The Baker Panel Report - ABSA

Similarly, although mixed responses were given to the process safety culture survey, more than 20 percent of several groups of workers at BP’sU.S. refineries expressed a lack of confidence that process safety issues were investigated thoroughly. Table 61 shows that of the identifiedgroups, a lack of confidence was primarily evident in negative responses from Texas City operators (27 percent), maintenance craft technicians(26 percent), HSSE employees (26 percent), and engineering professionals (22 percent); Toledo operators (36 percent), contractors (33 percent),and HSSE employees (21 percent); and Whiting contractors (25 percent). Other groups at Texas City, Toledo, and Whiting responded morepositively but, as shown below, in certain instances they still conveyed somewhat heightened levels of doubt regarding the thoroughness ofinvestigations. Respondents at Carson and Cherry Point, however, provided generally positive responses, as reflected by the fact that all sixemployee groups shown in the table below had negative response rates of less than 20 percent. Responses from operations management wereparticularly positive. In that regard, their negative response rates ranged from only two percent at Carson to 11 percent at Texas City.Table 61Percentage of Disagree/Tend to Disagree Responses to Survey Item:“I am confident that process safety issues are: [t]horoughly investigated.”Category Carson Cherry Point Texas City Toledo WhitingOperators 12 3 27 36 13Maintenance/Craft Technicians 19 11 26 19 ‡ 18Full-Time HSSE Employees 8 12 26 21 ‡ 10Engineering Professionals 8 4 22 11 8Operations Management 2 2 11 5 7Maintenance Management 9 ‡ 13 ‡ 16 * 0Contractors 11 20 18 33 25* Survey data are not available because of the small number (fewer than 15) of potential respondents.‡ Fewer than 25 respondents were in this group.Please read Section I for a discussion of considerations and limitations relating to survey data and the Panel’s method of analyzing that data.The analysis of survey data contained in this section is qualified by, and should be read in conjunction with, the discussion of thoseconsiderations and limitations in Section I. Some of the survey data provided in Table 61 correlate with views expressed during the hourlyinterviews. A number of hourly employees at Texas City and Toledo, for example, expressed the belief that management is more interested inassigning blame than identifying the root cause of an incident. In contrast to the generally positive survey results for Carson, however, somehourly Carson employees expressed concern that incident investigations do not dig deep enough and are primarily blame assessments.> Whiting rupture diskAs described more fully in Appendix D, during the Panel’s process safety technical review at the Whiting refinery in March 2006, the Panel’sconsultants discovered pressure between several rupture disks and pressure relief valves on a fractionator tower. Quarterly operator logs for theprevious two years indicated seven out of eight rupture disk/relief valves reported higher than intended pressure. This condition had thepotential to make the pressure relief system for the unit ineffective.The Panel’s consultants immediately alerted BP to the rupture disk situation, and BP promptly took corrective measures. In addition, BPcategorized the event as a HiPo, or high-potential-for-harm incident, and started a root cause investigation. BP then provided the Panel with areport summarizing BP’s internal investigation.Performance Evaluation, Corrective Action, and Corporate Oversight C 201