That is not a coincidence. That is a system under pressure it was never designed for.
- March 1 — Ecuador's largest refinery
- March 5 — Petromax Refining, Channelview, Texas
- March 17 — Pemex Olmeca, Tabasco, Mexico — 5 workers lost their lives
- March 23 — Valero Port Arthur, Texas — 435,000 barrels per day — shelter in place for 12 hours
- April 9 — Olmeca again — petroleum coke warehouse
- April 15 — Viva Energy Geelong, Australia — flames 60 meters high
- April 18 — BP Cherry Point, Washington — 3 workers injured
- April 20 — HPCL Pachpadra, India — $9.5 billion brand new refinery — hydrocarbon valve leak during startup
- April 27 — Shell Norco, Louisiana — hydrogen and gas explosion — 10 hours to extinguish
- May 8 — PBF Chalmette, Louisiana — 185,000 barrels per day — blast shook homes across the Mississippi River
- May 11 — HF Sinclair, Tulsa, Oklahoma — large fire — one employee taken off site for medical attention
- May 11 — Pemex refinery, Oaxaca, Mexico — cooling tower explosion — 6 workers burned — one passed away
Four continents. Seventy-five days. Twelve refineries. Two of these happened on the same day.
What This Means
Process safety experts are calling it what it is — a system being pushed past its limits. Deferred maintenance. Aging iron. Crews running equipment harder and longer than it was designed for because the world is 14 million barrels a day short and there is no slack left in the system.
The Hormuz closure did not cause all of these. But it is the reason nobody can afford to slow down long enough to fix the problems that were already there.
The men and women who work these plants deserve better than a world that only notices when something goes wrong.