2 Refineries Win Awards for Job Safety

Two Los Angeles oil refineries--Arco in Carson and Ultramar in Wilmington--have received safety awards from the National Petroleum Refinery Assn., in recognition of their employees working more than 1 million hours without an accident that caused anyone to miss work.

The awards were given to 20 of the 213 refineries in the United States. The Unocal refinery in Rodeo, near San Francisco, posted the longest safety record in the country--6 million hours without a serious accident.

Streak Began in October, ’87

The Arco refinery, which can process 235,000 barrels of crude oil a day, is the second-largest in Los Angeles County, after Chevron’s El Segundo refinery. Arco’s 1,060 employees began their injury-free streak in October, 1987.

They were at the 2.6-million hour mark at the end of 1988, when the refinery applied for the safety award, and had reached 3.25 million hours in March of this year, when an Arco employee trying to open a balky valve hurt his back and was forced to miss work to recuperate.

The 478 employees of Ultramar set a record of 2 million injury-free hours from Dec. 1, 1986, to Feb. 9, 1989, and have continued until today, safety supervisor Chuck Tomlinson said Wednesday. Ultramar has the capacity to refine 74,000 barrels of crude oil a day.

The NPRA award does not deal with safety records of workers at refineries employed by outside firms under contract.

Tomlinson said a contract worker at Ultramar suffered a broken bone in his hand in February. At Arco, refinery manager Les Smith said he was unable to recall any accidents involving contract employees that resulted in days off during the contest period.

Even though they have award-winning safety records, both refineries recently have had accidents.

2-Alarm Blaze

In Arco’s most recent fire, a two-alarm blaze lit up early morning skies in the South Bay on March 10 after a pipe under 700 pounds of pressure cracked in a heating unit. On Nov. 21 and July 29, plumes of black smoke were visible for miles after fires broke out in the refinery’s vacuum distillation unit.

At Ultramar, a malfunction in a desulfurizing unit Feb. 10 led to a brief release of foul-smelling sulfur dioxide fumes. Officials cleared the refinery of everyone not involved in shutting down equipment.