Texas City BP explosion attorney hasn’t seen “any change” in industry regulation

Beaumont Attorney Brent Coon represented many of those injured in the 2005 blasts, including Eva Rowe, whose mother and father James and Linda Rowe were killed in the explosion.

Rowe’s settlement centered on a promise of change, including a pledge from BP to improve safety to release documents related to safety practices and to make contributions of more than $30 million to various organizations.

Coon acknowledged signs of progress at the five-year commemoration of the explosion, saying “the industry has moved toward an increased appreciation for process safety.”

But as the 20-year milestone approaches, he didn’t mince words.

“No, I don’t think there’s been any change,” Coon said. “I think the drivers to an erosion of safety concerns in the petrochemical industry are multifaceted.

“It stems first from, at the end of the day, an improper moral compass. The industry is led by a corporate culture of profitability, first and foremost, over all other concerns, including safety.”

A spokesperson for BP didn’t provide comment by press time.

Another main driver is lack of sufficient oversight and regulation, Coon said — something Rowe’s settlement meant to address.

“The industry is, generally speaking, a deregulated industry,” Coon said. “While there’s lip service to heightened regulation to the petrochemical industry, it is understaffed, and most of the things they do in the industry are focused on general personal safety as opposed to Process Safety Management.”

Process Safety Management is an Occupational Safety and Health Administration standard that requires employers to identify, evaluate and control the hazards associated with the highly hazardous chemicals used in their processes.

A 2005 report issued by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said officials with BP’s Texas City refinery were fully aware of problems with a troubled unit at the center of the fatal blast.

Two years later, federal investigators concluded the 2005 explosion could have been avoided if the company’s upper management had acted sooner to improve safety measures and overall organization.

“OSHA does very little with respect to making sure plants refineries are safe from a infrastructural standpoint,” Coon said. “It is mainly going out making sure that employees that are working out there are wearing their hard hats, have steel-toed boots, are using their safety attachments when they’re working on scaffolding, things like that. Those are all superficial elements of safety.

“At the end of the day, the major catastrophic incidents are not a result of a lack of accountability by individual employees, it’s on infrastructural collapses.”