OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #221498405
BP PRODUCTS NORTH AMERICA, INC.
OREGON, OH—
Event description
Two employees are killed in explosion
Investigation abstract
At 6:45 p.m. on September 20, 2022, the south area units of the refinery were outside employee response to the high liquid level in the TIU fuel gas mix drum, naphtha was released into the atmosphere, forming a flammable vapor cloud at ground level and in the oily water sewer at the refinery. At approximately 6:47 pm, the vapor cloud ignited at/near the TIU fuel gas mix drum, possibly due to nearby fired heaters, in the crude unit. Both of the outside employees who responded to the high liquid levels were severely burned in the explosion. Both of the employees died due to their burn injuries in the early morning of September 21, 2022. experiencing process upset conditions, including lifting pressure safety valves and loss of pump arounds on the crude tower. Due to an incident earlier in the day, the NT/Sat gas unit and Coker gas plant were not in normal operating conditions. During work to troubleshoot and provide stability to the process units, the opening of a flow control valve to the absorber stripper tower in the Coker gas plant resulted in naphtha to flow downstream, eventually filling the TIU fuel gas mix drum with naphtha. This led to liquid in the refinery fuel gas system, which initiated the shutting down of some operating units. During
Victims (2)
-
#1 Fatality Age 34 M
- Event type
- 14
-
#2 Fatality Age 32 M
- Event type
- 14
Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.