Posted By D H
Andy - as I remember - Total made a statement to the effect that the accident was down to "negligence" - but they followed that up by saying the negligence was the fault of the supervisor.

With what I have seen, I cannot see how Total can get away with this!

The failure of basic controls etc and the fact that the supervisor had to be there - big site - other duties etc.

To try and blame the supervisor was a big ask.

Will certainly set case law in future IMO .

Dave

Posted By jom
Joint venture?

Partners seeking to share costs?

We've been here before.

Longford.

JV between BHP and Esso. Esso were the operational partner, BHP were a financial partner. Esso was prosecuted and sued for damages.

BHP sued Esso for revenue losses.

Esso sued BHP for a share of the costs of litigations.

Must be fascinating stuff for commercial lawyers, but not really relevant for safety and future prevention.

We still don't know why the overflow at Buncefield came about.

John.

Posted By jom
John,
You said "...we still don't know how the overflow at Buncefield came about."

I can't access the latest report - HSE Buncefield page not responding - but I thought there was a fairly clear view of the sequence of events.

Fuel pumped into tank
Failure of high level alarms(s)
Contents overflow round gaps in floating roof
Product runs down side of tank, hits structural members with generation of vapor cloud
Vapour cloud "escapes" from perimeter of site and raches location where electrics are not intrinsically safe with obvious, expected consequence - explosion/fire

Phil,

What you say is mostly correct (except it was a fixed roof tank with a floating deck on top of the petrol; and explosion was not expected from a vapour cloud).

What I'm referring to is the failures that allowed the tank to overfill.

HSE have revealed that the ultimate high level switch was not operational. However, such a device is a last ditch defence, don't you think? It should be operational but it shouldn't be called upon. Other systems ought come into play before the level reaches the "ultimate" hi level switch.

HSE also reveal that the tank level instrumentation was indicating that the level was static at two-thirds full, while it was actually rising.

There must be procedures in place that control the safe transfer of a large shipment of fuel from a distant source by cross country pipeline. What those procedures were and how they failed hasn't been revealed.

I don't know if anything about the procedures was revealed in the recent civil case.

John.