WASHINGTON — Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser told a Senate Homeland Security hearing today that the government and BP’s command and control structure in responding to the Gulf oil spill disaster have been overly bureaucratic and slow to respond to the ongoing crisis.

€Were going to get out there and fight this thing,’ Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said. “I still don’t know who is in charge,” Nungesser told the Subcommittee on State, Local and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration.

Nungesser said President Barack Obama should appoint someone with “the authority and guts to a make decisions.” He said that currently it takes five days for questions to make their way up the chain of command to Admiral Thad Allen, the national incident commander, which Nungesser said was “much too slow.”

The president and Allen have assigned Coast Guard officials to work with parish officials to cut through red tape, but Nungesser said it isn’t working.

“If they have the authority they aren’t using it,” he said.

Original Article

Interior secretary defends drilling ban

By JENNIFER A. DLOUHY

WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday defended the Obama administration’s ban on deep-water drilling and new rules that will delay exploration in shallower depths, amid criticism the slowdown threatens American jobs.

“If we are going to move forward with any kind of oil and gas production in the outer continental shelf, it must be done in a safe manner,” Salazar told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The administration’s six-month timeout on deep-water drilling is needed to implement new safeguards and environmental protections meant to prevent a repeat of the devastating oil spill spreading across the Gulf of Mexico, Salazar said.

The drilling industry is still deciphering safety rules the government unveiled Tuesday and is awaiting environmental requirements the Interior Department is expected to detail next week. But shallow-water drillers warned that rigs and workers could be idled while they comply with the new mandates and wait for regulators to sign off on their progress.

The shallow-water drilling delays and continued ban on deeper exploration could be devastating to energy companies, onshore suppliers and workers all along the Gulf Coast, warned Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.

“This temporary pause, if it lasts very much longer than a few months — not six, but just a few months — could potentially wreak economic havoc on this region that exceeds the havoc wreaked by the spill itself,” Landrieu said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, warned the Gulf Coast could face a double whammy from the floating crude: lost income to coastal businesses and environmental damage to shoreline followed by pain in the energy industry.

“The second crisis in the Gulf after the oil spill is going to be that job loss,” Murkowski said.

Salazar said the administration is very aware of the importance of jobs at stake. “The jobs are a concern to us,” he said.

But, he added, the top priority is ensuring offshore drilling is safe.

In response to questioning, Salazar said BP should pay claims by oil service companies and any of their workers laid off as a result of the administration-ordered drilling delays.

“BP is responsible for all the damages that flow from the BP oil spill,” Salazar said. “And these are some of the consequences from that oil spill.”

As Salazar defended the drilling moratorium, some engineers and scientists who counseled the administration on offshore safety distanced themselves from it.

Eight of 15 experts named in a May 27 Interior Department report on drilling safety sent a letter to Landrieu, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal insisting they did not endorse the document’s recommendation for a ban on drilling. The scientists said that recommendation was added after they reviewed the report.

The experts, including Robert Bea of the University of California at Berkeley and Martin Chenevert with the University of Texas, said Salazar was using their names to justify political decisions.

“We broadly agree with the detailed recommendations in the report and compliment the Department of Interior for its efforts,” the group said. “However, we do not agree with the six-month blanket moratorium on floating drilling.”

In other spill-related news Wednesday:

• Lawmakers were preparing to grill CEOs of big oil companies in a Capitol Hill hearing next week. The executives — from Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips, BP America, and Shell Oil Co., — are slated to testify Tuesday before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, two days before BP CEO Tony Hayward fields questions from another House panel.

• Dozens of lawmakers demanded BP halt plans to pay dividends to shareholders and suspend a nationwide advertising campaign that aims to buff its battered image. As long as crude continues gushing from BP’s underwater Macondo well, it is not time for “business as usual,” the group of more than 40 lawmakers warned Hayward in a letter Wednesday.

• Shareholders dumped BP stock Wednesday, sending shares to their lowest price in 14 years, amid worries the dividend could be suspended. The stock dropped $5.45, or 16 percent, to close at $29.20. Since the Deepwater Horizon exploded seven weeks ago, BP has lost half its market value, or $95 billion.

• Republicans were battling a Democratic plan to hike a tax on crude that helps pay for oil spill cleanup. Senate Democrats are using a proposed five-fold increase in the fee that fills an oil spill trust fund — from 8 cents to 41 cents per barrel — to offset planned spending in broad tax legislation. The House voted to quadruple the tax and make it 32 cents per barrel last month.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the move represented gimmickry by Democratic leaders who were exploiting the spill in the Gulf to disguise out-of-control spending. Democrats countered that revenues from the tax would still supply the oil spill trust fund.

Original Article

By Blake Ellis, staff reporterJune 10, 2010: 3:11 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Oil prices gained for a third day Thursday as the dollar weakened and Chinese economic data boosted confidence in global demand for oil.

What prices are doing: Crude oil for July delivery rose $1.10, or 1.5%, to settle at $75.48 a barrel on Thursday after jumping more than 3% on Wednesday.

The national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline fell to $2.706 from the previous day’s price of $2.713, according to motorist group AAA.

What’s moving the market: Oil prices were lifted Thursday as stocks rebounded and the dollar fell against major currencies.

Oil and other commodities that are priced in dollars tend to rise when the U.S. currency weakens.

Prices were also boosted by a report out Wednesday showing a bigger-than-expected drop in supplies last week and positive economic data from China.

Chinese exports surged nearly 50% in May compared to a year earlier, widely beating expectations, according to a China Daily report. Meanwhile, imports jumped 48%.

“This shows that China is importing more crude, and that’s what the market has really paid attention to and what is moving prices up,” said James Williams, president and energy economist at WTRG Economics.

As confidence in a global recovery and petroleum demand continues to increase, oil prices will benefit.

“Today it’s a matter of risk versus no risk,” said Williams. “If traders keep desiring more risk, you’ll keep seeing higher prices.”

Wednesday’s oil supply report from the Energy Information Administration, which showed that crude inventories fell more than expected last week, will also support higher prices on Thursday, he said.

Outlook: Williams said he expects prices to remain above $70 for the rest of the year, assuming that the euro zone’s debt crisis doesn’t worsen.

“If we avoid a meltdown in the European economy, I think we’ll see oil in a $70 to $80 range,” he said. “But if the euro collapses and Europe goes into a double dip [recession], we could see prices go into a $60 range.” To top of page

Original Article

(RTTNews) -  The International Energy Agency slightly revised up its global oil growth demand forecast, citing stronger-than-expected preliminary data from OECD nations.

The International Energy Agency upwardly revised up its global oil demand by 60,000 barrels per day (bd) to 86.4 million barrels per day (mbd) on stronger-than-expected preliminary OECD data, but cautioned that downside risk remains.

The agency, in its monthly report released Thursday, noted that annual global demand growth in 2010 is seen up by 1.7 mbd or 2%, largely due to demand from non-OECD. This growth projections came in slightly higher than the U.S. EIA’s growth projection, which sees demand up by 1.5 mbd in 2010 and 1.6 mbd in 2011.

The Paris based agency said total oil supply fell by an estimated 575,000 bd to 86.3 mbd in May, due to lower non-OPEC output on seasonal maintenance. However, for the full year 2010, output forecast was upwardly revised by 0.1 mbd to 52.3 mbd. Supply form the OPEC edged down a marginal 30,000 bd to 29.02 mbd in May as supply outages in Nigeria and Angola partly offset higher production in Iraqi.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has put on hold new deep-water exploratory drilling in the U.S. for six months, pending the findings and recommendations of a presidential commission investigating the causes of the explosion in April that sank Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon rig leased by BP Plc.

The agency upped its forecast for second quarter 2010 refinery crude throughput to 73.5 mbd and third quarter throughput to 74.4 mbd.

Yesterday, OPEC trimmed its world oil demand growth forecast to 940,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2010, from its earlier projection for a growth of 950,000 bpd.

Meanwhile, the EIA, in its monthly report released Wednesday, said that world oil consumption will grow by 1.5 million bbl/d in 2010 and 1.6 million bbl/d in 2011. The agency projects WTI crude oil spot prices will average $79 a barrel this year and $83 a barrel in 2011, both about $3 lower than in last month’s outlook.

The price of crude oil saw huge fluctuations in May amid lingering worries over the euro zone debt situation and on data that showed U.S. crude oil inventories were on the rise in May. Crude futures, which rose to a multi-month high of near $89 a barrel in early May, plummeted to as low as $67 a barrel within three weeks.

Original Article

SETH BORENSTEIN (AP)

WASHINGTON — So the Gulf oil spill has you ready to quit petroleum cold turkey? Louisiana’s brown pelicans have more of a chance of avoiding Big Oil than you do.

Merely parking the car and riding a bike won’t cut it. Your sneakers and bike have petroleum products in them. Sure, you can shut off the AC, but the electric fans you switch to have plastic from oil and gas in them. And the insulation to keep your home cool, also started as oil and gas. Without all that, you will sweat and it’ll be all too noticeable because deodorant comes from oil and gas too.

You can’t even escape petroleum products with a nice cool fast-food milkshake — which probably has a petrochemical-based thickener.

Oil is everywhere. It permeates our daily lives in ways we never think about. It’s in carpeting, furniture, computers and clothing. It’s in the most personal of products like toothpaste, shaving cream, lipstick and vitamin capsules. Petrochemicals are the glue of our modern lives and even in glue, too.

And because of all that, petrochemicals are in our blood.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested humans for environmental chemicals and metals, it recorded 212 different compounds. More than 180 of them are products that started as natural gas or oil.

“It’s the material basis of our society essentially,” said Michael Wilson, a research scientist at the University of California Berkeley. “This is the Petrochemical Age.”

Louisiana State University environmental sciences professor Ed Overton, who works with the government on oil spill chemistry, said: “There’s nothing that we do on a daily basis that isn’t touched by petrochemicals.”

When in the movie “The Graduate” young Benjamin is given advice about the future, it comes in one word: plastics. About 93 percent of American plastics start with natural gas or oil.

“Just about anything that’s not iron or steel or metal of some sort has some petrochemical component. And that’s just because of what we’ve been able to do with it,” said West Virginia University chemistry professor Dady Dadyburjor.

Nothing shows how pervasive and malleable petrochemicals are better than shampoo, said Kevin Swift, director of economics and statistics for the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s trade association. The bottle is plastic. The cap is plastic. The seal and the label, too. The ink comes from petrochemicals and even the glue that holds the label to the bottle comes from oil or gas.

“The shampoo — it’s all derived from petrochemicals,” Swift said. “A bottle of shampoo is about 100 percent chemistry.”

Often, some natural fragrance is thrown in.

What makes oil and natural gas the seed stock for most of our everyday materials is the element that is the essence of life: carbon.

The carbon atom acts as the spine with other atoms attaching to it in different combinations and positions. Each variation acts in new ways, Dadyburjor said.

John Warner, a former Polaroid scientist and University of Massachusetts chemistry professor, called petroleum “fundamentally a boring material” until other atoms are added and “you unleash a textbook of modern chemistry.”

“Take a very complicated elegant beautiful molecule, bury it in the ground 100 million years, remove all the functionality and make hydrocarbons,” said Warner, one of the founders of the green chemistry movement that attempts to be more ecologically sustainable. “Then take all the toxic nasty reagents and put back all the functional groups and end up with very complicated molecules.”

The age of petrochemicals started and took root shortly after World War II, spurred by a government looking for replacements for rubber.

“Unfortunately there’s a very dark side,” said Carnegie Mellon chemistry professor Terry Collins. He said the underlying premise of the petrochemical industry is that “those little molecules will be good little molecules and do what they’re designed for and not interact with life. What we’re finding is that premise is wrong, profoundly wrong. What we’re discovering is that there’s a whole world of low-dose (health) effects.”

Many of these chemicals are disrupting the human hormone system, Collins said.

These are substances that don’t appear in nature and “they accumulate in the human body, they persist in the environment,” Berkeley’s Wilson said. The problem is science isn’t quite sure how bad or how safe they are, he said.

But plastics also do good things for the environment, the chemistry council says. Because plastics are lighter than metals, they helped create cars that save fuel. A 2005 European study shows that conversion to plastic materials in Europe saved 26 percent in fuel.

“Compared to the alternatives, it reduces greenhouse gases (which cause global warming) and saves energy; that is rather ironic,” Swift said.

Still, chemists who want more sustainable materials are working on alternatives. Another founder of green chemistry, Paul Anastas, an assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, said: “We can make those things in other ways.”

LSU’s Overton is old enough to remember the days before petrochemicals. There were no plastic milk and soda containers. They were glass. Desks were heavy wood. There were no computers, cell phones and not much air conditioning.

“It’s a much more comfortable life now, much more convenient,” Overton said.

Swift said trying to live without petrochemicals now doesn’t make sense, but he added: “it would make a good reality TV show.”

Original Article

Natural gas advocates are stoked about their chance to push their product during this weekend’s U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The American Lung Association on Thursday honored 16 mayors, including Oklahoma City’s Mick Cornett, who have worked to promote healthier air and the use of clean vehicles. The winners were nominated by community volunteers and selected as Clean Vehicle Champions by a volunteer jury. Other honorees were:

• Mayor David H. Bieter of Boise, Idaho

• Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston

• Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago

• Mayor Michael B. Coleman of Columbus, Ohiio

• Mayor Tom Leppert of Dallas

• Mayor John W. Hickenlooper of Denver

• Mayor Ashley Swearingen of Fresno, Calif.

• Mayor Bob Foster of Long Beach, Calif.

• Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles

• Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee

• Mayor R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis

• Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York

• Mayor Ralph Becker of Salt Lake City

• Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco

• Mayor Mary Verner of Spokane, Wash.

More than 200 mayors from cities with 30,000 or more people will be gathered in Oklahoma City for the conference.

“City leaders … will be the ones making bold commitments to run their fleets in a cleaner, smarter way by using natural gas vehicles,” said Regina Hopper, president of America’s Natural Gas Alliance. “In addition to cities, companies like AT&T, UPS and Ryder also have been switching to natural gas vehicles to cut their pollution output.”

Visiting mayors will have plenty of chances to learn about the benefits of natural gas as a vehicle fuel.

Many of them were picked up in CNG-fueled vehicles Thursday when they arrived in Oklahoma City. Next up was a reception at the Skirvin Hilton sponsored by the gas alliance, American Lung Association and three local oil and gas companies: Chesapeake Energy Corp., Devon Energy Corp. and SandRidge Energy Inc.

Sixteen mayors, including Oklahoma City’s Mick Cornett, were honored for their efforts to promote clean vehicles and healthier air.

Norman Herrera, Chesapeake’s senior coordinator for market development, said the reception also allows natural gas advocates to spotlight the benefits of natural gas.

He said natural gas is an abundant, clean resource that can help reduce operating costs and create jobs in the future. It also is essential to reducing carbon and other pollutants that affect air quality.

There will be more than a dozen natural gas vehicles on display in an exhibit hall adjacent to the conference at the Cox Center.

Herrera said the “Clean Urban Vehicle Zone” will include a wide array of city or corporate vehicles that run on CNG.

Each of the vehicles will have a spokesperson standing by to discuss the benefits of natural gas.

Ample opportunities

On Saturday, mayors in the group’s transportation and communications committee will discuss natural gas.

“It’s a good policy discussion,” Herrera said. “From the time we pick them up at the airport to the time they depart, we really want to champion Oklahoma City, share everything that’s new here in our city, talk a little bit about our companies, talk more importantly about the message on natural gas and hopefully be able to have some long-term relationships with these mayors.”

Taylor Shinn, Chesapeake’s director of corporate development, said advocates have been working with the mayors’ group for some time because its members will continue to be political leaders for years to come.

He said this is a great opportunity to show them why natural gas is the economical and environmental answer for their cities.

“It’s critically important,” Shinn said. “All the cities are slashing their budgets and laying off employees because of high operating costs.

“They will leave with a very strong sense about natural gas and the benefits.”

The gas alliance’s Hopper said natural gas is the right choice for cities.

“Natural gas is substantially cleaner than diesel fuel for trucks and buses and coal used in power plants, and the American Lung Association has found that cutting emissions from both sources can reduce health effects from energy use,” she said. “The United States is blessed with a vast supply of natural gas, thanks to new discoveries in shale formations across the country.

“That ensures a stable supply of the fuel for many generations to come.”

Read more: http://newsok.com/article/3467758#ixzz0qXiSo1zB

Original Article

With three shuttered oil rigs preparing to leave the Gulf of Mexico for foreign waters, Gov. Bobby Jindal ratcheted up the rhetoric Thursday against the Obama administration’s moratorium on deepwater drilling, saying the White House still doesn’t understand the economic pain the forced stoppage is causing Louisiana workers.

Jindal with Obama.jpgMatthew Hinton / The Times-PicayunePresident Barack Obama talks with Gov. Bobby Jindal last month on Obama’s first visit to the area after the oil spill. ‘What worries me is I fear they think these rigs can just flip a switch on and off,’ Jindal said Thursday.

Jindal said he had a conference call with President Barack Obama’s senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, and appealed to her to shorten the six-month moratorium, arguing that a half-year pause would force oil companies to move drilling operations overseas for years and that the federal government could easily impose new safety standards and monitoring in a shorter time frame.

“She asked again why the rigs simply wouldn’t come back after six months,” Jindal said. “What worries me is I fear they think these rigs can just flip a switch on and off.”

Jindal, who addressed hundreds of angry shipyard workers at a slip in Port Fourchon, said Obama needs to listen to the majority of a panel of experts, who advised the Interior Department on drilling safety and recently said they were not in favor of a six-month “blanket moratorium.”

Obama’s response has been to say that safety and preventing another spill must come first. The administration said it’s aware of the moratorium’s impact on the local economy and will press BP to pay for wages lost due to the moratorium, but Jindal said, “Our people don’t want a claims check or an unemployment check; they want to get back to work.”

White House spokeswoman Moira Mack said the administration is concerned about the “effect of the spill on workers’ livelihoods and the economy of the Gulf Coast states” and “will hold BP to its commitment to compensate for all damages.” But Jindal said BP has made no such commitment to pay for damages caused by the moratorium, as opposed to the economic losses to fishers and others caused by the spill itself.

Unemployment assistance

The Obama administration said the president would propose legislation for an Oil Spill Unemployment Assistance Program that would make benefits available to those who lose their jobs because of the moratorium, including self-employed contractors and others who wouldn’t ordinarily be able to collect unemployment.

Also, local leaders feel the White House is myopically focused on the way the moratorium is affecting employees of big oil and gas companies, rather than what it’s doing to the far larger number of supply vessel mariners and dockside workers who work for small, local firms.

“Mr. President, I get the fact that you don’t like big oil and gas,” said Jindal’s recently appointed interim lieutenant governor, Scott Angelle. “But this is not about the stockholders of BP and Shell and Exxon and Chevron. This is about the Cheramises and the Callaises and the Boudreauxs and the Thibodeauxs!”

Industry estimates show that about 8,000 people are employed on the 30 rigs affected by the moratorium, while more than 20,000 work in the maritime industry that supports drilling.

The Obama administration says the moratorium will not affect 85 percent of employment on offshore rigs and platforms, jobs the administration says are tied to work on shallow-water rigs and deepwater production platforms that aren’t affected by the moratorium.

“We are aware that this six-month moratorium will place some burden on the oil and gas industry and its workers, but it has been targeted, so as to not affect ongoing production or drilling in shallow waters where the risks are better understood,” Mack said.

“This burden, however, has to be weighed against the potentially greater costs – to industry, our economy and the environment – that could result … (from) another spill like the BP oil spill.”

Shallow drilling long gone

Andy Chauvin, a crane operator from Galliano who came to the port slip to hear Jindal speak, said shallow drilling and deepwater production operations provide little solid work for the south Louisiana workers.

“Shallow drilling died in the ’80s,” he said. “As for the production stuff, I used to work on work-over rigs. It’s a one- to two-week thing.”

“It’s 40 people on the production rigs, versus 160-200 on the drilling rigs,” added Steve Swan, a drilling materials coordinator from Bay St. Louis, Miss. “The production platforms are already running, so they just need grocery runs.”

Jindal said he doesn’t think the White House understands that tens of thousands of dockside and supply vessel jobs are also on the chopping block because of the moratorium. He urged residents to sign an online petition asking the president to reduce the moratorium.

Pulling up stakes

According to the official state drill count, 17 of the 22 deepwater drilling rigs in Louisiana waters pulled up their drills in the first week of the moratorium, which was announced by Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on May 28 and requires them to plug and abandon their wells at the first safe opportunity.

Anardarko Petroleum Corp. has used a legal maneuver to break its contracts with rig owners and suppliers on three deepwater drilling rigs, meaning those rigs and supply fleets have been left to idle. The company has said it’s considering putting its resources elsewhere in its global portfolio.

On Thursday, Shane Guidry of Harvey Gulf International Marine, the primary tug company responsible for moving the rigs, said he’s been contacted by two other oil production companies — which he wouldn’t name because of his contractual obligations — negotiating with him about moving three rigs to foreign waters.

“One company is talking to me about moving a rig to Nigeria, which I’m concerned about because of the unstable situation there, and another to Colombia,” Guidry said. “Another of my customers is looking to move the rig to Israel.”

So far, six floating rigs that are self-powered and don’t need tugs for shorter distances have moved into shallow waters and Harvey tugs have moved another five rigs without dynamic positioning systems to ports or near shore for “stacking,” Guidry said.

Chet Chiasson, director of Port Fourchon, the main port servicing deepwater rigs, says there haven’t been any layoffs yet, mainly because shipbuilding and vessel-operating firms are holding out some hope that Obama will come around to the position of local and state officials.

“I think they’re holding off as much as possible because they see their local leaders getting active,” Chiasson said. “We realize the American public doesn’t want to hear from the CEO of Shell and these other oil companies. The people need to speak about how this hurts them, and they’re saying this can be a clean and safe industry.”

Original Article

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–U.S. Senators called for stronger safety measures in the oil and gas industry in the wake of a series of accidents in recent months in a hearing Thursday morning.

Senator Patty Murray (D., Wash.) said that repeated violations particularly at refineries and the incident rate of accidents in the oil and gas industry mean that greater oversight is needed. “We cannot assume someone else is taking care of things,” she said.

The Senate Committee on Health Education Labor & Pensions held a hearing on process safety management in the oil and gas industry.

Over the past four months, 58 workers have died from a Gulf of Mexico rig explosion as well refinery and coal mine accidents. The Deepwater Horizon rig explosion killed 11 workers and injured 17 others in late April. A couple weeks earlier, the explosion at Tesoro Corp.’s (TSO) refinery in Anacortes, Wash., killed seven workers. It was the most destructive refinery accident since the 2005 explosion at BP PLC’s (BP, BP.LN) Texas City, Texas, plant, which claimed 15 lives and injured 170.

Sen. Franken Al Franken (D. Minn.) asked how BP, which “has a long and offensive list of violations” can continue to operate. Other senators questioned how companies involved in major accidents such as BP and Transocean Ltd. (RIG), which owned Deepwater Horizon, were also recipients of various safety awards. The fatality rate in the petroleum industry is about 75 per 100,000 workers, or 20 times greater than the national rate, Franken said.

The U.S. Labor Department stepped up oversight of the refining industry since the 2005 explosion–the worst in the U.S. refining industry’s history–by mandating inspections of all refineries under the National Emphasis Program. The result of those inspections have repeatedly turned up serious safety violations across the refining industry. Most of these violations are related to process safety management.

Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said that not only are inspections at refiners showing a “significant lack of compliance” but that the same violations are showing up over and over again. OSHA has oversight over refineries and land-based oil and gas drilling operations.

Barab said there is a need to develop safety standards of onshore drilling, bigger penalties for violations and better whistle-blower protection.

There have been 29 fires and explosions at U.S. refineries so far this year, said Kim Nibarger, a health and safety specialist for the United Steelworkers union. He noted that refinery turnarounds–akin to regular maintenance and repairs for motor vehicles–used to take place every two years but are being pushed back to increments of three to five years. The scope of this maintenance activity has gotten smaller too as companies seek to pare back costs.

The refining industry is the most frequent sources of fires and explosions related to hazardous chemicals. OSHA has issued hundreds of citations to refineries in recent years. The penalties average $160,000, which “is not really high” for a major petrochemical or refining company.

Charles Drevna, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, an industry group, said that “the best way to enhance workplace safety is to work in cooperation not in confrontation” with workers and agencies. He said that the industry has stepped up safety efforts in the past five years.

“We’ll never be done, but we are better than we were before,” he said.

Original Article