RE: Quality control and maintenanceFelt compelled to respond to the lack of knowledge on this board ..
! ) to the poster who stated "dry Bitumen " was sent to secondary ... bitumen is sent from DRU to VAC unit and then to DCU.
2) Fires are not common place in these upgraders . The plant where this fire took place has had an exceptional run with very good production numbers.
3) the merger was not the cause of this fire . Want to blame preventive maintenance ? The QA dept does scheduled xray of piping all the time . do they cover every inch .. no .. they look at piping where higher rates of erosion would be expected and monitor those spots . Do you people have any idea how many miles of piping are in a refinery ?
The head of maintenance should be fired. Someone obviously doenst knowwhat they are doing... Probably some lacky that was promoted from withinthat knows how to kiss butt, and has no qualifications for the job.Some bureaucratic paper pusher probably.
Because the oilsands is not your normal oil operation .. the people who have been with the company for many years are very knowledgible , both with what works an what doesn't .
I will assume you think the big guys " Syncrude " who brought in all of their Exxon leaders to run that facility are what you would call experts ..... Since they took over managing that facility .. they have had more deaths than the previous
20 years , they managed to kill a few thousand wild birds and they managed to run it into the ground to the point where for the first time in the history of the plant they went to zero barrels output in the winter ..... they didn't want any input from the local lakiy's who had run the place for 20 years