OSHA Fines Louisiana Refinery $173K

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued citations to Calumet Shreveport Lubricants & Waxes LLC in Shreveport, La., for 22 alleged serious violations and two alleged repeat violations of federal health and safety regulations. Penalties total $173,000.

Dorinda Folse, OSHA’s area director in Baton Rouge, La., said it’s not the first time the company has been flagged for jeopardizing employee safety.

OSHA’s Baton Rouge Area Office began its inspection Feb. 23 at the company’s facility in Shreveport as part of the agency’s Petroleum Refinery Process Safety Management National Emphasis Program. The PSM program is intended to prevent or minimize the consequences of a catastrophic release of toxic, reactive, flammable or explosive highly hazardous chemicals from a process. A process is any activity or combination of activities including any use, storage, manufacturing, handling or the onsite movement of highly hazardous chemicals.

Serious violations found include failing to provide accurate process safety information for piping and instrumentation diagrams, conduct incident investigations, provide written operating procedures, resolve recommended actions resulting from compliance audits, and adequately address the citing of control rooms and employees working in process units.

Two repeat violations have been cited for failing to update process safety information when changes occur and to act on findings of potential overpressures for occupied structures stemming from process hazard analyses for the period from 1998 to 2009. OSHA defines a repeat violation as one where the employer previously has been cited for the same or similar hazard within the past three years.

In September 2007, OSHA cited Calumet Shreveport Lubricant & Waxes for willful, serious and repeat violations totaling $122,400. Calumet, an operating subsidiary of Calumet Specialty Products Partners LP, employs about 600 workers total, and operates two additional refineries in northwest Louisiana as well as facilities in Texas, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

Source: OSHA