An explosion at a Utah oil refinery _ the second this year _ smashed windows, bent garage doors and peeled siding Wednesday from 10 nearby houses, officials said. Federal investigators expressed alarm over the extent of damages caused by a refinery that has had a history of trouble dating to 2003. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board was still investigating a January fire that burned for 11 hours when it dispatched a team to look at Wednesday's blast at Silver Eagle Refinery in Woods Cross, which is five miles north of Salt Lake City. In all, 10 homes were damaged, said David McSwain, president of Silver Eagle, a company that operates its only oil refinery in Woods Cross. A city building inspector condemned one house as structurally unsound after the blast shifted it off its foundation and knocked lose a roof truss, said Woods Cross Mayor Kent Parry. Officials feared the house could collapse in high winds. The blast started in a vessel, called a diesel hydrotreater, that removes sulfur compounds from diesel fuel, said Donald Holmstrom, the Chemical Safety Board's investigations supervisor. The refinery in Woods Cross had fires in 2003, 2005 and 2007, according to federal records. The board also was looking into an Oct. 21 fire at a nearby Tesoro Corp. refinery. "We're concerned about the number of refinery accidents," said Daniel Horowitz, a spokesman for the board. "Counting this case, that's eight refinery cases open right now, with three in Salt Lake. It's a number we're concerned about." The safety board, which is an investigative agency that has no regulatory or enforcement power, has faulted a decade of lax regulation by another federal agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, for recent troubles among U.S. refineries. OSHA has said it was catching up on refinery inspections. In a recent report, OSHA said that U.S. oil refineries have had more fatal or catastrophic releases of hazardous chemicals in the past 15 years than any other part of the chemical industry. Silver Eagle executives said Wednesday that their safety record was "smack in the middle" of Utah's five refineries. Continued... |