Incident Report

Subject:                     Alon Refinery Speedily Works Towards Recovery

Date of Email reporting Incident:   Sun 24/02/2008

Report Detail:

On February the 18 there was a large vapour cloud explosion in the Alon refinery in Big Springs Texas. The refinery is a small 70,000 b/day complete refinery with an FCC and Alkylation unit for the production of gasoline. It normally sell it's gasoline and diesel in the local market. The town of Big Spring is about 150 miles west of Dallas, in a remote area of west Texas. It has been released that the original problem  was in the Propylene splitter (fractionation) area. Unbelievably there were only 3 injuries and no deaths. One of the injured was a person who was driving a car down the adjacent interstate highway when a piece of fragments from one of the explosions hit the car. The propylene splitter was reported to be adjacent to the Alkylation unit and the gas concentration part of the FCC. Both of which were damaged.  As you can see by the photo the fires were wide spread. 

BIG SPRING -- With seemingly lightning speed, Alon USA refinery has re-opened its truck rack, set up temporary office space and is getting ready to ship out product a little under a week after an explosion and fire ripped through the Howard County facility

"We are pleased with the progress we are making in returning the Big Spring refinery to service. This is the first step of many. We are currently ahead of our own internal schedule and continue to be optimistic about returning to the first stage of operation producing gasoline, diesel and asphalt within 60 days," President and Chief Executive Officer Jeff D. Morris said in a Friday news release.
The cause of the 8:20 a.m. incident has not yet been determined. The U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, among others, are investigating.
"It's still open and ongoing," said Diana Petterson, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Labor, which OSHA falls under.
"OSHA has six months to complete the investigation," Petterson said. "That's not to say it will take six months, but the law does provide OSHA with that amount of time."

Five people, including one passerby, were injured in the accident. One man, Paul Berrenger, was listed in satisfactory condition Friday afternoon at University Medical Center in Lubbock with burns from the incident, officials said.
"We're thrilled to death that no one was killed or seriously injured both at the time of the explosion and also while the first responders were fighting the fire," Big Spring Mayor Russ McEwen said.

"When I left the house (Monday), it was not if someone died, it was how many people died," he said.
Now Alon has temporary quarters at the union hall and mobile home units outside the plant site. McEwen said, adding it's "beyond comprehension" how fast the company has moved to get back in business.
"At 6:30 on Tuesday morning when those employees showed up at the union hall, there were computers up and running. Wow," McEwen said.
U.S. Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Lubbock, took an hour-and-a-half tour of the plant Thursday.

"Part of that tour was to get a briefing from the senior management team as to where their plans are to move forward and get that plant up and going. I had the opportunity to address 40-50 of their employees and tell them they did such an outstanding job of working with regional response teams to mitigate (the potential disaster)," Neugebauer said.
He viewed areas that were damaged and unharmed and said "the center of where the event started is very heavily damaged."
"I went to ground zero a number of months after (9/11) occurred, but I'd never seen that kind of explosion damage before," Neugebauer said. "Obviously, it's very disconcerting to see that, but the real story is God was watching those employees."
"I saw buildings where there would normally have been people. Just by the grace of God, they weren't there. We had a major event here. That event had to be mediated without loss of life. Now all our attention turns to getting that plant up and going," he said.
"An important part of that is that (portions) of the plant are not damaged. They have identified a lot of the pieces of equipment they're going to need and how they're going to need to connect those together. They're already making drawings of those pieces so they can send those drawings off to contractors and begin that process," Neugebauer said.

Neugebauer said he would be staying in regular contact with Morris to see how things are progressing.
"I feel very optimistic today," he said Thursday. "As I flew in on Monday from Lubbock, I saw how much smoke and fire was coming out. I was concerned for the firefighters. After my meeting today, I feel extremely confident they have a handle on it and it's going to happen," he said.

Additional Documentation:

Big_Spring_Fire_2008