tagged w/ Refinery
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Just as BP began celebrating a proclaimed success in its Gulf of Mexico catastrophe, the company now finds itself in the woeful position of facing a $10 billion lawsuit over a 40-day toxic chemical release in Texas City, Texas earlier this year.
A $10 billion class action lawsuit was filed Tuesday on behalf of 2,000 claimants against oil behemoth BP after the company engaged in a 40-day upset during April and May that released at least 538,000 pounds of known toxins into the Texas City skies. The event began just two weeks before the company became very well-known over its Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico.
Tony Buzbee, a Texas attorney who also represents Gulf coast residents impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, filed the suit on Tuesday for his clients seeking compensation for “health effects including all symptoms associated with acute benzene exposure,” according to The Telegraph(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7925565/BP-hit-with-10bn-lawsuit-over-Texas-City-chemical-leak.html).
As reported earlier by Digital Journal(http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/294675), the toxic leak, or upset, occurred at BP’s Texas City refinery from April 6 to May 16, releasing hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxins into the air, including benzene, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides.
In a ProPublica(http://www.propublica.org/article/bp-texas-refinery-had-huge-toxic-release-just-before-gulf-blowout) report of the incident, company officials were aware of the situation, underestimated its severity, and kept the plant in production to allay the chance of investors’ worries. It notes “the company’s corporate culture favors production and profit margins over safety and the environment. The 40-day release echoes in several notable ways the runaway spill in the Gulf. BP officials initially underestimated the problem and took steps in the days leading up to the incident to reduce costs and keep the refinery online.”
Buzbee, already involved in legal action against BP as he represents 15 Deepwater Horizon rig workers, dozens of fisherman, dock workers, and restaurants - all impacted by the Gulf of Mexico debacle - is a prominent Houston lawyer with a solid record in winning settlements from oil companies, Mother Jones reports(http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/06/rigs-fire-i-told-you-was-gonna-happen).
The lawsuit over the Texas City incident alleges “tens of thousands of individuals were injured and had his or her long-term health put in jeopardy after being exposed to extremely high levels of Benzene and other toxic chemicals while working at the BP Texas City Refinery or by simply living or working in Texas City,” according to Yahoo News(http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100803/bs_yblog_upshot/bp-faces-10-billion-suit-over-refinery-leak). The lawyer is seeking “punitive damages against BP in excess of $10 billion.”Just as BP began celebrating a proclaimed success in its Gulf of Mexico catastrophe,... more
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And Iraq oil ministry spokesman has said that a worker has been killed and a second worker suffered severe burns after a fire broke out at the Doura refinery in Baghdad.
Reuters reported that the blaze broke out in the grounds of the refinery after workers siphoned fuel from a gasoline tanker truck.
The spokesman, Asim Jihad, said that the truck had been seized from a group selling illegalm fuel, but added that the fire had not affected refinery output.
"This has nothing to do with the refinery," Reuters quoted him as saying.
The 160,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery is planning to increase output to 230,000 bpd by the end of 2009.And Iraq oil ministry spokesman has said that a worker has been killed and a second... more
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A fire at a pipeline at Kuwait’s 270,000-b/d Mina Abdullah refinery yesterday injured two workers and closed the whole facility for a day, with three fire fighters also being evacuated from the subsequent extinguishing operations due to smoke inhalation.
"The fire was later brought under control and the refinery has today reopened, despite initial estimates that a 72-hour shut-down would be necessary. The blaze started at a pipeline belonging to the hydrogen production unit as it was being taken offstream for scheduled maintenance together with four other units. The standstill has not affected loading schedules at Kuwait’s export facilities or domestic supply depots, given ample amounts of refined products in storage," said Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst at IHS Global Insight.
The incident is another reminder of Kuwait’s deep deficiencies when it comes to health and safety (HSE) standards, as well as the operational standard of mainly its downstream sector. "Apart from Iraq and Iran, where violence and/or long periods of international sanctions have depleted the industry’s technical, operational, and HSE standards, Kuwait’s hydrocarbons industry seems to have the dubious distinction of seeing the most workers injured or killed in the entire Gulf region," said Ciszuk.
To some degree this is down to the political deadlock that has been in place for the past decade, which has hindered the phasing out of Kuwait’s oldest Shuhaiba refinery and the thorough upgrade of its Mina Abdullah and Mina al-Ahmadi refineries. "It also, however, boils down to an inability to reform management practices and change the company culture within the state-owned industry, where relying almost completely on expatriates for all menial tasks means that company responsibility doesn’t necessarily have to extend very far after a worker has become incapacitated and left both his job and the country," added Ciszuk.A fire at a pipeline at Kuwait’s 270,000-b/d Mina Abdullah refinery yesterday... more
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The idea in this case is to produce a batch of biofuel from a single colony through E. coli's natural ability to proliferate and, after producing the fuel, dispose of the E. coli and start anew with a fresh colony, according to Keasling. "This minimizes the mutations that might arise if one continually subcultured the microbe," he says. The idea is also to engineer the new organism, deleting key metabolic pathways, such that it would never survive in the wild in order to prevent escapes with unintended environmental impacts, among other dangers.
But ranging outside of its natural processes, E. coli is not the most efficient producer of biofuel. "We are at about 10 percent of the theoretical maximum yield from sugar," Keasling notes. "We would like to be at 80 to 90 percent to make this commercially viable. Furthermore, we would need a large-scale production process," such as 100,000 liter tanks to allow mass production of microbial fuel.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bacteria-transformed-into-biofuel-refineriesThe idea in this case is to produce a batch of biofuel from a single colony through E.... more
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The real Siberian winter hasn't come yet, yet the frost is starting to bite.
The same goes for the Russian economy.
Like the city of Omsk in the bright winter sunlight, reflected from the ice and the patches of snow, the future of the Russian economy looked bright and sunny just until very recently.
But just as a chilling wind from the river Irtysh can immediately send shivers down your spine, collapsing oil prices are bringing the crisis home.
Russia is an oil economy, and Omsk is an oil city.
It does not have large oil fields nearby, but there is a huge refinery - indeed, the biggest in Russia.The real Siberian winter hasn't come yet, yet the frost is starting to bite.... more
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