PHILLIPS DISASTER OF 1989
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PhillipsPhillips may refer to:
Phillips Petroleum CompanyPhillips Petroleum Company was an American oil company incorporated in 1917 that expanded into petroleum refining, marketing and transportation, natural gas gathering and the chemicals sectors. It was Phillips Petroleum that first found oil in the North Sea on December 23, 1969, at a position that was later named Ekofisk. On August 30, 2002, Conoco Inc. merged with Phillips Petroleum to form ConocoPhillips, becoming the third largest integrated energy company and second-largest refining company in the United States. The company moved its headquarters to Houston. In 2012, ConocoPhillips split into two separate companies. The legacy company kept its name, and spun off the midstream and downstream portions of its business. The new company, which owns the refinery, chemical and pipeline assets formerly held in ConocoPhillips, is named Phillips 66, the brand name and trademark used by the original Phillips Petroleum from 1930 until the 2002 ConocoPhillips merger.
Phillips disaster of 1989On 23 October 1989 at approximately 1:05 PM Central Daylight Time, a series of explosions occurred at Phillips Petroleum Company's Houston Chemical Complex (HCC) in Pasadena, Texas, near the Houston Ship Channel. The initial blast registered 3.5 on the Richter scale, and the resulting fires took 10 hours to bring under control, as efforts to battle the fire were hindered due to damaged water pipes for the fire hydrants from the blast. The initial explosion was found to have resulted from a release of extremely flammable process gasses used to produce high-density polyethylene, a plastic used for various consumer food container products. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Phillips Petroleum Company $5,666,200 and fined Fish Engineering and Construction, Inc., the maintenance contractor, $729,600. The event killed 23 employees and injured 314.
2000 Phillips explosionAt approximately 1:22 p.m. CT on March 27, 2000, an explosion and fire responsible for one death and 71 injuries occurred at Phillips Petroleum's Houston Chemical Complex at 1400 Jefferson Road in Pasadena, Texas. The fire produced huge plumes of black smoke that spread over the heavily industrialized Houston Ship Channel and neighboring residential areas. The explosion occurred at the K-Resin facility, which made styrene-butadiene, a type of synthetic rubber. At the time of the explosion, the tank was out of service for cleaning and had no pressure or temperature gauges that would have provided the workers with an alert to the approaching crisis. Ultimately, this explosion resulted in one fatality, while 32 Phillips Petroleum employees and 39 subcontractors were taken to local hospitals for sustaining burns, smoke inhalation, and cuts from debris. It took search crews five hours to locate the body of a missing employee in the rubble. The dead man was Rodney Gott, a 45-year-old supervisor, who barely survived the Phillips Disaster of 1989. During that incident, Gott was in a building when its roof collapsed, but he remained in the blazing plant to save a woman and attend to the injured." The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's six-month investigation concluded that failure to train workers properly was a key factor in the explosion and fire, and it proposed that Phillips Petroleum be fined $2.5 million in penalties for 50 alleged violations of safety standards at the facility.
Phillips disastersPhillips disasters may refer to: 1989 Phillips disaster, a series of explosions and fire on October 23, 1989, in Pasadena, Texas 1999 Phillips disaster, an explosion and fire on June 23, 1999, in Pasadena, Texas 2000 Phillips disaster, an explosion and fire on March 27, 2000, in Pasadena, Texas
Deflagration to detonation transitionDeflagration to detonation transition (DDT) refers to a phenomenon in ignitable mixtures of a flammable gas and air (or oxygen) when a sudden transition takes place from a deflagration type of combustion to a detonation type of explosion.
1990 ARCO explosionAn explosion at the ARCO Chemical (ACC) Channelview, Texas petrochemical plant killed 17 people and injured five others on July 5, 1990. It was one of the deadliest industrial disasters in the history of the Greater Houston area. The land along the Houston Ship Channel is a heavily industrialized area, with numerous oil refineries. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, several large industrial disasters occurred in the area, with the largest being the Phillips disaster of 1989, a refinery explosion that resulted in 23 deaths and over 100 injuries. In the community of Channelview, ACC operated a petrochemical plant that was the world's largest producer of the fuel additive methyl tert-butyl ether. On July 5, 1990, employees at the plant were working on restarting a compressor for a 900,000 US gal (3.4-million L) wastewater storage tank at the facility. The tank held wastewater that contained hydrocarbons until it could be deposited in a disposal well. Because the hydrocarbons in the tank could vaporize, the tank had an oxygen analyzer that kept track of the oxygen concentration in the tank and had a nitrogen sweep system to keep the gas inert. However, unbeknownst to the employees, the oxygen analyzer had malfunctioned and as a result, the oxygen level in the tank was at a dangerous level. While restarting the compressor, the gas ignited and caused a large explosion. The explosion completely destroyed the tank and some of the surrounding facility infrastructure, affecting an area the size of a city block. Following the accident, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined ACC about $3.48 million for over 300 violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the largest OSHA fine at the time. Additionally, the company agreed to safety changes at its other three plants in the United States. Damages were estimated to total $100 million; however, ACC spent only $36 million in repairs and upgrades at the Channelview plant including $20 million on safety redundancies.
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