Failure to Learn: The BP Texas City Refinery Disaster

One of several safety books, Failure to Learn discusses the causes of a major explosion at the Texas City Oil Refinery on March 23, 2005.

Price: $75*

Format: Hardcopy, eBook

Making Professor Andrew Hopkins two most recent books, Failure to Learn and Disastrous Decisions available to all our employees at Spectra Energy as eBooks will help raise awareness about process safety management and build our positive process safety culture. Employees from CEO to frontline workers will learn how decisions they make, and actions they take every day, can have potentially catastrophic consequences. Most importantly, reading these books will help our employees understand how to avoid making the same mistakes as those that contributed to both the BP Texas City and the Macondo well explosions.
— Steven Lyth, Process Safety Manager, Spectra Energy

Respected OHS expert Professor Andrew Hopkins discusses the causes of a major explosion at the Texas City Oil Refinery on March 23, 2005. The explosion killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 others. Failure to Learn also analyses the similarities between this event and the Longford Gas Plant explosion in Victoria in 1998, featured in one of his earlier safety books Lessons from Longford.

Professor Andrew Hopkins is being recognized by the European Process Safety Centre in October 2008, in recognition of his “extraordinary contribution to process safety.” Professor Hopkins is the first winner to receive the award, outside of Europe, which is a demonstration of the impact of his valuable work worldwide.

He also appears in the US Chemical Safety Board film on Texas City and has been invited to appear in a subsequent film

The foreword for the book was written by Carolyn Merritt, chair of the CSB at the time of the accident and subsequent inquiry.

Professor Hopkins poses questions such as:

  • Why was the number of victims so large?

  • Who was blamed for the explosion?

  • What were the real causes?

  • Had lessons been learnt from the earlier incident at Longford?

Professor Hopkins is an articulate and engaging speaker, who actively held the attention of audiences at all levels within our organization. We were delighted to secure the services of Prof. Hopkins for an on-site visit that included insightful presentations to our executive committee, senior manufacturing leadership, and two open lectures held at a major manufacturing site and our corporate headquarters facility.

We are actively using Prof. Hopkins’ materials, including ‘Lessons from Longford’ and ‘Failure to Learn’, as part of our organizational journey towards becoming a Highly Reliable Organization. We have found these materials to be exceptionally relevant and meaningful as a foundational part of our ongoing process safety educational efforts.
— Dr. Peter Cartwright, Vice President and Executive Director; Environmental, Health, and Safety, Dow Corning Corporation

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