TEXAS CITY — Two days after confirming that it would take advantage of a total refinery shutdown to overhaul its Texas City refinery, BP is telling all of its employees to get back to work.
The city’s largest employer said it expects its work force to be back on the job for regular shifts starting at 6 a.m. today.
“Everyone is due back at work at the next regularly scheduled shift,” said BP’s Human Resource Manager Paula Sharp. “We need everyone to report to work to continue our facility recovery on the way to restarting operations.”
Officials with BP said Tuesday that the refinery would take advantage of a total refinery shutdown prompted by the Hurricane Rita evacuation to make some needed repairs and retooling of units within the facility. In all, BP’s Texas City refinery has 29 units, five of which were already down following a series of incidents including the March 23 blasts that killed 15 people and injured more than 170.
Last week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited BP for several willful violations and fined the company $21 million — the largest ever fine issued — for that fatal incident. The federal agency also gave BP an ultimatum to improve its process safety management culture.
The return to work call and the announcement that the refinery was about to undergo the overhaul was welcome news for union leaders. In the wake of the March 23 blasts, the United Steelworkers union has been critical of BP’s lack of previous commitment to make safety improvements within the refinery.
“I am not going to cast stones about a good deed whatever the reason they are doing it,” said Sonny Sanders, an international representative for the USW. “For whatever reason, it’s a good move on the company’s part.
“It’s probably the best time anyway given the shutdown. I think it was a good move and a good time to get things done.”
Still, the company could have done a better job of communicating its plans with its work force, said Sanders.
“There really wasn’t much in the way of explaining to workers what the heck was going to go on,” he said. “Today was the first day really we started hearing about the plans.”
Sanders noted that for several days word of the BP plan to concentrate on a retooling of the refinery was making the rounds, but little of what was being said included information to employees about their futures.
“We had guys wondering if they needed to dust their résumés off or not,” he said. “The lack of communication was somewhat lacking.
“But maybe the evacuation had something to do with that.”
BP’s call to employees to return to work went out Wednesday afternoon. The company also set up a phone number for those who because of hurricane damage to property or other needs due to the evacuation to call for assistance.
A further inspection of the refinery also found that damage to the sprawling complex was a bit more extensive. While not severe, company inspection teams found several places where the storm caused damage to insulation on units and pipes, said company spokesman Neil Geary.
One storage tank, which was emptied prior to the storm, also sustained damage, said Geary.
The priorities now, said Geary, were to fix the problems found after the storm and then begin work on the initial units that will be needed to produce gasoline.
The refinery plans to first bring up enough units to meet the market demand for gasoline. The remaining units will remain shut down until the overhaul of the refinery is complete.
The first phase of that overhaul will start with the steam lines within the refinery, said Sanders. Members of his union’s safety team met with refinery officials Wednesday.
The steam line work will include replacing a bulk of the lines within the refinery, he said.
Geary said he was unable to provide a timeline as to how long the work will take. He did say that comments made to The Daily News that the work would take four months to a year were “significantly more time than it will take to complete the work.”
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BP Texas City Refinery
Employees: 1,800.
Production: 460,000 barrels of oil each day, which is 3 percent of the nation’s crude oil supply.
Size: 1,200 acres.
Extra info: BP Texas City is the third largest refinery in the nation.
Employee hotline: For employees needing assistance, call (800) 982-6913.
