Phillips explosion of 2000

At approximately 1:22 p.m. CT on March 27, 2000, an explosion and fire responsible for one death and 71 injuries occurred at Phillips Petroleum's Houston Chemical Complex at 1400 Jefferson Road, Pasadena, Texas 77506. The fire produced huge plumes of black smoke that spread over the heavily industrialized Houston Ship Channel and neighboring residential areas.

The explosion occurred at the K-Resin facility and involved a type of plastic made with butadiene. At the time of the explosion, the tank was out of service for cleaning and had no pressure or temperature gauges that would have provided the workers with an alert to the approaching crisis. Ultimately, this explosion resulted in one fatality, while 32 Phillips Petroleum employees and 39 subcontractors were taken to local hospitals for sustaining burns, smoke inhalation, and cuts from debris.

It took search crews five hours to locate the body of a missing employee in the rubble. The dead man was Rodney Gott, a 45-year-old supervisor, who barely survived the Phillips Disaster of 1989. At that time Gott was in a building whose roof collapsed but he remained in the blazing plant to save a woman and attend to the injured.

Phillips Petroleum Company

Phillips Petroleum Co. was an American oil company incorporated in 1917 that expanded into petroleum refining, marketing and transportation, natural gas gathering and the chemicals sectors.

On August 30, 2002, Conoco Inc. merged with Phillips Petroleum to form ConocoPhillips, becoming the third largest integrated energy company and second-largest refining company in the United States. The company moved its headquarters to Houston.

In 2012, ConocoPhillips split into two separate companies. The legacy company kept its name, and spun off the midstream and downstream portions of its business. The new company, which owns the refinery, chemical and pipeline assets formerly held in ConocoPhillips, is named Phillips 66, the brand name and trademark used by the original Phillips Petroleum from 1930 until the 2002 ConocoPhillips merger.

History

It was incorporated 13 June 1917 by brothers Lee Eldas "L.E." and Frank Phillips, of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, U.S.A. Their younger brother, Waite Phillips, was the benefactor of Philmont Scout Ranch. The company was headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Phillips disaster of 1989

The Phillips disaster was a devastating series of explosions and fire on October 23, 1989, near the Houston Ship Channel in Pasadena, Texas, USA. The initial blast registered 3.5 on the Richter scale, and the conflagration took 10 hours to bring under control. Twenty-three employees were killed and 314 injured.

Prior to the disaster

The facility produced approximately 15,000,000,000 pounds (6,800,000 t) per year of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), a plastic material used to make milk bottles and other containers. The Houston Chemical Complex (HCC) facility had 905 company employees and approximately 600 daily contract employees, who were engaged primarily in regular maintenance activities and new plant construction.

Cause

The accident resulted from a release of extremely flammable process gases that occurred during regular maintenance operations on one of the plant's polyethylene reactors. More than 85,000 pounds (39 t) of highly flammable gases were released through an open valve almost instantaneously.