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Smart Regulation — The Chemical Safety Board vs. OSHA
The Chemical Safety Board has just released a preliminary report on the Deepwater Horizon accident. The core finding was that the crew was too focused on reportable lost-time accidents and too unfocused on process safety. Of course, our president dispatched the attorney general to threaten criminal charges for violations of mindless regulations while his interior secretary promised to keep a “boot on the throat” of BP!
The full title on the report is “CSB Investigation: At the Time of 2010 Gulf Blowout, Transocean, BP, Industry Associations, and Government Offshore Regulators Had Not Effectively Learned Critical Lessons from 2005 BP Refinery Explosion in Implementing Safety Performance Indicators.” Here is a summary of the board’s findings:
Noting the lack of sustained focus on process safety, CSB Investigator Cheryl MacKenzie described an “eerie resemblance” (emphasis added) between the 2005 explosion at the BP Texas City refinery and the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon.
At the BP Texas City refinery on March 23, 2005, contract workers had just returned to temporary trailers at the plant after attending a celebratory lunch commending an excellent personal injury accident record. Shortly after lunch, an explosion occurred during process startup, killing 15 and injuring 180 others. At Macondo, BP and Transocean officials were in the process of lauding operators and workers for a low rate ofpersonal injuries on the very day of that tragedy. Company VIP’s had flown to the rig in part to commend the workforce for zero lost-time incidents.
Investigator MacKenzie said, “The emphasis on personal injury and lost work-time data obscures the bigger picture: that companies need to develop indicators that give them realistic information about their potential for catastrophic accidents. How safety is measured and managed is at the very core of accident prevention. If companies are not measuring safety performance effectively and using those data to continuously improve, they will likely be left in the dark about their safety risks.”Read
Beer Rifle
July 27th, 2012
Bureaucratic Bullshit could kill us all.
Boobie the Rocket Dog
July 27th, 2012
Cutting to the chase means reading the LAST LINE:
“Which do you believe will be more effective going forward, Mr. President — a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears recent Ivy League graduates hired by the chief regulator … or grown men and women ‘with machines?’”
Lowell
July 27th, 2012
I call BS on this. I work on interstate natural gas pipelines. In the field, outside, boots on the ground. Operations personnel are the ONLY ones who really understand the risks associated with what they are doing. We don’t want our friends dead. Surprisingly enough, we also don’t want the public killed. If you haven’t worked in this industry, with stored energy systems, your opinion means exactly dick to me.
Was there a failure? Absolutely. Was it because somebody violated policies and procedures? I HIGHLY doubt that. Everybody that works these jobs knows the risks. They cannot be eliminated but they can be managed. The vast majority of the time.
Do any of you know anyone who would kill them selves, and their friends, just to make management happy?
If you do, you live in a world far different than mine.