Chapter 34 Safety or Damage Control?

I have to preface this by saying that everything I wrote when I wrote this was true to my knowledge.  I have not been affiliated with PPCO since before they merged with Conoco.  I have worked for Conoco on the Environmental side working on property they acquired in Charleston. S.C. with attorneys at their offices in Houston.  But I have no knowledge of their business practices since the 1990's. 

It's a roman candle, no it's a bomb, no it's an exploding polyethylene plant!

I had left Phillips about the time the Plant in Pasadena, Texas exploded killing umteen people including the female engineer who had reported the unsafe practices to the company.  But I get ahead of myself.

 I saw a letter to the editor in the Tulsa World that got me a bit riled.  It was probably a PPCo retiree who was defending his former employer company.   He said something to the affect of "Why are you and the OSHA picking on Phillips, if anyone knows how to operate a plant safely it should be Phillips.  Apparently OSHA and the courts thought differently.

 

 I wrote back to the Tulsa World that PPCo's practices at the time were all damage control.  They scrambled like hell after the fact.  As an Associate Geologist, I also acted as the Geology Branch safety officer for a year.  It was a revolving position that meant you hosted the monthly safety meeting in the Research Forum, which also doubled as nap time for most of the older guys who knew everything already.

I was trained as a DuPont Safety Auditor and ran audits in the Production and Chemical branches.  It amazed me to see what people did after being told not to do it.  Like balancing gas cylinders in swivel chairs etc.  My point is the middle line managers did not take things seriously, so it had a trickle down effect. The word seemed to be "do what you have to do to get the job done but don't get caught."

 

You could tell that no body cared about safety, because the company could not be bothered to hire someone full time to act as a safety officer, or give them sufficient authority to enforce the rules.  Instead, they made kids like me one year out of school safety officers.

 Well I said all this in the letter rebutting the other letter.  I also said that it was interesting that Health and Safety was NOT represented at the corporate level by a VP or anyone else until AFTER the Pasadena disaster.  Then all of a sudden it rated a VP and a female one at that. 

 

Not bashing females...I love females, but Oil Companies didn't seem too.  If you recall, if a company wanted to look good they found somewhere to hire women and put them.  Usually it was in the useless HR department.  They would put a male VP over them just to make sure things didn't get too out of hand.  I took HR classes at and OSU campus in Tulsa and it was a joke.  My point being what better way to make a good impression than by opening up a Health and Safety Department and then put a woman in charge of it to make people feel like you really meant business.

 

They quickly staffed the new organization with whatever engineers were available.  It didn't matter if they had ever had a course in industrial hygiene, environmental anything, or industrial safety.  Just being an engineer was enough.  They do oversight anyway, and let the consultants do the work.  My "junkless" friend ended up in that new organization overseeing pipeline safety.  (His little story will come next).

Now I also mentioned a few things in passing in the letter that surprised a few people.  My letter made it up all the way to the CEO I am told.  I mentioned a little known event involving the loss of a whole tank of Benzene at the refinery in Borger.

Benzene you see is a carcinogen and one of the four primary constituents tested for when dealing with gasoline spills.  It is an additive along with Toluene, Ethylene and Xylene.  They collectively form the acronym BTEX.  Well someone screwed up at Borger and left a tap open and a whole tank drained on the ground.  I knew someone involved in the sampling of the site.  Not wanting to draw attention and win the wrath of the then Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission.  PPCo kept mum and sampled it themselves sending some of my former workmates out to do the job.  Turns out they contaminated the watershed of an adjacent ranch.  So their solution was to buy the ranch.  This served to do what they wanted.  In Texas a problem does not exist unless it is reported and comes to the attention of the State Regulators.

Phillips now owned the contaminated property so they were not going to report themselves.  So nothing ever happened.

 

In fairness, the stuff probably evaporated and went to that big "landfill in the sky" as we used to say in the environmental industry.  The hot Texas summers would have baked he ground and wicked it up and into the atmosphere.  Hopefully this happened before it got down to any shallow aquifers, but likely any shallow water would have been alkalai and not fit for consumption by man or beast.  But then there is the possibility that it went into the aquifer or creek and into the nice big recreational lake there around Borger.  I have no knowledge of the gradient out there or where the spill occurred so I am just speculating.  Since this happened in the late 1980's unless there are a lot of people with three heads walking round, I doubt it hurt anyone in the long run.

 

It was to demonstrate the mindset of the company.  Anyhow...

I didn't go into any details in the letter I just mentioned it as an example of how PPCo put a band aid on things after the fact.

My Ex #3 owned a pub in Katy which is near the site of the Great Southwest Equestrian Center.  That is a horse arena to most people.  I got to know the owner and did catering for him on weekends through the pub.  Yes, I can cook.  I did one event for 1200, German food for an Oktoberfest.

Anyway, turns out he was an engineer too.  He had been married to the engineer who reported the dangerous conditions at the Pasadena plant prior to the explosion.  Well, who should PPCo try to pin the blame on?  Yep.  The poor dead female engineer.  Seems she was smart and had copies of all the safety reports to her bosses at home.  So it was easy for her husband's attorney to prove they were lying through their teeth.  Not surprising really. 

 

Well, my new friend and owner fought back and won a defamation and wrongful death suit and a boat load of money.  Seems he got about $12 million.  More than enough to buy the Equestrian Center and all its property while it was in bankruptcy.  He probably paid $50 of the dollar or less for the very large property directly in the path of the western expansion of suburban west Houston.

He has gone on to keep the center in operation while selling off surrounding property.  At last look there were at least 2 apartment complexes, a super church, condos and commercial property all in the front 1/4 mile of the property along Mason Road.

Seems he turned those $12 million dollars that PPCo stock holders generously gave him into a tidy profit.