The Ultimate Heads Up Display Geek Goggles

Recon Instruments offers a pair of ski goggles with built in heads up display and GPS.  The HUD data includes speed, time, altitude, temperature, and a lot of other stuff.  Tell me you couldn't adapt these to an industrial environment with a roving operator or maintenance technician. 

http://www.reconinstruments.com/

BP To Sell Texas City Refinery

One of the iconic refineries in America is to be sold.  Here is a link to the story in the Galveston Daily News. 

http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=e1da7df15449d254

According to the article, this was a complete shock to most of the employees there.  The refinery contributes an estimated $22 billion to the Texas economy and is the third largest in the country.  BP also announced the sale of the Carson, CA refinery. 

Shell Safety Strategy

Shell is an extremely safe company, and there are reasons for this. Here is a link to an 8 page document that neatly sums up Shell's approach to safety and, more importantly, its safety culture.

 

http://www-static.shell.com/static/environment_society/downloads/safety/process_safety_in_shell_lr.pdf

CSB Says Natural Gas Blows Inherently Unsafe

It may sound strange, but it is currently common practice power plant construction to clean pipes through natural gas blows, which essentially means blasting natural gas through a pipe to remove any obstructions. It certainly may be convenient to purge lines with your readily available supply of natural gas, but this gas can be vented into unsafe areas and find an ignition source. This was revealed to be the primary cause of the explosion at Kleen Energy in Connecticut earlier this year. According to this article in EHS Today, the State of Connecticut has now banned this practice. CSB is also making recommendations to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) to revise their existing codes to stop the practice of gas blows in favor of safer alternatives. CSB has more commentary on natural gas blows and the inherent risk thereof in its series of YouTube videos here.

ISA CAP Testing is Coming in September

And I am totally not prepared, but don't let that stop you from taking the test to get this important certification.

More information from ISA:

Upcoming CAP Exam Application Deadline

The application deadline for taking your CAP Exam in the final Testing Window for 2010 is 15 September. Testing Window 3 allows you to take your exam any time between 1 November and 31 December. Here is the link to apply

OSHA Testifies on Worker Safety in Process Industries

OSHA deputy assistant secretary testifies before Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety on worker safety in energy production industries

This is some powerful testimony from OSHA on the state of safety in our country's refineries and chemical plants. Definitely worth a read.

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/osha/OSHA20100819.htm

"Not only are we finding a significant lack of compliance during our inspections, but time and again, our inspectors are finding the same violations in multiple refineries, including those with common ownership, and sometimes even in different units in the same refinery. This is a clear indication that essential safety lessons are not being communicated within the industry and often not even within a single corporation or facility. The old adage that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it is as true in the refinery industry as it is elsewhere. So we are particularly disturbed to find even refineries that have already suffered serious incidents or received major OSHA citations making the same mistakes again."