June 22, 2019

Explosions and Political Spenders

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy

June 22, 2019

On June 21, 2019 an explosion at a Philadelphia oil refinery generated pictures of fireballs and thick black smoke all over the news and social media, including this harrowing clip. The explosion was so big that it could seen by a satellite from space.

As I learned at a recent meeting at the Union of Concerned Scientists, these types of industrial explosions happen more frequently than you might think. If you know where to look, these dangerous events are disturbingly common including four explosions in one month in 2018.

The subject of the meeting at the Union of Concerned Scientists was how science is often left on the sidelines of American policy decisions. The basic pattern scientists described was government geologists, climatologist, chemists, doctors or engineers would study a particular problem, suggest a set of solutions to their political supervisors, and then political appointed bosses would ignore them or chart a path counter-indicated by the science again and again. Often the path taken would help industry instead of the environment or public health.

The most recent example of this phenomenon is a new directive from the Trump White House that tells federal agencies they can’t forecast climate change past 2040. This is a cynical ploy to avoid talking about the likely grim numbers after year 2040, which were predicted by scientists in the 2018 the National Climate Assessment. But this is just part of a bigger trend. According to the New York Times, the Trump Administration is rolling back 83 environmental rules including many that apply to extractive industries like oil and gas.

Why is this happening? One explanation is that money in politics is skewing science in our democracy. A frequent common denominator among the companies behind these industrial accidents is they tend to be big political spenders.

How do I know this? I track political spending by publicly traded corporations, and year after year, oil and coal companies are top Super PAC funders. (Super PACs are political action committees that can raise and spend unlimited money in federal elections including from wealthy individuals and corporations). In 2018 top publicly traded corporate political spenders included Chevron, Valero, Marathon Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, Devon Energy, and Peabody Energy. Philadelphia Energy Solutions which owns the refinery that exploded isn’t publicly traded and thus is not in my data set.

With industrial explosions back on my mind, this got me wondering if other big political spenders also had a history of explosions. It turns out they did.

Chevron, a perennial political spender, has had a number of explosions at its refineries. In October 2018, Chevron agreed to pay a $3 million fine and spend $160 million on safety upgrades to settle suits arising out of the 2013 explosion in Pascagoula, Mississippi, that killed a Chevron worker and a 2012 fire that prompted over 10,000 residents of Richmond, California to be evacuated.

Marathon Petroleum, another Super PAC funder has had its share of explosions too. In 2018, a man died and others were injured after an explosion at a Marathon owned MarkWest facility in Pennsylvania. In 2018 Marathon settled a suit arising out of a 2013 storage tank explosion in Detroit. In 2017 there was an explosion at a Marathon refinery in Texas City. This led to an evacuation of a town and to the state of Michigan canceling a safety award that it was poised to give the company.

Political spender Devon Energy had an explosion in 2018 in Wyoming which injured three. This wasn’t long after a 2017 oil field explosion in Oklahoma killed one and injured another at another Devon location.

Valero, another big political spender had an explosion in its Texas City refinery in 2018 which injured workers. And political spender ConocoPhillips had a high voltage room in a Norway facility explode in 2018, while political spender Peabody Energy had one of its coal mines catch fire in Australia in 2018.

Maybe this is all just a horrible coincidence. Or maybe this speaks to how unsafe extractive industries continue to be. But this is also a story of political power. The millions that these companies have spent in politics seem to have an effect. After all, what other industry is allowed to literally explode on a regular basis?