Explosion Rocks Texas Oil Refinery

An explosion leveled a portion of a massive oil refinery Wednesday, killing at least 14 people, injuring more than 100 and sending plumes of smoke billowing over the Texas coastline.

Don Parus, manager of the BP refinery, said some employees were still unaccounted for. Workers continued combing through the rubble for bodies Wednesday night.

“Words cannot begin to express how I and the people of BP feel right now,” Parus said.

The explosion tore through the 1,200-acre BP oil refinery in Texas City, about 40 miles southeast of Houston.

The facility, the third-largest in the nation, can process as much as 437,000 barrels of crude oil each day. Enough gasoline is produced at the refinery to fill a car every seven seconds.

The heat from the blast was so powerful that several cars in a nearby parking lot exploded.

As helicopters arrived to pick up the wounded, stunned employees streamed onto the grounds surrounding the plant. Some sprawled on the grass, still wearing their blue hard hats.

The fire from the explosion had been extinguished by nightfall. A portion of the plant was reduced to pile of smoldering, gnarled metal.

The blast was felt as far as five miles away. Buildings shuddered, windows broke and merchandise fell from store shelves.

“The devastation is horrendous,” said Mike Land, Texas City mayor pro-tem. “It is a terrible blow, not only to BP but to the city.”

Shanee Jones, 27, was cooking shrimp in her apartment when she felt the explosion. She dashed outside, looked toward the plant and saw smoke.

“Dark, dark smoke like I’ve never seen before,” she said. “It shook the whole city.”

Many residents do not like living in the shadow of such a massive plant, Jones added.

“We live in fear every day,” she said. “One wrong move and Texas City could go up in smoke.”

Pedro Albaladejo, a parts consultant at a car dealership down the road from the BP plant, said the explosion sounded like a bomb going off.

“We went outside and there was a big ball of fire, maybe 500 feet in the air,” he said.

The cause of the explosion was unknown, BP spokesman Hugh Depland said Wednesday night.

Law enforcement officials were investigating whether terrorism was a possibility, but stressed that they were doing so only as a matter of course.

“We have no reason to believe that this was caused deliberately,” Depland said. “The potential of a terrorist act is not a prime focus of anybody’s investigation.”

News of the accident came as regular-session trading was ending at the New York Mercantile Exchange, where crude oil prices had fallen over the course of the day while gasoline prices had fluctuated.

In after-hours trading, as the severity of the explosion became clear, gasoline for April delivery jumped to a record high of $1.608 a gallon before easing off.

Oil futures jumped more than 1% to $54.50 a barrel.

“Besides the human element, this will have a market impact,” said Mark Baxter, director of the Maguire Energy Institute in Dallas. “Having that refinery down will affect the whole United States.”

Andy Lipow, a consultant and former trader in Houston, said he believed that the market overreacted.

BP officials said Wednesday night that most of the plant remained operational. The plant runs 30 processing units around the clock.

Parus said the explosion took place in a part of the facility where materials were produced that raised the octane levels of gasoline.

Texas City was founded around the sprawling petrochemical industry that dominates this pocket of the Gulf Coast. BP is the biggest refinery, employing about 2,000 people, one-third of whom live in Texas City.

The company contributes about $35 million to the local tax base and says its employees earn, collectively, $185 million each year.

Land said that he and his family -- like countless others in the city of 45,000 -- were anxiously awaiting word on the identities of those killed or injured.

“I’ve been here all my life,” he said. “I’m sure I will know people, just like everybody else will.”

Representatives from the FBI, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Texas Commission on Environmental Safety arrived to investigate.

Environmental officials were testing the air quality around the plant; several chemicals and solvents were likely released in the explosion.

The Texas City area has had numerous industrial accidents over the years.

The worst industrial accident in the nation’s history took place in 1947 in Galveston Bay, when a ship containing 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded. More than 500 people died and thousands were injured. The blast generated a tidal wave that tossed cars and destroyed buildings.

Last March, the BP plant was evacuated for several hours after a furnace ruptured, releasing flammable vapors that ignited. OSHA fined the refinery $63,000 for safety violations, citing inadequate employee training.

In September, two employees at the plant died after they were burned by superheated water. BP is contesting a $109,500 fine OSHA imposed for the accident.

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Times staff writer Elizabeth Douglass and researcher Lynn Marshall contributed to this report.