Millennium Petrochemicals - Executive Summary |
|
Millennium Petrochemicals is committed to maintaining a safe and healthy workplace, to operate its facilities in an environmentally responsible manner, and assure the utmost care is taken in the manufacture and storage of its products. Millennium Petrochemicals has adopted and will diligently follow, the guiding principles of the Responsible Care program, so as to achieve a safer workplace, improve employee health, minimize releases to the environment and a better informed public.. This policy has been adopted at all Millennium Chemicals facilities in the U.S. and foreign locations. Millennium Petrochemicals actively participates in the LaPorte Citezen's Advisory Council and LaPorte Local Emergency Planning Committe through funding and commitment of plant personell time to these activities. Millennium Petrochemicals has hosted plant tours of concerned citizens. The facility has an established, and tested, method for notifying our employees and surrounding community of an event which c ould, or would impact them. The complex has standard operating procedures in place which define responsibilities and reporting requirements, depending upon the nature of the emergency. The manufacturing complex has an Emergency Response Team that is trained to respond to fire, hazardous materials, medical and rescue emergencies. Additionally, the complex is a member of the Channel Industries Mutual Aid organization and can call upon all of their expertise, manpower and equipment if needed. Millennium Petrochemicals falls under the OSHA Process Safety Managemnt(PSM) standard. Our facility has adopted these recognized 14 components of PSM to govern how we run all of our processes, not just those required by regulation. Millennium Petrochemicals produces three final products at the LaPorte facility, methanol, acetic acid, and vinyl acetate monomer. Additionally, Millennium Petrochemicals operates a polyalphaolefins(PAO) unit owned by another company. Methanol is sold into the merchant ma rket as well as being a feedstock for our production of acetic acid. Acetic acid is sold as an intermediate to customers who use it to manufacture other final products. Acetic acid is also used as a feedstock for the manufacture of Vinyl acetate monomer.Millennium Petrochemicals has three chemicals which fall under the RMP regulations. These are vinyl acetate monomer, anhydrous ammonia, and borontrifluoride. Vinyl acetate monomer is stored in a purpose designed tank with a maximum capacity of 24,000,000 pounds. Borontrifluoride is brought onto the site in dedicated tube (pressure vessel) trailers and stored in a designated, purpose built area with a water curtain for protection. Only on tube of the trailer is hooked up to the process at any given time. This is a maximun of 6700 pounds. Anhydrous ammonia is stored in a dedicated pressure vessel with a maimum inventory of 90,000 pounds. Millennium Petrochemicals has conducted an offsite consequence analysis (OCA) to estimate the potent ial impact to offsite environmental receptors and the public for an accidental release of a regulated substance. The OCS evaluates both a worst-case (WCS) and an alternate release scenario (ARS). Millennium Petrochemicals does not anticipate a WCS to occur, but has planned for and communicated the information concerning a WCS to the public. The ARS is a more realistic scenario. Alternate release scenarios are based upon a more likely set of circumstances.Information on the ARS and WCS have been presented and distributed to the public and the LaPorte LEPC. If you are interested in further information, please contact our RMP Coordinator at 713-767-1063. The WCS for a toxic material at our site is a failure of the vinyl acetate monomer storage tank which allows the entire contents of the tank to evaporate in a 10 minute period, form a plume and travel offsite. This plume will impact offsite environmental receptors and the public. The ARS for borontrifluoride involves the shearing of the supply tubing from the trailer to the process piping. The scenario includes the activation of the water curtain, a "containment procedure", after a short amount of time. This will limit the release amount which could impact the public and offsite environmental receptors. The relase will possibly impact site and industrial neighbor's personnel only. There will be no impact to residences in the are or environmental receptors. The ARS for anhydrous ammonia involves an inlet flange seperation and leak to the ground. The line is blocked within 20 minutes of the release beginning. The release will impact site and industrial neighbor's personnel only. There will be no impact to residences or environmental receptors. Millennium Petrochemicals maintains an active accident prevention program consisting of many elements. The LaPorte site falls under the Risk Management Program (RMP) and Process Safety Management (PSM) .standard. Millennium Petrochemicals goes beyond the reuirements of the PSM standard by adopting these procedures for all processes at the facility, not just covered processes. The LaPorte facility has an in-depth training program for operators. this program includes standrd operating procedures, mentoring, on-the-job traing, and testing. Our SOPs are reviewed annually by professional staff and technicians. Millennium Petrochemicals utilizes contractors for plant maintenance and other projects. A qualification procedure has been established for these contractors which examines their safety records, procedures and training. All on-site contractors participate in the facility safety programs. Millennium maintains a Request for change (RFC) and Management of change (MOC) process. Employees and contractors participate in both these programs. Millennium Petrochemicals has a predictive and preventaive maintenance program inplace and uses third party risk based evaluations to validate and revise the program. The site has a comprehensive work permit procedure covering all types of work including; hot work, confined space entry, cold work and excavation. Millennium uses third party auditing to verify safety, health, environmental and mechanical integrity throughout the facility. The facility conducts weekly safety and housekeeping audits of all plant areas. Safety information is a priority communication to enmployees. Millennium Petrochemicals has adopyted the Responsible Care program and communicates to its employees that the items covered in this program will be one of three basic programs we base all our decisions on. No releases of the three RMP covered chemicals at the Millennium Petrochemicals LaPorte facility has occurred in the last five years that has resulted in any fatalities, injuries, or significant damage both onsite or offsite, or environmental receptors offsite. Millennium Petrochemicals has a written Emergency Response Plan (ERP) for the protection of employees, contractors, visitors, the public and environmental receptors. The ER P details how employees should report a variety of emergencies, including fire, hazardous materials release, medical and rescue situatioons.Actions to be taken by all onsite personnel are detailed in the ERP. The LaPorte Complex maintains an Emergency Response Team with personnel trained (to the applicable standard) to respond and actively mitigate in fire and hazardous materials emergencies. Additionally, the ERT has medical and rescue trained personnel for these situations. The complex is a member of Channel Industries Mutual Aid (CIMA) which gives the facility access to all the manpower, expertise and equipment of the other 100+ members. Millennium Petrochemicals reguarley has drills to test the ERP and ERT response. Changes are made based upon these drills. Millennium Petrochemicals reguarly reviews all areas of plant safety. These reviews involve all levels of the organization from Plant Manager to technician. There are procedures in place that allow any employee to stop a pro cess or job and question any safety aspect of that job. Millennium Petrochemicals has a regular schedule to review and revise standard operating procedures.The site has just completed a stormwater handling project which will reduce the number of releses during major storm events. |