Patterico's Pontifications

2/18/2008

West Texas in the News (Updated)

Filed under: Current Events — DRJ @ 8:16 am



[Guest post by DRJ]

There’s breaking news in my part of the world:

A thunderous explosion rocked the Alon Refinery in Big Spring, Texas, around 8:20 AM CST and was felt up to 30 miles away. Subsequent explosions were reported and local media broadcasts show the refinery still on fire over an hour later. The refinery sits next to Interstate 20, which has been shut down. Nearby schools have been evacuated.

The refinery employs 170 and was reportedly working at half staff due to the President’s Day Holiday. CareFlight helicopters were sent from area cities and local hospitals activated their emergency response plans but, miraculously, initial reports say that all personnel have been accounted for and there was only one injury. An unverified report said there had been one fatality, a 75-year-old woman. (EDIT: Later reports state that 4 people were hurt and there were no fatalities. A woman was injured – not killed – when the windows in her car shattered as she drove past the refinery.)

The Alon Refinery, previously known as and still called by many locals as the Cosden Refinery, refines 70,000 barrels of oil a day and supplies gasoline to a large area of the Southwest. Gasoline prices in those areas will likely spike as a result of this explosion.

UPDATE 1: It even made the national news, including a picture of the mushroom cloud.

UPDATE 2: Officials already know what happened — a minor propane leak caused a flammable mist that an alert employee spotted and warned about so the plant could be evacuated. Amazing. Photos and more info here.

— DRJ

10 Responses to “West Texas in the News (Updated)”

  1. Everyone focuses on the price of oil but the real source of our gasoline price issues is really refinery capacity.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  2. Wasn’t there a reported pipeline fire just a couple of days ago? This seems a little fishy (but hey, coincidences happen)

    Dr T (69c4b2)

  3. Dr. T,

    There haven’t been any recent pipeline explosions in our area and it’s too early to say what caused this, but refineries are dangerous. They put billboards up by these facilities with the number of days that have elapsed since the last accident. Some facilities can go months or years without one, but it’s inevitable that something will happen. Automation helps reduce serious human injuries but all it takes to cause an explosion is a spark or one broken piece of equipment.

    DRJ (3eda28)

  4. Blue Storm Rising?

    JohnW (eadc74)

  5. DRJ,

    I meant this story:
    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330799,00.html

    I grew up in Odessa and remember the oil derricks everywhere. I just wondered if we were seeing the beginning of a pattern, but it’s probably just random luck.

    Thanks

    Dr T (69c4b2)

  6. The Big Spring refinery is owned by a subsidiary of the French oil consortium TotalFinaElf, and is the main supplier of gasoline in the Permian Basin. The blast appears to have happened on the north side of the complex, and as a result, gasoline prices at many area stations jumped between 20 and 30 cents a gallon this afternoon (which was similar to last year, after a refinery explosion in the Texas Panhandle).

    John (34537e)

  7. It’s already gone up? I’m glad I filled up yesterday.

    Also, I may be wrong but I think the Big Spring facility is part of Alon USA, an Israeli company that purchased this refinery from Total S.A. (fka TotalFinaElf) in August 2000.

    DRJ (3eda28)

  8. Just got off the phone with my dad, who reported not being able to hear the explosion from his home on the south side of Lamesa, 45 miles north of Big Spring (and perhaps a bit closer than that to the refinery on I-20). On the other hand, this time of year, the spring windstorms are typically getting underway, funnel clouds are a bigger concern than mushroom clouds, and smoke plumes from controlled burn-offs of cleared cotton fields aren’t terribly uncommon. Folks out there are a hardy bunch, and they’ll be back to normal, without much fuss, in pretty short order.

    Beldar (3df1f4)

  9. BTW, and FWIW, locals tend to pronounce the town name “Big Sprang,” and if you lapse into the common mistake of calling their small city “Big Springs,” most of them will give you an immediate verbal smackdown with: “There’s only the one, and it’s dry.” (Which is true.)

    Beldar (3df1f4)

  10. I can attest to Beldar’s Big Springs comment and also to his observation that they are a hardy bunch. The local paper mentioned that, in typical West Texas fashion, the biggest problem they had was too many people showed up to help.

    DRJ (3eda28)


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