…huge potential for a large fire, explosion, or sending toxic H2S gas to atmosphere. Shell management knowingly operated like this, not wanting to sacrifice production for process safety…
Recent Problems for Shell in Central Alberta Region of Canada
BY A SHELL CANADA INSIDER
Some background on me: I used to work at the Caroline Gas Plant as an operator.
I read your online articles with great interest, as I am always interested in the corporate behavior of the company I work for, mainly in terms of HSE performance, which is something I have passion for. I believe that there is greater potential to create change from within an organization, which is one of many reasons that I work for a petroleum company while being an environmentalist and conservationist at heart. I have quit working for other companies which placed little regard in this area, based on what I experienced. Shell is NOT the worst offender in this neck of the woods, but their performance COULD be better. More recently, their performance in the region has declined as a result of cost cutting, neglect, and not practicing what they preach.
For example, the Caroline Gas Plant’s primary “A-Pool” reservoir is in pretty steep decline in recent years. The operating facilities are evolving, as new sources of gas are brought in to the plant and being processed. New sources of gas are drier, contain more CO2, and less H2S. The Caroline plant was built to process very sour gas (30-40% H2S inlet raw gas stream) and is now being optimized to run the less sour, drier (significantly lower volumes of natural gas condensate) gas. Less hydrocarbon liquids mean significantly less money being generated by the facility, and the lower sulphur content challenges the facility in terms of providing less heat (steam) in the sulphur recovery plant, which has had to co-fire significantly higher in recent years with supplemental fuel gas in order to maintain the required steam to operate the facility. Management has been mostly concerned with cutting costs and phasing out plant equipment as it is no longer required. Most of this was scheduled to happen over the course of the past year and into 2012, when it is planned to shut down one sulphur recovery train, which may have a significant effect on operational reliability, as it will become a single train operation. Plant upsets will have a much greater likelihood of creating short term flaring events in which H2S is burned at the flare stack (0% recovery: becomes emissions), instead of in the sulphur recovery unit (99% recovery, most is recovered as sulphur, which is processed and sold at market prices.) Recent culture has been of the “don’t touch F_ck all” variety, in terms of putting money into maintaining the plant equipment, especially those units which are to be decommissioned in the next year or so.
Before I quit working there, I was appalled by how often we ran our plant equipment limping along with various instrumentation protective functions (IPF) and measurement points not operational, for longer periods of time. Some operation this way is unavoidable, as performing maintenance in a running facility requires a processing facility to run without certain instrumentation at times when it needs to be repaired, maintained, or calibrated. As such, it is important to strive to retain high reliability and minimize the risks created by running in an impaired state. The Baker Report (BP disaster) has shown us this, along with all of the other collective industry experiences and learnings. They (Shell management) know this, yet the risk assessment models and processes are frequently manipulated and given “window dressing treatment” to justify to employees how they can continue to operate the facility in this impaired fashion, rather than fixing known problems in a TIMELY manner. They fully intend to perform the necessary repairs sometime, but always seem to justify why these matters do not get treated as high priority items, including shutting down equipment to repair as needed. They seem more concerned with overall reliability and staying running. This isn’t a completely bad thing, as it is important to keep a facility like this running. Shutdowns are costly, both in terms of lost revenue, as well as riskier operations in starting up and shutting down, with greater risk likelihood of environmental exceedances occurring.
We operated two consecutive liquid hydrocarbon processing portions of the plant with the level indications faulty, unreliable, or non-operational for several months, relying on one IPF function as a barrier to passing high pressure sour gas to the condensate storage tanks which would create huge potential for a large fire, explosion, or sending toxic H2S gas to atmosphere. Shell management knowingly operated like this, not wanting to sacrifice production for process safety, and instead relied on their skilled control room and unit operators to limp the facility along. During this time, there were several small flaring events, process upsets and large potential for equipment damage and greater magnitude process upsets. Our (Operations workers) wished to get these problems fixed. It went largely ignored for quite a while, but we continued to make it hard for management to ignore, by reporting ALL incidents related to this unit and mentioning the root cause in reports for the related process upsets caused by impaired instrumentation. Eventually they had no choice but to perform some stop-gap repairs, but they continued to operate for a while longer until the unit was shut down for repairs, which they cut corners on. They decided to get rid of several tower trays when several damaged top ones became inconvenient to repair. They gambled and got away with it. Mostly.
In spite of the creation of SPOG: Sundre Petroleum Operators Group. which was mostly window dressing and was actually Shell Operations people (in the Caroline Plant control room) doing the job that the ERCB (Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board), Shell was only interested in APPEARING to be a good neighbor to the area residents. Other companies in the area have the same flawed mentality. (Make it look good, and make some token efforts and donations here and there, but when it comes to the hard decisions, it is business first, environment and safety second.)
Another series of events highlighted Shell’s disregard for the public occurred when we continued to operate while creating a large odor in the area as fugitive emissions drifted from our condensate storage tanks. We had some operational issues (remember those trays they didn’t think they needed in the towers, along with the level indications not working, as well as fouled heat exchangers due to poor planning and scheduling of maintenance?) Shell told us (Operations) that the tank odors were because of the stabilizer tower operational difficulties. A few people did not believe this was the case and told them so. They ignored it as usual (they were much smarter than us) and continued to operate the stabilizer for many weeks while complaints rolled in from the public about the bad smells in the area from the aromatics and other volatile components still contained in the finished Caroline Condensate product, which were venting from the tank. Shell told the government watchdog a sob story about their process unit being in sick shape, but that every effort was being made to remedy the situation ASAP. The ERCB relented and told them we didn’t have to follow the usual protocol of phoning in every time there was a new odor complaint, due to the increased volume of calls related to this subject. We filled out the paperwork for each complaint, but did not have to phone the ERCB every time. The calls continued to come in for weeks, and the complaints stacked up, while Shell abused the slack that they were given by the watchdog agency. Eventually the ERCB caught on to this and they sort of hit the roof when they found out JUST how many people had complained and for how long. I think the ERCB would have forced them to earlier action, had they been getting the reports all along. The Alberta Government was asleep at the switch again, and the public suffered for it as usual. Eventually all other possibilities were exhausted, and Shell was forced to recognize what a few of us said all along; that IT WAS THE TANK (FLOATING ROOF) SEALS ALL ALONG that were to blame. They confirmed this (an employee broke an LSR during activity; still kept his job. Shell only seems to like firing contractors over LSR violations, but that is another story….) This tank repair would be costly and inconvenient, so the tanks would be largely bypassed, sending product straight to pipeline as much as practical.
By now, I was pretty disgusted with Shell’s conduct. The management was largely made up of good old boys who said “yes” and were lap dogs to their former boss (CAB region supervisor and former plant manager, Keith Eslinger, who left a wake of neglected plants and lots of useless “window dressing” for good PR.) With each set of new promotions, it was demonstrated that crap does float, as most of the best and brightest chose to leave or were cast from Shell when their talents and expertise were ignored and the incompetents and back-stabbing hypocrites continued to get rewarded and promoted. Rules were changed to pave the way for promoting those who “played the game” and nepotism flourished. They seemed to promote family values almost as often as they hired and promoted family members. Some of these people were very good employees, but that is not the point. Incident reports were sometimes whitewashed to the point that one fellow employee commented that “I wasn’t even sure if I was there, after reading the report.” Management insisted also on having employees choose to live in certain locations, and invested heavily in Sundre real estate while forcing some employees to live there (for business reasons.) Unethical? For sure.
I felt that we were headed for another TOP EVENT, such as the one that occurred in the past with the pipeline blow-out in the , or the produced water storage tank that was neglected and eventually blew up before its issued could be resolved. I chose to work somewhere else, because I felt that there was too much corruption and neglect to overcome, and I had watched my facility (when I started there it really wasn’t a bad place to work at all) become quite neglected and the work environment was really headed downhill at an alarming rate.
So, we’ve recently seen the following happen:
Billion-dollar gas plant shut down at Caroline: Red Deer Advocate 7 January 2011
Massive fire at Shell Shantz plant: Mountain View Gazette 7 December 2010
Shell Shantz fire related to glycol leak, say officials: Mountain View Gazette 14 December 2010
Here is some background information on the facility. They HAVE done some good things here, but have had a lot of issues, too: http://www.kirbymedia.ca/shellcabregion/pg2-3_caroline.html
Below is a report from the pipeline that leaked into the:
Caroline Pipeline Failure: Findings On Corrosion Mechanisms In Wet Sour Gas Systems Containing Significant Co2
To give credit to Shell, they have chosen not to produce that well using the river pipeline, and has remained shut in ever since the incident. The wellsite is dormant, but not abandoned.
In closing, I feel to share that it is my opinion that we the public in Alberta are too focused on working hard and making money, or choose to ignore or care because many of us would rather not jeopardize our decent standard of living and employment in the petroleum industry. The Alberta Government has not been very accountable for a LONG TIME because of too many parties splitting the vote. The Conservatives remain in power and are extremely corrupt with big business calling the shots. Corporations such as Shell have the government officials in their back pocket. A little whining every now and again when the government tries to take a bigger royalty cut or make them more accountable to the environment seems to work. They tell the same old sob story about how tough it is to make money doing what they are doing and that toughening the rules will drive a lot of business away (or under), leading to dire economic consequences for the province. This province needs to wake up and be leaders. We need stewardship and to not squander these resources we have been blessed with. We need to take care of our environment, our citizens health, and diversify our economy. The oil sands ARE a blight on the landscape, but a necessary one, so we need to be realistic and find better ways to do things. I feel cautiously optimistic about the future, as companies are VOLUNTARILY sharing tailings management technology and research, and are striving to improve and change public opinion on how they do their business up north. Not because they have to or want to, but because they are worried that it will cost them too much money if they don’t. They might be right.
I believe (and know for a fact) that there are a lot of citizens who whine and point the finger at the oil companies for all of their health and farming woes. The “squeaky wheel gets the grease”; a lot of times the oil companies will pay money to these individuals or do them favors, just to shut them up. I’ve seen and heard about it. So some people continue to try to take advantage of this. This greed unfortunately makes a lot of genuine complaints from honest people lack credibility, due to the amount of false allegations floating around. Your recent story about Donna Getz has some ring of truth to it, but I wonder a bit about the credibility of the “specialist” that Donna saw (her story sounds a little bit fishy on some levels, but perhaps it is just the way she communicates.) “Specialists” can be found to support a great many arguments, many of which are spin stories to try to get money from the oil companies. Not that Shell and other corporations don’t resort to similar sinister practices; they do, but often the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the two stories.
That being said, I firmly believe that there are some serious long term effects that are being ignored in terms of air quality and the petroleum industry. The public that live in Sherwood Park, and other municipalities that lie downwind of Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan’s refineries and petroleum plants are paying a price for living so close to industry. There is an alarmingly high occurrence of respiratory issues in this area. I am one of these people, with allergies and asthma like symptoms which I need to take medication for. It seems like just about everyone has some sort of breathing issue around there. Some days, you can smell it and see it in the air, as inversions or prevailing winds push the pollution down on nearby citizens.
Keep up the good work with the website. Keep it honest and do not get let astray in rumors. Great job so far.
We can make a difference, with our actions.
ARTICLE ENDS
Royal Dutch Shell Plc has had advance sight of this article by a Shell Canada insider and the opportunity to provide comment for publication on an unedited basis. If we receive any such response, it will be added to the article. The article was supplied without any highlighting in bold print. That has been added by us, not the insider who has provided a balanced view. Some of the information is likely to be of particular interest to Bill Campbell, the retired HSE Group Auditor of Shell International, who with his audit team, discovered the “Touch F*** All” safety culture on the Brent Bravo oil platform prior to the explosion resulting in the deaths of Shell offshore workers. Safety records were falsified with management approval.
Comment from Donna Getz
I would like to bring up lots of points such as: he chose to work in the gas field and loose his lung function, My family and I were just minding our own business on the ranch. We didn’t choose what happened to us. As for being greedy and wanting money, I believe we would choose to have our health and horses back. Money cannot buy this. As for specialists, none of them really know how to deal with H2S injuries. The remedy we were told was to move out of the gas field to where there is fresh air and pine trees. There isn’t anything we can take for our lungs.
All a person has to do is drive down from Pink Mountain to Fort Saint John, BC and you can see, smell and feel that the gas companies do not care what they are putting into the air. We are sick for over a week after going to town. We are living on a pine ridge on one of the highest points right now but there is going to be a well drilled right above us on the highest point not even a km from us. On a clear day ( if you can find one) there is a covering over the whole country. A few years ago this wasn’t here.
We know we were hurt and need to go where the air is more fresher, but how does a person get there? It is hard to get a job when you are coughing stuff up most of the time and don’t have the lung capacity to do some jobs. They really want you in a restaurant!
Every night, we listen to our lungs, feel the stuff oozing out of our lungs and have to cough stuff up. All day long we cough stuff up. We did not choose to have this happen to us. How many more are like this? Lots of people don’t even know what is wrong with them and the doctors sure can’t tell them. Medication does not help.
REPLY FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE ARTICLE
Thank you for printing my article. I would appreciate the chance to comment back to Donna Getz response.
I am still a little concerned about negative consequences for speaking out as an insider, but a person should be allowed to exercise their right to free speech as a concerned member of society, and I tried to keep it as factual as possible.
I respect Donna Getz response, and apologize if it sounded like I was personally trying to discredit her. That is not the case. I should have chosen my words a little more carefully and not speculate. I guess I was just commenting that there were a couple points in her article that sounded a bit odd to me (flushing the lungs and coughing up foam); but I am NOT a medical expert and do not know much about treating severe exposures. Exposure can result in pulmonary edema, if memory serves me correct. I re-read the article and it sounds to me like her case was a very concentrated and acute exposure, based on the information about what happened to her truck. If that’s what it did to her truck, what kind of serious damage does it do to someone’s lungs? I was simply wondering if her “expert’s” opinion came from a medical professional, based on some wording of the article that sounded odd to my ears. In any case, I sympathize for her being in such an awful situation and for the way she was treated. I’m sure ANYONE would rather be healthy than have money and not be able to enjoy quality of life.
She is 100% correct in stating that my lung issues could have been caused by my choice to work in industry. It is just so hard to prove that is the case. How much honest research has really been done on LOW level chronic exposures? Not much, I’m afraid. I guess the point I was trying to make is that there are plenty of residents who complain looking for handouts. It sometimes makes it difficult in telling fact from fiction. Some of them even move into the area willingly and knowing full well that they are going to be located very close to an industrial facility, then expect their new industrial neighbor to drastically change the way they operate.
Perhaps respiratory issues such as mine have much to do with environmental factors such as industry nearby. Or perhaps it is a result of living in a modern home with many manufactured products that leach chemicals into the air around us. Or perhaps from my hobbies. I will probably never know for sure. It is so hard to prove when there are so many possible factors, and it is one of the many reasons why long term research is difficult.
I certainly do NOT condone or support eco-terrorism such as the events that have happened primarily to Encana up in the NW corner of Alberta, but I think I understand the frustration that drives ordinary citizens over the edge when their concerns are not addressed and there is no one willing to fight for their cause.
There is a growing contingent of people who are fed up with their well being coming up second to development. See the events in the proposed Alta-Link 500KV line to the Heartland Substation as an example. The government watchdog embarrassed the heck out of their bosses in the Alberta government when they chose to spy on their own citizens opposed to the project. No wonder it is so hard to trust the government being balanced in the application and hearing process.
Hello again:
I just wanted to make a small fact correction to the article that was printed. The photo at the top of the article is of the Shell Shantz sulphur facility. It is in fact located some distance (about 40 Km) from the Shell Caroline facility.
Thought I had better set the record straight, since anyone who lives or has driven through the area would immediately know the difference by looking at the photo.
Thanks.
THE MENTIONED MEDICAL REPORTS
GetzOleMedicalReport20Apri2004 Medical Report dated 30 April 2004 written by Professor Jeremy Beach
GetzDonnaMedicalReport20Apr04 Medical Report dated 30 April 2004 written by Professor Jeremy Beach
Dr. Jeremy Beach – Diagnosis and Management of Occupational Asthma
Jeremy Beach trained in Medicine at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, qualifying MBBS in 1983. He subsequently worked in General Internal Medicine and Respiratory Medicine gaining his MRCP (UK), and then moved to a research position leading a project studying occupational asthma in shipyard welders which provided the basis of his doctorate. He went on from this to train as a specialist in Occupational Medicine gaining his MFOM and specialist accreditation in the UK 1996. In his work in Occupational Medicine he has combined work in academia at the University of Birmingham and Monash University in Australia; work in industry, becoming Senior Medical Officer with a major multinational engineering company; and the health service, working as a specialist in occupational medicine and occupational lung disease in hospitals in Birmingham and Bradford, UK. He was awarded FRCP in 1999 and FFOM in 2000. He moved to Canada in 2002 to take up the position as Associate Professor and Director of the Occupational Medicine Residency Program at the University of Alberta.
He is past editor of the journal ‘Occupational Medicine’, adopted journal of the Occupational and Environmental Medical Association of Canada (OEMAC), and remains the assistant editor for Canada. He was elected President of the Occupational Medicine Section of the Alberta Medical Association in February 2004, and of the President of the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Association of Canada in September 2004. In addition to both undergraduate and graduate teaching at the University of Alberta he is actively involved in a number of research projects, and sees patients in the occupational medicine clinic at the University hospital. His major interests are in occupational lung disease, particularly occupational asthma, the health effects of pesticides, and health surveillance.
May I asked you where you got all those information for your articles, the publication of which prompt Shell to take legal actions against me, in breach of my human rights and freedom?
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