Investigators Find Welds on Refinery Pipes Faulty

State investigators tested at least 25 welds on piping at the Shell Oil Co. refinery in Carson and found them all faulty in a unit that would have carried very hot and highly flammable petroleum liquids, union officials said.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health discovered the bad welds during an investigation this week into work performed during a routine overhaul of the refinery’s so-called coking unit by two contractors, Brown & Root and Cooperheat Inc., said Kim Wiese of Local 1-128 of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers International Union.

Had Cal/OSHA not been called in, “those pipes were OKd to go into service and could have endangered employees,” said Wiese, local representative of the union, which represents about 320 to 340 Shell workers.

Cal/OSHA spokesman Richard Rice confirmed the investigation but declined to say what it had turned up. He would say only that Cal/OSHA was looking into allegations that Cooperheat failed to perform hardness tests to ensure the completeness of the welds made by Brown & Root workers.

Rice said Cal/OSHA could expand its investigation into work done by the contractors at other Southern California refineries.

“The potential is there for major problems,” said a source familiar with the investigation. “You’re dealing with flammables and explosives.” The source added that Cooperheat had been asked for records detailing work it had performed at other area refineries.

Word of the investigation comes at a time when critics are questioning the oil and chemical industry’s safety record in the nation’s refineries, and union officials have singled out the use of contract workers as a contributing factor. Industry and contractor officials have denied a safety problem.

A spokesman for Cooperheat, which is based in New Jersey and has an office in Long Beach, declined to comment on the investigation.

In Houston, Shell spokeswoman Dee Dee Taylor said the company’s routine auditing and testing procedures turned up “a problem with a contractor’s weld-testing procedures.”

“However,” she added, “we want to emphasize that the integrity of the welds was never in question.” If there was a problem and “Cal/OSHA hadn’t found it, we would have found it in our testing and we would not have started the unit,” she said.

A spokesman for Brown & Root in Houston also denied there was a problem with the welds, saying X-rays of 10% of the welds showed them to be sound.

Brown & Root, one of the nation’s largest engineering, construction and general management contractors, has done work in the Atlantic Richfield Co. refinery in Carson and the Texaco refinery in Wilmington, but the bulk of its work locally is done for Shell, said Joe M. Stevens, a Brown & Root vice president in Houston.

Cooperheat also has done work at the Arco refinery and at other area refineries.

Albert Greenstein, a spokesman for Arco, said Brown & Root had performed work on “just about every major construction project at the plant in recent years.” He added that the company used Cooperheat for occasional work. He said the company was not aware of any problems with either contractor’s work at the Arco refinery.

Texaco officials were not available for comment.

Shell’s 125,000-barrel-per-day crude oil refinery employs about 600 workers.

The welds in question were made on piping in the coker or coking unit, which heats heavy liquids left over after the initial distillation of crude oil to extract gas, gasoline and distillates and to leave behind coke, a nearly pure form of carbon. Temperatures within a coker can exceed 1,400 degrees, Wiese said.

The piping was being installed during a routine “turnaround,” or shutdown of operations to perform maintenance and repairs. None of the newly welded pipes had ever been placed in operation.

The investigation was prompted by a complaint Cal/OSHA received on March 19, Rice said. Brown & Root’s Stevens said the complaint came from a Cooperheat employee.

Specifically, Cal/OSHA is investigating Cooperheat’s work in “stress-relieving” the welds. That is work performed after welds are made. Cooperheat workers heat a pipe to very high temperatures and hold it there for a specified period of time, then gradually reduce the temperature to normal. The heating and cooling is designed to relieve stress on the welds and to reduce their brittleness, industry observers said.

Wiese said Cooperheat certified the welds it stress-relieved. But, he said, Cal/OSHA subsequently came in and performed its own tests three times on each of 25 welds--and found them all to be faulty.

Although the investigation centers on Cooperheat’s work, Rice added that if the welds were found to be bad, it would also call into question the quality of Brown & Root’s welding. “Any kind of pressure-bearing piping, if a weld were to fail and it were carrying a flammable liquid, there would be a potential for a fire,” he said.

Stevens at Brown & Root defended his company’s work. “As far as we know, the welds are good. We tested the welds, and we have the X-rays to back them up.”

Although Shell officials would not comment on the current investigation, the refinery’s health and safety manager defended the plant’s safety record in an interview earlier this week.

“In my experience, Shell has sufficient safeguards, auditing procedures and assurances in place to avoid a situation where we have people out there doing unsafe acts,” said health and safety manager Aamir Farid. “We check them up front, we run spot checks and field checks, and we require immediate corrective action.”

Shell has had at least two accidents at the plant in the past two months. On March 15, a fire broke out in the plant’s alkylation unit while employees were removing liquids from a large vessel. The vessel apparently ruptured during the process, and escaping vapors ignited. Fourteen people were given first aid treatment. The cause of the accident is still under investigation, Farid said.

On March 17, a contract worker was electrocuted while working on an electrical substation in the plant. Cal/OSHA is investigating that accident as well.