BP’s aggressive cost-cutting and failure to invest in its largest US refinery left the Texas City plant vulnerable to the catastrophe that cost the lives of 15 people, said the leading US chemical accident investigator.

The report of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, published today, blames organisation and safety deficiencies at all levels of BP for America’s worst industrial accident for 17 years.

The oil company said today that it took responsibility for the accident but indicated its “strong disagreement with some of the content of the CSB report, particularly many of the findings and conclusions”. BP said it had cooperated fully with the investigation and would give careful attention to the CSB’s recommendations.

Citing internal BP documents, including safety reports, internal e-mails and the results of surveys conducted by the company, the CSB finds that “cost-cutting and budget pressures from BP Group managers impaired process safety performance at Texas City”.

The CSB’s recommendations may prove highly controversial for US industry, notably its proposal that OSHA, the occupational safety regulator, be given powers to conduct safety reviews of organisational change, including mergers, takeovers and restructurings.

The evidence compiled in the report of the CSB, which has no prosecutorial power of its own, will be scrutinised closely by other US regulators, including the Department of Justice, which is conducting its own investigation of the March 2005 refinery explosion.

The CSB’s chairman, Carolyn Merritt, said: “The combination of cost-cutting, production pressures, and failure to invest caused a progressive deterioration of safety at the refinery.”

BP executives in London, including at least one member of the executive board had been made aware of a series of audits and studies that revealed serious safety problems. “BP’s response was too little and too late,” she said.

BP acquired Texas City in 1998 when it took over Amoco, the US oil company. It then ordered an across-the-budget 25 per cent cut in spending at all of its refineries. The CSB states that cost considerations discouraged refinery officials from installing a flare to the refineries ISOM unit, an improvement which would have prevented the accident.

The CSB’s finding that cost-cutting was to blame will be a severe blow to BP which has always maintained that there was no direct connection between cost reductions and the disaster.

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