsuit in the amount of $50 million by the Texas Attorney General alleging that poor maintenance and operation led to the release of the toxic gases. And a lawsuit for $500 billion on behalf of victims affected by the gas release is pending. (Source: Harvey Rice, Houston Chronicle, 7/25/2012)
The decision making behind the directive to continue operations while the compressor was down was clearly flawed. You have to wonder what they were thinking. The settlement made with the Texas AG already dwarfs the revenue numbers resulting from that decision by a shocking margin. And our Texas City injury lawyers point out that the number tied to the pending lawsuit isn’t even on the same chart.
We all know that big companies tend not to factor your health consequences from their actions into their decision process any more than is strictly required by law (and often less). But one would think that their own self-interest would cause them to factor potential liability numbers into their profit calculations to avoid such grossly flawed decisions as this one by BP seems to represent. Hopefully you use more sense when calculating your own household or business budgets.
Our Texas City injury lawyers remain in awe of the magnitude of the missteps apparently made by BP following the failure of the compressor in the ultracracker unit at the Texas City refinery. We also remain somewhat worried about possible health effects on ourselves and our neighbors and relatives. The winds that blow over Texas City also blow in metro Houston. And the release of pollutants during the more than 40-day period in spring of 2010 seems massive by all accounts.
Our Texas City injury lawyers will be keeping an eye on the related lawsuit against BP as some indicator of the value of your health in relation to corporate profits and responsibilities. BP was already under fire for the toxins it brought to our waters through the Deep Water Horizon devastation. Now the company faces allegations relating to toxins it spewed into the air. Learn more about some of the toxins you face every day in your water in the article linked to this post.