Refinery Blast Still Under Investigation

ANACORTES - When Mike Cade finished his 12-hour shift at the sprawling Equilon refinery here on the evening of Nov. 24, one of the giant steel drums at the coker unit where he worked remained sealed. Operators appeared worried about the high temperature of the oily residue inside.

The next day, the day before Thanksgiving, Cade's 23-year-old brother Ted was working in the same coker when the OK was given to open the drum and clean out the residue. An explosion and fire erupted, killing Ted Cade and five other men working there.

"My thought has been, I wish it had been me," says Mike Cade, a burly 30-year-old sometimes mistaken as his younger brother's twin.

The opening of the drum may have brought oxygen into contact with a pocket of volatile gas or liquid trapped inside, igniting the hot fuel, according to national experts and some coker workers at the plant.

The cause of the devastating explosion Nov. 25 is under investigation. Equilon may release preliminary results of its probe this week, company spokesman Lee Reagin said. The state Department of Labor and Industries; the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union; and the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board also are investigating.

Killed in the explosion and fire were Equilon employees Ron Granfors and Wayne Dowe, and Western Plant Services workers Cade, Jim Berlin, Warren Fry and Dave Murdzia.

Western Plant Services (WPS) manager Tim Erickson, whose

workers helped operate the coker unit, said the fire appears to have occurred after workers removed a lid from the top of the coke drum and were unsealing the larger bottom lid, held in place by 72 bolts.

Equilon contracts with WPS to open the drum and clean out the coke - a charcoal-like residue used as fuel by aluminum smelters.

The scenario of a rush of oxygen into a pocket of hot fuel still leaves unanswered questions about events leading up to the fire, which took place as the refinery was recovering from a power outage the previous day.

Families may take action

Families of the victims are preparing for possible legal action. They are represented by a Seattle law firm that last year won an $8 million judgment against the refinery after a 1994 accident in which a worker was paralyzed.

David Beninger, a partner in the firm, said his staff is working with state investigators to learn whether the equipment was working properly and safety guidelines were followed.

"We're trying to see whether somebody didn't follow a procedure or whether there should have been a procedure in place that wasn't," Beninger said. "The whole idea really is to keep this from happening again . . . and to hold people accountable."

The accident hit hard for the three generations of Cades who live together in a cozy country house in Bow, a small town in northern Skagit County.

While they await word on the cause of the explosion, Cade and his mother, Ada, are helping his brother's widow, Aimiee, care for her sons, Chayce, 15 months, and Drew, 3 months.

Undercurrent of danger

Cade and other refinery workers said there always is an undercurrent of danger in their jobs. Between 1992 and 1997, 55 oil refinery workers across the United States died on the job, 18 in explosions or fires, federal statistics show.

At the Anacortes refinery, a woman was killed in 1996 when a 700-pound cover blew off a refinery unit and struck her. At that time, the refinery was operated by Texaco, which built the plant in 1958. It is now owned by Equilon, formed in January as part of a $17 billion merger of the refining and marketing operations of Shell and Texaco.

As long as everything ran smoothly, Cade said, he and co-workers felt relatively safe.

"At a refinery, normal is good," he said. "Anything that isn't normal isn't good."

The coker where the Cade brothers worked - technically called a Delayed Coking Unit - consists of two giant steel drums that are pressurized and fed with a high-speed jet of oil heated to more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

The intense heat and pressure "crack" the oil into vapors, which are sucked out through the top of the drum and later refined into gasoline, propane and other fuels.

As the vapors rise, heavier particles crystallize and collect in the drum, forming a charcoal-like residue called petroleum coke.

When one drum fills with coke, the hot-oil feed is switched to an empty drum, and water and steam are used to cool the full one.

At that point, Equilon employees give WPS workers written permission to unseal the full drum and cut out the coke residue with a high-pressure water drill.

The coke is sold for about $50 a ton to aluminum smelters, which use it as a fuel, said Erickson.

On a normal day, the work at the coker is hot and dirty. Coke-cutters wear dark-blue flame-retardant coveralls, hard hats, leather or rubber gloves and steel-toe boots. They strap on respirators to keep out the coke dust and any gases released when the bottom of the drum is unsealed.

Some refineries now use an electronic device to remove the top and bottom lids from coker drums. But the Equilon refinery's coker - which started operating in 1984 - still requires workers to remove the lids' bolts with a large pneumatic air wrench.

Day was far from normal

When Mike Cade arrived at the refinery at 7 a.m. on Nov. 24, the situation was far from normal, he said. Everyone was "running around" trying to start up operations shut down after windstorms caused a power outage the night before.

The crew opened and cut the coke out of the so-called B drum, which was full and being cooled when the power was lost. But there were concerns about the temperature inside the A drum, Cade said.

Throughout his shift, Cade said, the crew was told it might open and clean out the A drum. The A drum had been about an hour into the 15-hour cycle during which the coke fills it. But Equilon operators remained concerned about the safety of opening the drum, Cade said.

It was the A drum that exploded the next day.

Reagin, the Equilon spokesman, declined to comment on conditions at the coker the day of the blast.

While emergency batteries kept instruments running, and the power came back on two hours later, it would take days to bring the whole refinery back on line.

Refinery operations are at their most unstable during shutdowns and startups, said Equilon President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Morgan.

Each step in filling, cooling and opening a drum is critical, said Paul Ellis, technical manager for Great Lakes Carbon's refineries and a national expert.

Normally, fuels are stripped out of the drum by heat, and the coke residue is cooled with a deluge of water and steam before the drum is opened.

Fredrix Washington, a California refinery consultant, said a pocket of volatile fuels normally sucked out the top of the drum might have been trapped inside and inadequately cooled before the drum was opened.

Ellis said workers may have had problems cooling all the material in the A drum if the power outage allowed the oily sludge inside to settle and plug up channels through which steam and water usually run during the cool-down stage.

Monitors for operators

The coker operators should have had monitors feeding them data about the temperature and pressure conditions inside, Ellis said.

The men who worked the coker were safety-conscious and wouldn't have opened the drum if they believed it was too dangerous, said Luis Negrete, who tests coke at the Equilon refinery for a Canadian aluminum company.

Negrete wondered whether an equipment failure played a role in the fire - everyone at the unit was well-trained and should have been able to determine when it was safe to open the coke drum, he said.

"They've had other power outages, and everything has come back like it's supposed to," Negrete said.

State investigators are checking equipment at the site, but are not releasing information until their investigation is complete. Their probe is expected to take several more weeks.

The results of the investigation will be watched closely by other refineries that have cokers, Ellis said.

"This sort of shakes everybody up in the industry until they figure out what's going on," he said.

When Mike Cade left the refinery at 7 p.m. on Nov. 24, he said, operators remained concerned about the conditions inside the A drum - and it sat unopened.

So far, Equilon officials and state investigators aren't saying why the decision was made to open the drum the next day or who made the decision.

Les Brown, a worker at the coker unit, wants to know exactly what led to the deaths of six friends and co-workers and left a community in shock.

"That's the main thing," Brown said. "We're not pointing any fingers. We just want to know what happened."

Seattle Times researcher Vince Kueter contributed to this report.

Jim Brunner's phone message number is 425-745-7808. His e-mail address is: jbrunner@seattletimes.com ------------------------------- From crude to coke: how oil is refined

At a refinery, crude oil oil is separated into gasoline and other products by being piped through hot furnaces. Here is what happens:

1. During heating, liquids and vapors are discharged into distillation towers where they separete according to molecular weight and boiling point. (Some products, such as jet fuel and asphalt base, require little additional processing.)

2. Fluid catalytic cracker is the basic gasoline-making process. Heavy hydrocarbon molecules are "cracked" into smaller gasoline molecules through catalytic action using a powedered catalyst, which speeds the process.

3. In the Delayed Coking Unit heavy vacuum-reduced crude oil is baked at more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit, capturing usable fuels and leaving a "coke," a a charcoal-like residue used in aluminum smelting.

Sources: Reporting by Jim Brunner and research by Karen Kerchelich ------------------------------- Delayed Coking Unit:

In a 15-hour cycle, heavy oil - from which most of the usable fuel already has been extracted - is heated to get more fuel. Here is how:

4. Oil is pumped into a furnace and heated to more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit. The oil boiling and partly vaporized - is shot at speeds of up to 150 mph through a line into the bottom of one of the two coke drums.

5. Heat "cracks" the oil molecules, producing fuel vapors that get pushed out of a line in the top of the unit. The vapors are collected and refined into fuels such as gasoline and diesel fuel. The leftover material crystallizes into a charcoal-like residue called petroleum coke.

6. After 15 hours, the first drum fills up with coke, and the hot oil feed is switched over to begin filling the second coke drum. Meanwhile, steam and water are injected into the full drum to cool.

7. The water is drained, then workers unbolt the top and bottom covers of teh drum. A high-pressure water drill cuts a "pilot hole" through the center of teh coke. The drill bvit is then switched to one that blasts horizontally, cutting th ecoke out in chunkcs that fall int a pit at the bottom. After all of teh coke is cut out, the drum is resealed, stean-tested and warmed up in preparatio o be filled again. ------------------------------- THE SEATTLE TIMES