Back on Monday (May 15) yet another in a long string of fire incidents occurred at the Marathon Refinery in Texas City. Sadly, this incident has resulted in one fatality as of the time this is written.
Back in the late ‘70s this refinery still belonged to Amoco. One of my early projects at MW Kellogg was a study of the Refinery’s pressure relief system. Over the years, they had done many debottlenecking projects to increase product capacity but had never looked at their overpressure protection.
The study found that the overpressure protection was far short of what it needed to be.
During the study I made several visits to the plant. I can tell you that the Amoco Refinery was the only plant I feared setting foot into in my 46-year career.
Meanwhile, in other important news, the Sooner Softballers will take on Missouri this afternoon in the second round of the NCAA Regionals. It will be televised by ESPN+. I am not a subscriber so I will miss this one.