3 TX Refineries Lose Power. SIP

[DReynolds]

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42761336/ns/us_news-life/

[DReynolds]

Cause of outage still unknown.

[Exodia]

Can someone who is familair with the process comment? Is the burning of the "flares" in this situation because of the lack of power, and they are not able to control the process?

[DReynolds]

Texas City Dow Chemical plant also without power.

(Strange time for an outage, 76degrees and sunny in SE Texas. Not windy. No rain. No seismic events, no nothing)

[Exodia]

Plants are BP, Marathon and Valero. BP went down first. Looks like the first shelter in place was lifted around 3:00 am. Then the two other refineries went down and they issue another SIP around 5:30 am.

Schools closed in the area. Still no cause reported.

http://www.ksat.com/news/27672343/detail.html

[Pablo Escobar]

if it is a co-ordinated attack by those pesky terrorists to cause economic harm to the us, ie increase gas prices, they are too late. Ben Bernanke is waaaaay ahead of them.

Ha

Ha

Ha

(I'm crying here.)

No

Literally crying.

Shhit.

[Exodia]

This looks like an older story (doesn't mention the 5:30 am SIP), but it talks about a fire that occurred at a crude distillation unit shortly after the power was lost at around 11:00 pm. The report says the fire was quickly put out.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2...nt-stabilizes/

[DReynolds]

I'll make a rough guess that those 3 refineries account for at least 10 percent of US gasoline refining capacity.

(BP=400,000bpd, the other two are about 250,000bpd, which adds up to over 800,000bpd and Total US demand is 8millionbpd).

[Exodia]

Originally Posted by DReynolds

I'll make a rough guess that those 3 refineries account for at least 10 percent of US gasoline refining capacity.

(BP=400,000bpd, the other two are about 250,000bpd, which adds up to over 800,000bpd and Total US demand is 8millionbpd).

I seeing on wiki that the BP Texas City refinery is the 3rd largest in the US.

[Exodia]

http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/TX3166/



Description: At four miles wide, what is generally referred to as BP Texas City, southeast of Houston, is one of the largest industrial sites in the world. The perimeter is intensely developed, and contains a number of plants and companies, connected to each other symbiotically by shared chemical products circulated in pipelines. On the west end is Dow's Texas City Operations. In the middle and dominating the site is BPs refinery. With a capacity of 460,000 barrels per day, this is usually ranked as the third largest refinery in the USA. It is also notorious for deadly industrial accidents. There are four chemical units on site operated by BP, making paraxylene, metaxylene, and other plastics feedstocks. Marathon Oil, Sterling Chemical, and Valero have facilities on the east side of the Texas City site. The east edge of the complex is the Port of Texas City, which serves the complex.

Location: 35 miles SE of Houston, in Texas City
(POINT(-94.923119544983 29.375817727782))
(show on map)
Address: TX

Links: http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarti...n tId=7010402

LCS: Industrial, Petrochemical Plant / Oil Refinery

[Exodia]

Valero has regained power, units coming back online.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...estarting.html

[Exodia]

Some good info here. Most of power restored to plants, although sirens and fire trucks were seen headed toward the plant around 9:00 am. Power outage seems to be plant only, not a grid problem. Here is an interesting paragraph:

Clawson said officials think they know what caused the outages but he declined to elaborate. He said plant officials said no emissions have been released. Residents who live near the plants said they heard what they thought were explosions just before they lost power. They said street lights also went out.

[Exodia]

Failure point was apprently customer owned distribution lines. Four "events" started around 9:30 pm Monday. Some speculation that salt accumulation on equipment led to shorts.

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/04/26/t...y-be-to-blame/

[DReynolds]

Originally Posted by Exodia

Failure point was apprently customer owned distribution lines.

That's the utility company saying it wasn't their equipment that failed. But Valero, at least, is saying it wasn't their equipment either. Besides, who ever heard of 4 different transmission lines failing at once? It's preposterous.

Here's the email ERC-TX (Eletric Reliability Council) sent around this afternoon:
"Several electric transmission lines in the Texas City area tripped off-line at about 4:30 a.m. today. The cause was unknown."

[Exodia]

Yes, as I thought about that today, I started thinking "what are the chances that salt accumulation would trip off four seperate events"?

[Ought Six]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...ectricity.html

Blackout Shuts 5% of U.S. Refining; Gasoline Futures Jump

[Teestorm]

This is verrrry close to home for me .