Marathon to face lawsuit over deadly fire as US refinery accidents soar

18 May 2023

Quantum Commodity Intelligence – A lawsuit has been filed by lawyers representing a worker injured in a fatal blaze at Marathon Petroleum’s Galveston Bay refinery this week, in the latest of a string of similar accidents at US refineries.

The suit claims the worker was carrying out routine checks at the 593,000 bpd plant in Texas City near Houston on 16 May, when a splitter pump developed a leak and caught fire and resulted in second and third degree burns to his body, face and arms.

“These last few weeks we have seen several plant fires in the Texas Gulf coast region. These workers are being severely injured, and their lives are changed forever. Today’s filing is the first step in the investigation process,” attorney Mo Aziz told reporters Thursday.

A second worker, Scott Higgins, died in the blaze. His family plans to file a separate lawsuit soon against Marathon Petroleum, according to local media.

Marathon Petroleum did not reply to requests for comment by Thursday, but told the state broadcaster that it has begun an internal investigation this week, alongside state and federal environmental agencies.

It comes amid a series of similar upsets in the US refining system, including a death at the same Galveston Bay refinery during maintenance in February.

A fire broke out at Valero’s nearby Corpus Christi refinery on Wednesday, just a day after the deadly blaze at Galveston. While a fire at Shell’s Deer Park earlier this month sent nine workers to the hospital.

US refineries were ran extremely hard last year to take advantage of outsized margins, and maintenance was put on hold or delayed at several sites until 2023 to maximise earnings.  

It resulted in bumper profits for the industry, Marathon Petroleum not alone in reporting record first quarter earnings this month.

The biggest US refiner by capacity, Marathon reported net income of $2.7 billion in the first quarter of 2023 and ran 2.8 million bpd of crude at its 13 refineries.

Galveston Bay is the company’s biggest and one of the country’s largest having completed an 40,000 bpd upgrade in March taking it above 600,000 bpd when fully operational.