TEXAS CITY, Texas, 26 March 2005 — The Federal Bureau of Investigation has rejected claims purportedly from two Islamic extremist groups of responsibility for an oil refinery explosion in Texas that left 15 people dead.
But for residents of this south Texas town, Wednesday’s blast and subsequent rumors of bomb scares continued to fuel fears that have long enveloped their lives in this smoggy town.
The claims by the Islamic groups emerged in e-mails the day after the blast rocked the third-biggest petrochemical complex in the United States, run by British multinational BP at Texas City south of here.
“We’ve found no evidence to support criminal or terrorist activity,” Al Tribble, spokesman for the FBI office in Houston, told AFP. The e-mails were apparently from “two specific Islamic groups”, Tribble said Thursday.
BP said the cause of the blast was still being investigated, but has ruled out terrorism. It said the explosion occurred when a unit of the refinery that adds octane to gasoline (petrol) was being brought back online after being shut down for routine maintenance.
“This whole town’s like a powder keg,” said Gloria Sanderson, 55, who lives just two miles away from the BP plant in this blue-collar town located on the Gulf of Mexico just south of Houston.
Massive chemical plants and refineries line the coast for miles and loom over the city like a scene out of a distopian science fiction film.
A year ago the FBI warned Texas oil refineries of a potential terrorism threat in the wake of deadly train blasts in Madrid, which came two-and-a-half years after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Five days later a series of explosions hit the BP plant at Texas City, but they were traced to a furnace fire. Those blasts created public doubts over safety at the 71-year-old refinery complex which Wednesday’s events only served to fuel.
But BP’s chief executive John Browne insisted there was nothing to fear after flying in to Texas City to personally oversee operations and to convey his condolences to relatives.
The discovery of the body of a missing worker took the number of dead to 15, with more than 100 others injured, Browne said.
Addressing a hastily convened press conference, he assured employees “that the full resources of BP will be made available to help the bereaved, the injured and all others affected by the explosion and the fire.”
Browne said the company’s internal investigation would leave “no stone unturned.”
“It is a very safe plant,” he said.
The US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, however, does not share Browne’s confidence about the plant’s safety. BP has been fined twice in the past seven months for serious safety violations at the plant. In one accident in September 2004, two workers were burned to death and another was seriously injured because the hot water line they were working on had not been properly depressurized.
