Several Texas City plants lost power unexpectedly causing fires and shelter in place orders

[Emily]

At least 25 people sought medical help for respiratory distress.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/article/Officials-seek-causes-of-power-loss-at-Texas-City-1353827.php

Officials seek causes of power loss at Texas City plant(s)
People were told to shelter in place, schools were closed.
By TOM FOWLER, AND DALE LEZON

Updated 08:47 p.m., Tuesday, April 26, 2011


HOUSTON — Refinery operators and power company officials are trying to piece together why several Texas City plants lost power unexpectedly, leading to shelter-in-place warnings, Tuesday school cancellations and plant flares that lit the skies over the coastal town.

The brief outages, which happened in two clusters starting around 9:30 p.m. Monday and 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, prompted BP, Valero and Marathon Oil to shut down their refining operations. Dow Chemical also shut down equipment at its Texas City chemical plant, which makes components used in consumer and industrial products....
.....
A Texas Commission on Environmental Quality investigator arrived in Texas City at 8 a.m. Tuesday and measured emissions with a handheld device at seven locations. The measurements for volatile organic compounds — a broad class of chemicals found in crude oil, pesticides and common solvents such as turpentine — exceeded the instrument's capability, said Terry Clawson, an agency spokesman....

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/busines...-loss-at-Texas-City-1353827.php#ixzz1Ki7cVNej

Strange video here:

http://www.ktsm.com/news/texas-refineries-lose-power

Note that there was an unexplained power failure that shut down a nuclear reactor in another part of the country just 2 days ago.

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?p=406248#post406248

 

[Emily]

Re: Several Texas City plants lost power unexpectedly causing fires and shelter in place orders

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201104271653dowjonesdjonline000679&title=bptexas-city-refinery-restart-delayedpower-supply-not-yet-stable

Apr 27, 2011
]BP: Texas City Refinery Restart Delayed; Power Supply Not Yet Stable


By Rose Marton-Vitale, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) said Wednesday that the restart of its oil refinery in Texas City, Texas, has not gotten under way because reliable power supply is not yet available. The entire plant was taken off line late Monday into Tuesday following overnight power outages....

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7539692.html

Another outage affects Texas City plant
By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press ? 2011 The Associated Press
April 27, 2011, 2:12PM
...
Bruce Clawson, the Homeland Security coordinator for Texas City, says there was a power outage at BP's chemical plant around 6 a.m. Wednesday.....

Video from 4-25:
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QDYt1cUunTw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/7538547.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+houstonchronicle%2Fenergy+%28HoustonChronicle.com+--+Energy%29
Today's mystery: Why did Texas City plants lose power?
Refineries idled, many residents stayed at home and schools closed
By TOM FOWLER, MATTHEW TRESAUGUE and DALE LEZON HOUSTON CHRONICLE Copyright 2011 Houston Chronicle
April 27, 2011, 6:21AM

 

[Emily]

Re: Several Texas City plants lost power unexpectedly causing fires and shelter in place orders

http://galvestondailynews.com/story/228110

Emissions data hazy after power failures
By T.J. Aulds
The Daily News
Published April 28, 2011

TEXAS CITY ? More than 89,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide and about 1,000 pounds of benzene were estimated to have been released by two refineries during a 24 hour period following a massive power outage that led to excessive flaring at Texas City?s major industrial complexes Monday night and Tuesday morning.

Those figures, found in the initial reports to the state?s environmental regulatory agency from BP and Valero, are expected to go higher as company officials compile detailed data of the emissions...

Unfortunately Homeland Security is only looking at the data collected by the city and contractors working for the companies producing emissions. They are not finding levels of concern, yet this article also reports that volatile organic compounds were so high that Texas state environmental investigators equipment were unable to get values for the maximum levels released.

 

[Emily]

Re: Several Texas City plants lost power unexpectedly causing fires and shelter in place orders

The air monitoring story gets more and more convoluted. Now TCEQ has retracted their high emissions readings for Wednesday, But BP monitors report detecting high levels on Wednesday.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7542131.html

High winds helped to mitigate air pollution Tuesday and Wednesday. But a BP monitoring station measured elevated levels of cancer-causing benzene and hydrogen sulfide - a highly toxic chemical that has the odor of rotten eggs - when the average wind speed dipped below 10 mph Wednesday morning.

BP and Valero are still waiting for power while utilities that claim the outage was due to drought caused debris accumulation on equipment are spraying down substations from helicopters with water canons.

Local politicians are skeptical about the drought theory and calling for an investigation.