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Overflowing fuel tank, vapour cloud cited in oil depot blaze
AFP
LONDON
Petroleumworld.com 05 10 06
An overflowing fuel tank created a giant vapour cloud that apparently exploded at an oil depot in Britain, creating the biggest industrial fire in peacetime Europe, an official report found Tuesday.
Safety mechanisms failed to stop the petrol from spilling out of the tank in the minutes before the massive blast and blaze, which devastated the Buncefield oil depot near Hemel Hempstead, northwest of London, on December 11.
The report aimed to identify how the inferno, in which 43 people were injured, occurred rather than apportion the blame for fear of prejudicing any future legal action.
Taf Powell, who is heading the investigation, said unleaded petrol spilled out of the storage tank for 40 minutes before the early morning blast.
The fuel had been pumped into the container since the previous evening but at 3:00 am on December 11 a gauge stuck and incorrectly showed the pumping had ceased, said the report by the Buncefield Major Investigation Board.
At about 5:20 am, the tank began to overflow out of breather holes on the roof. A huge vapour cloud grew over the site before the explosion at 6:01 am.
Investigators were unable to say what ignited the escaped vapour because the subsequent damage to the site was so severe, Powell said.
But he noted the most likely explanation was that a spark had been generated from a pump-house on the site or a generator in a nearby car park.
"The investigation has identified that it was tank 912 ... from which the fuel escaped," Powell said as the report was made public.
He outlined the failure of safety mechanisms to spot the overflow.
"The separate high-level protection system which should have automatically closed the valves to prevent overfilling did not operate," Powell said.
The chief investigator, however, declined to say whether alarms had sounded in the control room once the fuel started to spill over or whether operators had made errors in failing to spot the problem.
He estimated that around 300 tonnes of unleaded petrol leaked out prior to the blast, forming the vapour cloud.
"Eyewitness accounts and closed circuit television footage show a white mist emerging from (the site) at 5:38 am and spreading out, initially to the west and then in all directions," Powell said.
The main blast was followed by a series of smaller blasts, according to the report, which was unable to explain the sheer size of the initial eruption.
"Technically, the least understood part of the sequence of events is the violence of the explosion," Powell said.
The depot, jointly run by the French oil company Total and Texaco, part of the US oil giant Chevron Corporation, had a capacity of 150,000 tonnes of fuel, which was distributed to airports in the London area.
AFP 05 09 06 1535 GMT
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