In the wake of the 3 June gas explosion at WA’s Varanus Island, the flow-on effects of which Prime Minister Kevin Rudd warns could be felt across Australia, Crikey has received two illuminating insider accounts of the energy situation in WA (pics included!).

An anonymous Western Australian gas worker writes:

How did the big bang occur last week? The pipe that feeds Western Australia burst due to it corroding down to the thickness of a match stick (as the pictures below show).

Too much pressure, too many idiots, and money, money, money — it could have been prevented!

We had 166 people on the island, and lucky enough not one was injured. But fark, we ran for our lives as it was really, really, really scary.

It does not feel good to be back here so soon (five days later) and the place is quiet — there’s no noise, nothing. Just us hitting spanners etc.

The bl-ody tossers. This could of been prevented if they inspected the pipe like they should do. I hope the state of WA sues these seppos (Apache is an American company) a-ses off.

I’m not sure if I really wanna be here when it’s up and running again (which will be months away) as there is a lot of damage.

Here are some pictures of the area:

 After the explosion  

 The damaged pipes 

 A piece of pipe  

  The corroded pipe

Meanwhile, Crikey received this anonymous tip today:

With the gas crisis starting to seriously impact on WA, it reminds me of how other critical infrastructure services are being maintained in WA. As this gas example shows, it only takes catastrophic failure of one piece of equipment to severely disrupt the nation’s economy and endanger people’s lives.

About five years ago, someone realised that several heat exchangers were not designed for their operating conditions on several of the units at the BP Refinery in Kwinana. Some work was done to check the compliance of about 40 heat exchangers. About 90% of those that were investigated did not meet the pressure vessel code for some reason or other. Several of these contain fluids that are above autoignition temperature during normal operation (ie they will catch on fire if the heat exchanger leaks and the oil is exposed to air).

There have also been several reported cases of these heat exchangers leaking during start up resulting in flames ‘licking’ along the joints as the oil oozes out. Standard practice in these situations is to tighten the bolts with a bigger spanner — not exactly the professional sort of response that I’d expect from a responsible company. There is also a well documented history of internal components in several of these exchangers failing in service.

Despite this issue being highlighted with senior safety staff, senior mechanical engineers and senior operations staff; the few short term mitigation steps that were recommended took over a year to be implemented for the worst offenders and not at all for most heat exchangers. A current global capital shortage within BP has resulted in nearly all long term improvements being deferred until more money is available.

The questions that I think would be worth asking BP are:

  • Are there any heat exchangers at the Kwinana Refinery that do not meet Australian Standards?
  • How long has BP known about this?
  • What work has been done to determine the possible consequences of failure and what are these possible consequences?
  • What mitigation measures have been put in place? How long did it take to implement these measures after the risks were identified?
  • What fraction of the heat exchangers investigated didn’t meet the applicable safety standards?
  • What has BP done to determine that there aren’t other exchangers on the refinery that also fail these codes?
  • How has BP guaranteed that these exchangers do not pose a risk personal safety and the supply of petroleum products to WA?