Ineos fined £400,000 over gas leak
Ineos has been fined £400,000 after gas leaked from a cracked pipe creating a potentially explosive cloud over its Grangemouth site.
Despite the size of the leak, which was equivalent to 26 Olympic-sized swimming pools, no gas was detected outside the perimeter of the plant itself and all 97 personnel were ushered to safety.
The incident on 2 May 2017 sparked a full-scale emergency response as 17,000 tonnes of flammable gas leaked from the 10-inch corroded pipe. Roads surrounding the area were closed and the area evacuated.
Petrochemicals giant Ineos has been fined £400,000 after gas leaked from a cracked pipe creating a potentially explosive cloud over its Grangemouth site.
The incident on 2 May 2017 sparked a full-scale emergency response as 17,000 tonnes of flammable gas leaked from the 10-inch corroded pipe.
Roads surrounding the area were closed and the area evacuated as on-site firefighters deployed special hoses to create a wall of water to prevent the ethylene gas from reaching the plant’s furnaces and exploding.
Despite the size of the leak, which was equivalent to 26 Olympic-sized swimming pools, no gas was detected outside the perimeter of the plant itself and all 97 personnel were ushered to safety.
The site’s owners, Ineos Chemicals, admitted safety inspections failed to identify
corrosion of the pipe during a hearing at Falkirk Sheriff Court.
The court heard that ethylene cracker at Grangemouth had been re-commissioned in 2016 to process methane from the United States for use in the production of plastics.
The plant contained more than 17,500 lines of pipe, and the section that failed had been wrongly identified as not high risk and therefore not subjected to insulation strips as part of a regular inspection programme.
This allowed a process called "chloride-induced stress load corrosion cracking", which may have been caused by sea salt.
Investigators from the Health and Safety Executive and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service(copfs) later learned that the alarm was raised by an employee who heard what he believed to be safety valves being triggered automatically. Following the case, Alistair Duncan, head of the Health and Safety Investigation Unit of COPFS, said: "The risks at high hazard sites such as this cannot be understated and the failings on the part of the company to maintain an effective maintenance regime underlines that duty holders should take nothing for granted. Hopefully this prosecution and the sentence will remind other duty holders that failure to fulfil their obligations can have serious consequences and that they will be held to account for their failings."