The explosion that rocked Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s Galveston Bay oil refinery one year ago trapped Rigoberto Guillen 75 feet in the air. Stranded on a metal platform, he and a colleague crouched low as black smoke engulfed them. “I couldn’t see my coworker,” Guillen said. “I couldn’t even see the sun.”
When the men were finally able to scramble down three flights of cage ladders — the soles of their boots liquefying on the hot metal — they emerged with burns on their wrists, hands, faces and ears. “I saw my coworker’s nose basically melt off,” said Guillen.
They were relatively lucky. Scott Higgins, a 55-year-old machinist, burned to death. It was the Texas refinery’s worst tragedy since 2005, when an explosion killed 15 and injured scores more.
The Marathon Petroleum Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City. Photographer: Mark Felix/Bloomberg
The source of the blast was a leaking pump that the company had identified as needing maintenance, according to an internal Marathon investigation shown to refinery workers and described to Bloomberg. But the work, along with other vital upkeep, got pushed back amid the company’s drive to maximize production.
Marathon, the largest fuel producer in the US, had for two years been deferring maintenance at its plants, in part to take advantage of historically high refining margins. They weren’t alone. When gasoline consumption rebounded after the worst of the pandemic, many refiners postponed maintenance as profits to turn oil into fuel shot to a rec