BP Facing up to $3 Million in Fines in Ohio Refinery Explosion

Just months after BP was slapped with a $87.4 million fine for its failure to fix serious safety issues at its Texas City refinery, the oil giant is looking at up to $3 million in fines for violations at its Toledo, Ohio refinery.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has announced that it has found dozens of violations at the Ohio refinery. According to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, BP has "no excuse for taking chances with people's lives." According to an OSHA memo, investigators found safety concerns with pressure relief valves similar to those present at the Texas City refinery, just before the fatal explosion in 2005. That explosion killed 15 BP workers, and injured 180 people.

This is the latest in a series of fines and penalties levied on BP's US operations. 

• We last reported that BP was fined $87.4 million by OSHA after investigators found that the company had failed to fix problems at the Texas City refinery.
• In 2009, the company pleaded guilty to violations of the US Clean Air Act, after a spillage of more than 212,000 gallons of oil on Alaska's North Slope.
• Also last year, the company paid $50 million in fines, and pleaded guilty to a criminal violation of the US Clean Air Act in the Texas City Explosion.
• All of these are besides the more than $2 billion that the company has paid out to families of victims of the Texas City refinery explosion and the persons injured in that tragedy.

We have acted as Texas refinery explosion lawyers on behalf of some of the victims of the Texas City explosion. BP may insist that OSHA has been unnecessarily harsh by categorizing so many of its violations as "willful violations". The fact however, is what any refinery explosion lawyer familiar with BP and its facilities, will tell you. These facilities have a record of severe safety violations, and failure to correct these issues to keep workers safe. These are not the kind of facilities we would ever wish to work in, and it's unfortunate that a company that makes billions of dollars in profits every year, cannot isolate the resources needed to make its refineries safer for workers.

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