Texas explosions show chemical industry stretched to its limits
In its devastatingly slow crawl up the industrial Gulf Coast, Hurricane Harvey is proving to be the biggest test yet of the safety and vulnerabilities of the U.S. chemicals industry.
A Houston-area chemical plant was hit by explosions overnight after floods caused by Harvey-knocked-out power supplies needed to refrigerate volatile peroxides. Fifteen police officers were treated at the hospital for smoke irritation from the plant. Earlier evacuations of the site and surrounding community prevented more serious injuries. The plant is owned by French chemical company Arkema.
The remaining chemicals will eventually burn up in the fire, Richard Rennard, a company president, told reporters Thursday.
“It is not anything we think is a danger to the community at all,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a news conference early Thursday. U.S. Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency are monitoring the disaster. No concentrations of toxic materials have raised any concerns at this point, the EPA said in a statement.
The incident underscored the risks confronting the industry after dozens of chemical plants shut down in the path of the storm from South Texas to Louisiana, knocking out more than half of U.S. production of some of the most-used chemicals and plastics.
With its crucial access to ports for shipping and receiving, the Gulf Coast is the epicenter of the nation’s chemical industry, where many of the materials indispensable to modern society are produced. The plants provide the basic building blocks for making everything from cars and computers to household furnishings and appliances.
The massive industrial centers also deal with complex chemical processes that pose hazards from lethal explosions to toxic spills when things go wrong. The danger is greatest when plants are shutting down and starting up.
“That is when bad things happen,” said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, chief energy officer at the University of Houston.
Gulf Coast chemical plants are designed to withstand hurricane-force winds and floods, but Harvey has put the industry into uncharted territory, Sam Mannan, director of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University, which studies plant safety.
The newest plants come with sensors and control towers that provide multiple barriers to prevent accidents, Krishnamoorti said. But some plants are 60 years old, and the average age is about 30 years, he said. While large operators such as ExxonMobil are constantly updating their facilities, much more work remains needs to be done — especially if they’re going to withstand the kinds of floods brought by Harvey.
“We want to be good, not just lucky,’’ Krishnamoorti said.
Though plants have been dealing with a multitude of problems and there have been no serious injuries, the crisis is far from over. It will take weeks, if not months, for all the plants to assess damage, make repairs and restart operations in the wake of the floods.
True test of safety systems
“This whole thing is testing how well we have thought through our safety systems and programs and how robust the plants are,” said Mannan. “I don’t know if anybody is ready for this level of flooding.”
Harvey made landfall on Aug. 26 and has brought torrential rain and historic flooding along the Gulf Coast, knocking out almost a quarter of U.S. refining capacity. While Harvey’s shut down of U.S. crude processing capacity has grabbed headlines and led to spiking gasoline prices, less known is the storm’s outsize impact on chemical production.
“It seems like Harvey came with a plan to follow the chemical industry on the Gulf Coast,” said Mannan.
About 61 percent of U.S. ethylene production had been halted because of Harvey as of Wednesday afternoon, according to PetroChemwire. The storm has closed about 51 percent of U.S. capacity for making polyethylene, the world’s most used plastic resin, according to Kevin McCarthy, an equity analyst at Vertical Research Partners. As much as 65 percent of polypropylene production and one-third of chlorine output may cease, or run at reduced rates, according to consultant IHS Markit.