The Galveston County Daily News

TEXAS CITY — Victims of BP PLC’s deadly 2005 plant explosions will be allowed to challenge a plea deal that was criticized as being too lenient in the federal criminal case against the company.

Attorneys for the victims have argued that a $50 million fine brokered between the London-based company and the justice department is insufficient. They want to reject the plea deal that came out of a federal probe of the explosion that killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 others.

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal said Wednesday she was going to allow victims’ attorneys to submit additional information about the history of fines, whether BP is being granted some form of immunity and whether the fine should be increased.

One of the victims’ attorneys, David Perry, has argued that the fine should be $1 billion, because the company made that much in profit while it operated under unsafe conditions that violated the Clean Air Act.

Perry has also said the plea deal grants BP a broad immunity from other potential criminal charges unrelated to the Texas City refinery explosions.

Rosenthal said she would use the additional information from the victims to decide whether to order a presentence report, which would offer more details about the blasts and their causes. Such reports are standard in criminal cases.

If she orders the report, Rosenthal would use it when deciding whether to accept or reject the plea agreement.

BP and federal prosecutors have said a presentence report is not needed because Rosenthal has various investigative reports on the accident that will give her enough information to make a decision.

But victims’ attorneys said the investigative reports do not include such relevant information as details about BP’s recent history of fines and whether BP is being granted some form of immunity because a subsidiary is named as the only defendant in the plea agreement.

BP was scheduled to formally enter a guilty plea earlier this week. But the recusal of two judges and the objections to the plea agreement led to a delay.

The fine and plea were part of an agreement by BP to pay $373 million to settle various criminal and civil charges.

The explosions at the plant, about 40 miles southeast of Houston, occurred after a piece of equipment called a blowdown drum overfilled with highly flammable liquid hydrocarbons.

The excess liquid and vapor hydrocarbons then were vented from the drum and ignited as the isomerization unit — a device that boosts the octane in gasoline — started up. Alarms and gauges that were supposed to warn of the overfilled equipment didn’t work properly.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, one of several agencies that probed the accident, found BP fostered bad management at the plant and that cost-cutting moves by BP were factors in the explosion.