Incident Report

Subject:                     Vapour Clouds - Lessons Learned

Date of Email reporting Incident:   Tue 20/05/2008

Report Detail:

BP operation in Texas City, Texas is BP's largest refinery and the third largest refinery in the U.S. An explosion rocked the oil
refinery Wednesday, March 23, 2005, at about 1:30 pm and sparked approximately four fires in the unit and set at least 15 cars on
fire. About 433,000 barrels of crude oil are processed a day at the plant, producing 3 percent of the U.S. supply. Other than the
“isomerization” unit affected by the blast, the rest of the refinery was running normally. Most of the smoke that was visible for
over an hour was coming from the vehicle fires which were left burning until all of the process area fires were controlled, mostly
small to medium size fires in the unit. Windows rattled more than five miles away.

The product release came from an isomerization unit with an estimated capacity of 25,000 B/D. The isomerization unit is used to
change low octane rated straight chained Naphtha type material in Isomer’s chains thus upping the octane level to a good quality
gasoline additive.

The unit was just coming up from a turnaround. There was a sizable release of liquids from the elevated stack of a blow down
drum. With process liquids coming from process relief valves on one of the distillation towers. The release was spotted by
several operators who spread the word about the problem on the radio, and then ordered for every one to start shutting down
everything. The released liquid started to pool under the stack and showed a visible vapor cloud. The ignition source appears to
be a truck that was started by a contractor at the edge of the cloud.

Those who died were all contractors, all of whom were in meetings held in temporary office buildings or trailers. These trailers
were in the car parking lot of a large metal building used to store catalyst next to the isom unit. The catalyst warehouse was
across a wide pipe rack at ground elevation. This is a major pipe-way between the refinery units and the tank farm.

Additional Documentation:

VaporCloudExplosion