BP Failures to Ensure Safety May Lead to Major Accidents – Greenpeace

BP failures in managing critical engineering information increase the risk of major accidents at the company’s oil plants across the world, a confidential internal report by the Greenpeace said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The report that involves interviews with more than 150 stakeholders at nine BP sites was prepared in partnership with IBM and the WorleyParsons engineering company in August 2015. More than a year later it leaked to the Greenpeace's Energydesk website.

The report revealed about 75 incidents resulted from mismanagement of engineering information. Such incidents are said to lead to annual losses amounting to $180 million.

"The conclusion is urgent attention is required to resolve the engineering information integrity issues," the report said.

Robert Bea, renowned safety expert and former BP consultant, told Energydesk that the identified problems were similar to those, which were revealed more than a decade ago.

"It is clear that BP have again failed to act on recommendations and address the issues raised. These failures could have very serious effects on the safety of the refinery operations. These failures could have very serious effects on the safety of the refinery operations," Bea said.

A BP spokesperson denied the accusation of lacking safety at BP facilities.

"BP is dedicated to continuous safety improvement and is introducing new training programs, deploying innovative technologies, and strengthening its safety culture – all in an effort to provide overlapping layers of protection," the spokesperson said, adding that over the last five years BP managed to improve safety at its sites.

The most well-known accident at BP facilities is the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which resulted in deaths of 11 people and spilling 4.3 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.