DEPO Hoffman, Mike

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006 Page 1
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CAUSE NO. MIGUEL ARENAZA, ELIZABETH RAMON, DAVID G. CROW and JUANITA G. CROW, et al.
05CV0337 ) IN THE DISTRICT COURT ) ) ) VS. ) 212TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT ) BP PRODUCTS NORTH AMERICA ) INC., B.P. CORPORATION ) NORTH AMERICA INC., DON ) PARUS, AND JE MERIT ) CONSTRUCTORS, INC. ) GALVESTON COUNTY, TEXAS CAUSE NO. 05CV0337-A IN RE: BP AMOCO EXPLOSION ) IN THE DISTRICT COURT MARCH 23, 2005 ) COORDINATED DISCOVERY ) 212TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT PROCEEDINGS ) ) GALVESTON COUNTY, TEXAS
***************************************************** ORAL VIDEOTAPED DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL P. HOFFMAN AUGUST 2, 2006 *****************************************************
U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100
Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)
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DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 718 21 22 23 24 25 719 Letter from Lord Browne dated 2/11/05 regarding job award for 2004, BPISOM00344272 and BPISOM00344273 Goals for Mike Hoffman, BPISOM00344274 and BPISOM00344275 25 INDEX PAGE MICHAEL HOFFMAN Examination by Mr. Coon ....................... 8 Signature Page ............................... 326 Court Reporter's Certificate .................. 328
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ORAL VIDEOTAPED DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL P. HOFFMAN, produced as a witness at the instance of the Plaintiffs and duly sworn, was taken in the above-styled and numbered cause on August 2, 2006, from 9:50 a.m. to 5:37 p.m., before Stephanie Barringer, Certified Shorthand Reporter in and for the State of Texas, reported by stenographic means at the offices of Fulbright & Jaworski, 90 Long Acre London, England, pursuant to the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure and the provisions stated on the record or attached hereto. Since this deposition has been realtimed and you may be in possession of a rough draft form, please be aware that there may be a discrepancy regarding page and line numbers when comparing the realtime draft and the final transcript. Also, please be aware that the realtime screen and the unedited, uncertified rough draft transcript may contain untranslated steno, a misspelled proper name and/or nonsensical English word combinations. All such entries are corrected in the final certified transcript.
EXHIBITS (Continued) EXHIBIT DESCRIPTION 716 Notes by John Manzoni for the performance review of Mike Hoffman for 2005, BPISOM00344268 and BPISOM00344269 717 Review of Mike Hoffman's Peformance for 2005 by John Manzoni, BPISOM00344270 and BPISOM00344271 PAGE 24
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 FOR DEFENDANT BP PRODUCTS NORTH AMERICA, INC.: 11 12 13 14 15 16 VIDEOGRAPHER: 17 Mr. Stephen Faigenbaum 18 19 BP IN-HOUSE COUNSEL: 20 Mr. James Neath 21 22 23 24 25 Mr. Otway B. Denny, Jr. Mr. Stephen M. Fernelius Fulbright & Jaworski 1301 McKinney, Suite 5100 Houston, Texas 77010-3095 Fax: 713-651-5246 Telephone: 713-651-5151 APPEARANCES
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 723 14 15 724 16 17 18 725 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 726 Email from Stacey McDaniel dated 3/29/05, Subject: Note to R&M, BPISOME03760534 and BPISOME03760535 Email from Buck McElroy dated 5/17/05, Subject: Re: Draft Press Release, BPISOME03760046 through BPISOME03760060 278 Email from Stacey McDaniel dated 3/28/05, Subject: Proposed note to all R&M employees (to be sent Wed), BPISOME03760541 and BPISOME03760542 261 Group Leadership briefing pack, BPISOME03760023 through BPISOME03760033 259 EXHIBITS (Continued) EXHIBIT DESCRIPTION PAGE 720 One-On-One Employee Safety 27 Discussions, BPISOME01288026 and BPISOME01288027 721 Email from Don Parus dated 230 7/8/04, Subject: FW: Control of Work Audit Response, BPISOME00081193 and BPISOME00081194 722 Email from Tim Patrick dated 256 2/16/05, Subject: FINAL RESULTS for Group and Segment HSSE for 2004, BPISOME03759617, BPISOME03759619 through BPISOME03759626
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FOR PLAINTIFFS JAIME ANDREADE, ET AL.: Mr. Brent Coon Brent Coon & Associates 3550 Fannin Beaumont, Texas 77701 Fax: 409-833-4483 Telephone: 409-835-2666
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questions for the bulk of the day; and we would ask that you give straightforward, simple answers to the best you can. Okay? A. Okay. Q. We need you to answer out orally. That is, yeses and nos instead of nods of the head so the court reporter can get that down appropriately. Okay? A. Okay. Q. We are going to be taking breaks probably once an hour so that the videographer can change the tapes. If you need breaks in between times, you are welcome to do so. You have counsel here with BP. You are free to consult with them as you desire as well. Okay? A. Okay. Q. It's very important that you understand the questions that I ask of you today. You will be taking questions all day long. So you may lose your train of thought every now and then or something. If you need to stand up and get your juices going again, let us know. It's going to be very important that you understand the
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was relevant to the explosion of March 23rd, 2005 with respect to investigative reports, studies, audits, things of that nature? A. I have seen the -- the Mogford report. Q. Both copies? A. You mean the draft and the final? Q. The interim and the final, yes, sir. A. Yes. Q. Anything else that you have reviewed in preparation for your testimony today? A. I did -MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I didn't review that in preparation for testimony. I read the report when it came out. Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. That would have been around December of 2005? A. Yes. Q. Have you reviewed anything to refresh your memory today? A. No. Q. When was the last time you reviewed the fatal report, sir? A. The Mogford report? Q. Yes, sir. A. I reviewed the findings a few weeks ago.
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questions that I ask because we will be relying upon your answers as part of the investigation in this matter. Do you understand? A. Okay. Q. Mr. Hoffman, in preparation for your deposition today, we sent out a notice for your appearance here in London; and it also had a subpoena attached to produce certain documents. Did you have an opportunity to look at that subpoena request -A. Yes, I did. Q. -- and respond to it? Did you provide a response to all areas that you thought you had documents that were responsive to the subpoena? A. I opened up all my documents and files to our legal team. Q. And in preparation for your testimony today, other than meeting with counsel, have you reviewed any documents, either those that you were provided or documents that you provided as part of the investigation? A. No, I haven't. Q. What have you seen that you recall that
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Q. Have you reviewed the testimony that anyone else has given in this matter? A. No. Q. Have you been advised as to what anyone else has testified to in this matter? A. No, I haven't. Q. Do you know who else has provided testimony in this matter? That is, formal testimony. A. I know some of the people that have. Q. Who are the persons you understand that have given formal testimony in this matter? A. Well, I know Kathleen Lucas has, Paul Maslin, Don Parus. I don't know the list beyond that. I know there's been a number of people, but I don't -- I am not familiar with the exact list. Q. Mr. Hoffman, could you go back for us and provide the jury with an insight as to your personal background, where you grew up and the education you received, please, sir? A. Yeah. I went to Montana State University in chemical engineering. I have a chemical engineering degree from Montana State. Q. Was that 1980?
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A. Right. That's when I got the degree. Then I went to work for ARCO Products company in Billingham, Washington at the Cherry Point refinery as a process engineer. And I worked there for 11 years in various different -both process engineering, process engineering supervise -- supervision, operations, management roles. In 1991, I moved to run the Wilmington Cal Center, which is in Wilmington, California where I was the plant manager for that facility. In 1993, I was -- I moved to the Products company corporate headquarters, which was in L.A. to be the head of planning and strategy for the Products company. In 1995, maybe it was late '94, I went to run the technology center, which was in Anaheim, which supported the refining and marketing system. In 1990 -- mid 1996, I went to ARCO corporate and ran the downstream planning and strategy group at corporate; and I was in that role for -- until January, 1997. At that point I went to Asia as
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Q. Were you the BUL at Carson City from '98 to 2002? A. Yes, I was. Although we didn't call it BUL in ARCO. ARCO was purchased by BP in April of 2000. Q. Called the plant manager prior to that time? A. Yes, refinery manager. Q. Who do you report to here in London? A. To John Manzoni. Q. Mr. Manzoni's title? A. Executive vice president refining and marketing. Q. And he reports to Lord John Browne? A. He reports to John Browne, yes. Q. Who are the persons you are immediately responsible for? A. My direct reports are three regional vice presidents that oversee the regional refinery. So J.J. Gomez, which has got our international refinery; Pat -- Patrick Dixon, who has the German refineries in our Rhine region; and Pat Gower, who runs the U.S. refinery system; Paul Maslin runs technology; Eric Walker is head of HR; Jeff Pitzer who runs the -- he is the commercial manager. So
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business development manager for the downstream businesses. I lived in Singapore. In January of 1998, I went to the Carson refinery to be the refinery manager; and I was there until January, 2002; and at that point, I moved to -- to London into the group vice president of refining role for BP. Q. What was the role you had when you came here to London? A. Group vice president of refining. Q. The acronym is GVP? A. Yes. Q. Do you still retain that title now? A. Yes, I do. Q. Can you tell us what you did as the group vice president for BP? A. Well, I am responsible for high-level strategy, how do we run the business; responsible for putting both long and short-term plans together; responsible for preparing capital budgets; responsible for overseeing the operation on kind of end year basis. So developing plans with the businesses, approving those, proposing those to the corporation.
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he runs the planning and strategy group. Q. Do you have hiring authority? A. What do you mean by "hiring authority"? Q. Well, do you have the direct ability to hire persons that work under you? A. I have the ability to propose people into those positions that report directly to me within my organization. Up to that level I think I can hire. Q. Okay. Well, if you look at the regional vice presidents and people in technologies, human resources that you just described, do you have the ability to personally go out and replace one? Can you say, "I want Mr. Gower replaced with Mr. Maslin," for instance or -A. I could propose that, but that would have to be approved. Q. Who does that get approved by? A. That gets approved by John Manzoni and -and by the HR senior vice president, executive vice president. Q. And who is that? A. Sally Bott. Q. Have you from time to time over your three or four years working in the position you
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have here in London made recommendations to replace or promote personnel? A. Yes, I have. Q. Which ones? A. We needed to assign a refinery manager to the Kwinana refinery. So I proposed that and to replace the refinery manager in Bulwer in Australia as well. I proposed that. We removed the refinery manager from Bulwer to Carson. So those moves -Q. Okay. So that I understand, you look at not only the personnel that immediately report to you, being Mr. Gower and others you gave examples of, but the people that would report directly to them, being BULs -A. Yes, the executive leadership. Yeah. Q. Being BULs at various plants? A. Yes. Q. And I believe that Ms. Lucas, by example, is the one that left the position in Kwinana -A. Right. Q. -- to go back to Texas City? A. Yes, she did. Q. And you were involved in the replacement for her in Kwinana?
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planning, who would be ready and capable to -- to do that. So we know people are ready that could move into those and then have the discussion about who I would propose into that role and what the choices might be. And then from there, I take that discussion into John Manzoni's staff. Q. Where does Mr. Manzoni reside? Here in London? A. Yes. Q. Does he office with you? A. He is in the same building. Q. Is he there this week? A. Yes, he is. Well, he's -- he's -- I think he is back today. He was in Chicago earlier this week. Q. He was in Chicago when? A. Monday. Q. Monday of this week? A. I think so. Q. When was the last time you were in the States? A. I was in the States -- I was in the States briefly last week at a staff meeting. Q. Where at? A. Chicago.
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A. Kwinana, yes. Q. Who is involved in making the decision to promote personnel to BULs? A. Well, I am involved in it; but at executive level. Those are executive positions. Again, it has to go through the group approval process, which is John Manzoni and the -- and the HR. Q. And sitting at the table to discuss personnel who are eligible for holding a position as a BUL at a refinery, who is at that table? Mr. Manzoni is there? A. Yes. Q. You were there? A. Yes. Q. Head of HR is there? A. John Manzoni's HR person is there. The rest of John's direct reports would be there as well. Q. Is the regional VP there? A. No. Q. What say, if any, does the regional VP have over the replacement of the BUL? A. Well, sir, the way we do that is: In my staff meeting we look at what is our succession
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Q. Any plans to go back to Texas this year? A. Yes. Q. What for? A. I will go to the refinery, to the Texas City refinery. Q. Is this a planned visit to the refinery in Texas City? A. Yeah. Q. Is this a quarterly or annual visit? A. Well, the quarterly visits are done by Pat Gower. Because of kind of the scope of the things that we are working on at Texas City, I visit there more often than I would at another refinery. So I am going there in August to review the next year's plan, what we are putting together for next year's plan. Q. So you had plans to go to Texas City this month? A. Yeah, the 18th. Q. Do you know if Mr. Manzoni had plans to attend with you? A. No, he doesn't. Q. Do you know when his plans are to return to the States?
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A. No, I don't. Q. Do you sit in any meetings with Lord Browne? A. I sit in a quarterly review with John Browne, with John Manzoni and his staff. Q. Do you know when Lord Browne has any plans of going back to the States? A. No, I don't. Q. Do you know when the last time it was that he went to the States? A. I believe he was back there last week. I believe he was there with Tony Blair. Q. Is this the California trip? A. Yeah. Oh, I saw that in the news. So I don't usually know exactly where John Browne is. Q. Do you sit on any boards here in London? A. Not in London, no. Q. Anywhere else? A. In Germany. Q. What boards? A. The Deuch BP supervisory board. Q. Do you sit on any other boards? A. No. Q. How long have you had this trip planned to Texas City in August?
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MR. DENNY: Do you want to go ahead and mark it, Brent? MR. COON: Well, let's mark this 716. (Exhibit Number 716 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) And it just says, "Dear Mike." I assume this is to you, but does that set out the form for your bonus program? A. Yes. Q. And if I could show you another one. (Exhibit Number 717 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) This is marked as 717 and it looks like a review of '05 and it's "JAM." Would "JAM" be Mr. Manzoni? A. Yes. Q. Could you explain that document briefly to us? A. Yeah, I think these are John's notes that he used to talk to me about the performance in 2005. Q. And was the one that we have marked as 716, I guess the one that came first? A. I don't remember which came first.
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A. Maybe two weeks. 1 Q. Two weeks? 2 A. Yeah. 3 Q. And, Mr. Hoffman, how is it that you get 4 paid at BP? I take it you get a salary? 5 A. Direct deposit. 6 Q. Yeah. 7 A. Yeah, I get a salary. 8 Q. Do you get it in pounds? 9 A. No, in dollars. 10 Q. What are your bonus considerations? 11 A. What does that mean? 12 Q. Do you get any bonuses? 13 A. Yes. 14 Q. What are they based on? 15 A. They are based on performance to 16 contract. They are based on behavioral 17 expectations, you know, criteria, compliance with 18 ethics and policies, things like that, 360 review. 19 Q. We have been provided with certain 20 portions of your personnel file prior to your 21 deposition, and I am going to show you some of the 22 documents in here and maybe you can explain them to 23 us. 24 This one is -25
Q. Okay. Are those both summaries or notes from -A. This is a calculation that was done to determine the bonus, and this was the performance review bullet points (indicating). Q. 717 is the performance review? A. Yeah. I think that's John's notes for that. Q. Is that given to you by Mr. Manzoni every year? A. Yeah. Usually verbally. Q. As opposed to what we have there? A. I think he gave me this, but he does some kind of performance review every year but many times he does that off of his own notes. (Exhibit Number 718 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. I also have what's marked as 718, and this one is to M.P. Hoffman. I presume that's you? A. Yes. Q. And this one is from Lord Browne of Madingley dated February 11th, 2005. Do you typically get a letter from Lord Browne as part of your review as well?
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A. Yeah, I would typically get a letter from John Browne. It's a form letter that would just have the -- you know, what -- what the bonus criteria was, what's going on with the -- the longer term incentive plans. Q. Is safety one of the considerations given to providing a bonus each year? A. Yes, it is. Q. And the circumstances with safety, if you have a bad year on that issue alone, can any bonus be denied? A. Yes. Q. Was there consideration to denying bonuses to any personnel in 2005 as a result of what happened in Texas City? A. So the -- the Texas City organization has a -- what's called a variable pay plan, which sets the bonus for the Texas City personnel. That bonus was suspended for the first half of 2005 and then it was restructured in order to be more focused on the things that needed to happen at that site for the second half. Q. Was your bonus impacted as a result of the problems associated with Texas City in the last
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each year for bonuses? A. Well, he approves -- well, he is charged with reviewing all of his direct reports; but he also approves all bonuses for the executive leadership and for -- he approves variable pay plans for all the businesses as well. Q. Has there been any change to the VPP program for Texas City since the explosion? Not in any discounts for safety but has there been a change to the structure of the VPP package? A. Well, we put a specific VPP in place for the second half of 2005 that was focused on, you know, what they needed to work on. So it was much -- it was a different structure than we would have typically. There wasn't -- it wasn't financially related, for example. Q. I am sorry. Could you elaborate on that? I am not sure I follow you. A. Well, the -- so the -- so we had the tragedy in March and -- or in April and then we had to go and we suspended the VPP and then we put a plan together on "This is what Texas City needs to focus on. This is what they need to do." And it was at the outcome of the Mogford report and many
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year? A. I believe so. Q. Did it reduce by say more than half what your bonus was in the year prior? A. Well -- so -- I don't know all the considerations that were made and what my bonus was. It was about 50 percent less in the scoring. Q. Is your bonus typically a percentage of your salary or multiple of your salary? A. It's a percentage. Q. I also have two others that were just notes. Can you identify what these two are? I will mark them as 719 and 720. (Exhibit Numbers 719 and 720 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) I didn't see where there was really much in the way of dating. If you could tell me what those were. A. These -- I think these are -- I believe these are John Manzoni's notes that he used to give me verbal feedback on my performance. Q. Who is Mr. Manzoni charged with reviewing
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other things that gave suggestions for improvement at that site. So we put the VPP together in order to focus on those areas, where a typical variable pay plan would have safety components, it would have availability, operations kind of components. It would have milestones, which would be, "Here is the improvement activities." And it would have financial performance. Q. Who was involved in the decision to change the VPP program for Texas City last year? A. It was proposed by the site because they -- they wanted -- and I agreed and Pat Gower agreed that they needed to have something to move forward with and then it was approved by the segment. So I discussed it with John Manzoni. Q. Is Mr. Gower still vice president of BP North America? A. He is not vice president of BP North America unless that is a legal title. Q. Is -A. So I don't -Q. BP Products?
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A. He works for BP Products. He is an executive within BP. Q. And does BP have any plans to change his present position? A. No. Q. And Mr. Pillari, I understand, is retiring as president of BP Products? A. Yes. Q. Who is involved in the decision to replace him with Mr. Malone? A. I don't know. I wasn't involved with that. Q. Do you know if there were any particular reasons that triggered any decision here at BP or London to replace Mr. Pillari? A. I think that the -- I don't know what the decision about replacing Mr. Pillari was, but there is a strong interest with developing better relationships with our regulators. So that's one of the charges that Bob Malone has. Q. Who are the regulators in the United States that you wanted to have better relationships with? A. The FDC, EPA, OSHA. We have -- we have -- generally
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A. Against -- in the chain of command. Q. What chain of command? A. Refining. Q. Of BP? A. Yes. Q. Regarding? A. Regarding Texas City. Q. Anything in specific? A. I don't know more about it than that. I haven't seen the terms of reference for that. Q. Well, is it regarding the Texas City explosion -A. Oh, yes. Q. -- or things that occurred before then? A. Texas -- Texas City explosion. Q. Does it have anything to do with fatalities that have occurred before then or since then? A. I haven't seen the terms of reference. So I don't know. Q. Does it have anything to do with the Telos Report? A. I don't know. Q. Did it have anything to do with any of the other audits, studies, budgets, anything else?
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have good relationships with those agencies locally, but we haven't maintained the relationships regionally and federally. Q. What does Mr. Malone bring to the table in that regard, if you know? A. Well, Mr. Malone was the -- he was an executive leader of the region after -- shortly after the ARCO merger with BP. He was on the West Coast. So he has had experience with working with governments and agencies. Q. Mr. Gower told us in his deposition that he was under another review by BP. Do you know anything about an ongoing investigation that -A. I know there is -Q. -- involves Mr. Gower? A. I know there is an ongoing investigation. Q. Who is conducting that investigation? A. Bill Bonser. Q. And who chose Mr. Bonser, and what is he supposed to be doing? A. I believe that John Manzoni chose Bill Bonser, and he is investigating whether or not there should be further disciplinary action. Q. Further disciplinary action against whom?
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A. I don't know the scope of what they are looking at. Q. Have you been involved in any meetings with Mr. Bonser? A. Yes, he has interviewed me. Q. Why did Mr. Bonser interview you, if you know? A. It was part of this investigation. Q. What kind of questions did Mr. Bonser ask of you regarding the Texas City explosion? A. Primarily about accountabilities, what were the accountabilities. Q. Was it geared more towards accountabilities or lack of accountability? A. It was geared towards accountabilities. Q. Who had accountability for Texas City? A. The site was -- the direct accountability of the site was Don Parus. Q. Who picked Mr. Parus to run that unit? A. I don't know. He was running it when I got this job. Q. I thought Mr. Parus was given the BUL position in August of 2004? A. No. He -- he was the site director in 2002.
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In Texas City in 2002 everything was still operating under the South Houston complex? A. Yes. Q. And Mr. Parus arrived in Texas City in 2002; is that correct? A. Yes. Q. And were you involved in having Mr. Parus go to Texas City? A. No, I wasn't. Q. Who was? A. That was a decision that was taken before I got in to this role. So I don't know who all was involved in that. Q. Okay. So the decision was made before January of 2002, although he did not actually physically go to Texas City until sometime after you came here to London? A. Yes, it was. Q. Who did you replace here? A. Al Kozinski. Q. Where is he now? A. He is retired. Q. Where is he at now? A. I don't know.
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integrity. In particular, we had done a lot of work looking -- that's part of what A.T. Kearney had looked at as well. So we started to put plans in place, and a lot of those plans had already started to start to address the infrastructure integrity issues. A.T. Kearney identified an issue about -- that it was a site that kind of had a lot of aspirations, started a lot of stuff but didn't complete things very well. So out of the A.T. Kearney study, Don put together a program called 1000 days, which was intended to have kind of a project metric so we could look at what kind of progress are we making against -- against these goals, what kind of improvements, and put more rigor into it. Q. Okay. Well, I hate to quote you; but I thought earlier you said that back in 2002 y'all were trying to change the culture of the site. A. Out of A.T. Kearney. So get more delivery; but, you know, "cultural problem," I mean, that's very broad. The thing that we were trying to do was make sure that Texas City, when they committed to doing something, got it done. So we
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Q. Did he move back to the States? A. Yes, he did. Q. And after Mr. Parus moved to Texas City, did he report to you? A. He reported to a board that was set up. I did Don's performance review, but his contract was actually held by the people that were on the board and agreed by that. So it was chemicals. In BP, there's what are called segments. So there is a refining and marketing segment and there was a chemicals segment. And so the business unit leaders on the chemical side are set up along product lines. And so the business unit leader is the GVP on chemicals, and I would have to agree on Don's contract and what -- what he was responsible for. Q. Okay. Now, after you came to London in January, 2002, and Mr. Parus went to Texas City, when were you first made aware that there were cultural problems associated with the Texas City site? A. I don't know if I would say "cultural." I knew that there was -- there were issues around integrity, infrastructure
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got a lot more clearer -- or Don did with this 1000 day plan on specific improvements that needed to happen at the site, including the -- the infrastructure improvement plan was a very rigorous multi-year plan that was prioritized. Q. Okay. I just want to understand the timeline and when you were made aware of different issues associated with that facility. So that I understand, Mr. Parus came into Texas City and he was responsible as the site manager for the oversight of not just Texas City but the various other units -A. Yes. Q. -- that were part of that complex? A. Yes. Q. And you were in charge of overseeing him at some level? A. Yes. Q. And I also assume that Mr. Gower and other people in Chicago had some sort of oversight role, or did they not? A. Their -- the organization with the regional vice president didn't exist at that time. Q. So did he report directly to you for that --
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A. So all -- all the refinery managers, then, reported directly to me. MR. DENNY: Brent, when you say "he," who? Who are you referring to? I -- just to make sure y'all are on the same page. MR. COON: Mr. Parus. MR. DENNY: Okay. THE WITNESS: Mr. Parus, yeah. A. So I did his -- he reported directly to me; but his -- again, his performance or his -- his contract was held with this board. That was the concept that was put in place with the South Houston. Q. (BY MR. COON) And then Mr. Hale also reported directly to you? A. Well, Mr. Hale wasn't there in 2002. He was in -- I believe he was in Castillon, in Spain. Q. I thought he came to Texas City in 2002. A. I don't think so. I think it was later than that. Q. Do you recall when? A. Yeah, it couldn't have been 2002. It might have been late 2003. Q. Okay. Were you involved in replacing Mr. Scruggs?
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Mr. Parus is already -- a decision has already been made to send him there? A. Yes. Q. After you come to London? A. Yes. Q. Actually, that decision was made before you came to London? A. Yes, it was. Q. But it doesn't happen until after you come to London? A. Right. And the reason for that is that there was a very large turnaround maintenance going on and Mr. Scruggs wanted to stay at the site until that large maintenance activity was complete. Q. Okay. And then Mr. Parus comes out, and then you tell us about this Veba study with A.T. Kearney. So I want to talk about that a little bit. A. Okay. Q. Who made the decision to send the Kearney group out to Texas City? A. Well, Don -- I proposed it to Don. This guy, Jim Hay, suggested that we do that because we knew that we were -- we needed to increase
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A. Replacing him as what? 1 Q. Well, he was the plant manager or BUL at 2 Texas City in 2002, 2003. 3 A. He was the director of the South Houston 4 complex. I wasn't involved in those moves. Those 5 were -- would then be -- those were decided before 6 I took the job. 7 Q. Okay. So Mr. Scruggs was on his way out 8 before you came to London in January? 9 A. The decision had taken its -- that 10 Mr. Scruggs was leaving and Don Parus was coming in 11 before I took the job. 12 Q. And what do you know, if anything, about 13 Mr. Carter being phased out of the Texas City 14 facility? 15 A. Well, I had talked to Don about that, 16 that we needed to kind of change the style. There 17 were a number of issues that we saw about people 18 being very unhappy with the kind of style that 19 George had. It was very punitive. 20 Q. And was this in 2002? 21 A. That's when we started talking about it, 22 yeah. 23 Q. Okay. Well, I am just trying to figure 24 out everything that was going on in 2002. 25
spending. We had already seen some of these infrastructure issues. And so we wanted to get an outside company that, you know, had done a really good job for us in Germany to come and take a look at the site and help us put a plan together for improvement and Don -Q. Who is Jim -- I am sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. Who is Jim Hay? A. Okay. So Don Parus, then, agreed that that was a good idea, that we should do that. Jim Hay was an executive on the chemicals side that was in the project to integrate Veba. Q. And what was the Kearney group hired to do? A. To go in and do an assessment of Texas City. Q. What were they asked to look for and report back on? A. They were asked to look for -- or to -really to report what do we need to do in order to improve -- put a plan in place to improve the site. Q. And you told us that there were infrastructure issues that had already been
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identified. Could you elaborate on that, please, sir? A. Well, the -- the spending on connecting pipe -- kind of the connection of the units that hadn't been going on for a while or had been reduced and so we -- what we wanted to do and did was looked at all that. So, you know, under insulation corrosion, for example, things like that. We did an assessment of all of that and put a, you know, multi-year plan in place with funding in order to address those issues. Q. All right. So in 2002 at some point in your talks with Mr. Parus, you were made aware -specifically aware that there had been deferred maintenance issues associated to the Texas City complex? A. Yes. Q. And those included items you just mentioned, such as corrosion under insulation with the piping and with thin pipe -A. Yes. Q. -- as well? A. Yes.
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A. Yeah. Q. I think one of those was that, just by example, the sheer number of fires that were occurring at the Texas City facility was alarming. Do you recall that? A. I don't recall that specifically, but the piece that I do recall is that we had had a period of reduced spending on maintenance over a period of time and so, you know, that's -- we put plans in place to both increase the spending in specific areas but also to increase the maintenance budget of things. Q. Why had maintenance spending been reduced at Texas City? A. I don't know. Q. How long had underinvestment in the infrastructure at Texas City been going on? A. I am not sure even how to define that. If you will look at the -- at -what I remember about that Veba study is they actually had a chart that showed a decrease in spending over time. Q. Went back to at least the mid Nineties, didn't it? A. Yeah, I think so. It looked like it
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Q. Anything else that you can elaborate on that was associated to infrastructural maintenance issues? A. Those were the primary things. Q. And how was it that Mr. Parus relayed this to you? Had he had a comprehensive inspection program that had determined all these issues or were they -A. It actually started before he was there. So there was -- there was a project put in place to begin that, and then Don was new to that site. So we had A.T. Kearney come in and do another assessment to say, you know, what is the scope of the things that we need to do, really to help Don put a plan in place for improving the site. Q. And that was the Veba report? A. That's what -- I think that's what Texas City called it. Q. It came out around August, 2002? A. Yeah. Yeah, that would have been about right. Q. Were you provided with a copy of that? A. Yes. Q. I think that report pointed out some major concerns, did it not?
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started about the time that the resid hydrocracking unit had been -- there was a huge investment that went into Texas City, and then there was a -- you know, a reduction in investment that happened after that. Q. Do you recall anything in the Veba report expressing concern over the large number of fires that were occurring at that facility? A. I don't recall that specifically, but that wouldn't surprise me. Q. And you understood that the fires in many circumstances was due to escaped hydrocarbons? A. Right. Q. Do you recall anything in the Veba report pointing out specifically that unless those issues were fully addressed that BP Texas City was poised for a potential catastrophic event? A. Yeah. I don't remember those words, but that is why we put all those plans in place, to address the -- address the situation. In fact, one of the metrics that we set up or -- Don set up in this 1000 day was to measure loss of containment, leaks and spills. Q. And a lot of this had occurred under the watch of Mr. Scruggs and Mr. Carter, had it not?
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there was kind of various different, what I would call, kind of normal pressure on, "Are you really spending too much? Is there other ways to cut costs? Do you need to do this project," that kind of thing. But my accountability was to run the site, and I was able to do that. We didn't do any massive cost reduction; and I didn't get particular pressure, other than questions, to do that. MR. COON: I am going to strike as nonresponsive. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, I just asked you a simple question. Did BP London ask you, as the BUL at Carson refinery, to effectuate any budget cuts in the two or three years that you stayed there prior to moving to London? A. No. THE VIDEOGRAPHER: It's five minutes. Should we go off? MR. COON: No. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, have you received any type of training to deal with the media?
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safety. Q. Is there anything more important that you can think of than adhering to process safety management principles in the owning and operation of refineries and chemical plants? A. So what do you mean by "process safety"? Q. Well, let me ask you: What do you mean by "process safety," since you are in charge of it? A. Well, so, there is -- there is specific regulation in OSHA which defines, you know, kind of activities that have to happen around process safety. I think that it's -- in running a business, it's more holistic than that. It's -you know, it's operations, procedures. It's how you do maintenance. It's kind of keeping track. So more broadly, we would call that operational excellence. The ability to maintain and control, operate safely. Q. If I was asked -- say I just asked you, "What's the most important thing for you to do in your job at BP?" A. It's to run the -- run the refinery safely. Q. And what are the most important things
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A. In ARCO I did. I took a -- a one-day class. Q. What was that about? A. It was just how to -- if there is a camera and a mike in your face, how do you do that. A little bit of practice. It was, you know, the kind of questions you might get, that kind of thing. Q. Have you had any follow-up training in your years at BP in how to deal with the press or how to make statements to the press? A. I haven't. That training is available, but I haven't done it. Q. Have you received any safety training at BP? A. Yeah, I have received safety training. Q. Does it include process safety management? A. Well, I am responsible for process safety. Process safety, in a large extent, is refinery specific. So a kind -- it's a big part of what my agenda is, is developing process safety standards; and we spend a lot of time on it. I haven't had any specific BP training on process
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that you need to do to run a refinery safely? A. There is many, many things that are important to running a refinery safely. Q. Run them off. A. So training, competency, maintenance, procedures, HAZOPs, management of change, leadership, ability to hear the organization. Q. Any more? A. I am sure there is -- there is many more. I mean, so the way we -- we approach this is: First of all, what are -- what are our values? So our values are safety, people, environmental performance, availability and financial performance. And then how do we support that? So leadership training. How do you -- how do you develop an organization? So the culture that we are trying to derive is called high reliability organization, which particular aspects of high reliability are characteristics of high reliability organizations and then we have trained leadership in how to develop that. And those kind of things, executing with rigor, finishing are important. THE VIDEOGRAPHER: May we go off
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the record to change the videotape? MR. COON: Yes. THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Okay. Thank you. We are going off the video record. The time is 10:49. This is the end of Videotape 1 of the deposition of Mr. Hoffman. (Recess taken.) THE VIDEOGRAPHER: All right. We are back on the video record. The time is 11:03 a.m. This is the beginning of Videotape 2 of the deposition of Mr. Hoffman. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, before the break, we were talking about process safety management and the principles involved; and I would like to go back and elaborate on those some with you, if we may. A. Okay. Q. In going over your day-to-day responsibilities in process safety, what do you do? What's a typical 8:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday week for you? A. I don't know if I have a typical -- the way I run the region is: Once a month I meet with my leadership and then once a quarter we will
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job sites? A. So we'd track -- we tracked days away from work case and recordable injury frequency. Q. Do you track fatalities? A. Yes. Q. Who keeps those records? A. The segment keeps those high level records. They are kept on a system -- on the general system at BP called Traction and then reported through the segment and the group. Q. When were you first made aware of the history of the fatalities at Texas City? A. Well, the history? Which... Q. The number of fatalities that had occurred at that particular jobsite over time. A. I am not sure. Q. Were you made aware, prior to the explosion in March of last year, that Texas City had an inordinate amount of fatalities occurring there over time? A. I was certainly made aware of the long-term history of that after the incident. I don't believe I knew the Amoco history. Q. What do you know about the history of Texas City refinery specifically? Do you know like
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review all the process safety related data, which would be how were we doing on progress against gaps versus our standards. So we have written a number of unit specific process safety standards. Our action items being closed from process safety audits. So we track that. So that's part of it. And then the other pieces that I would say that is kind of process related is: Are there any high potential incidents that have happened or major incidents? And those -- so we get those reports, plus we review those, as well, as part of my management team, to see whether or not there's trends that -- that we need to do something about, a new -- new direction that we need to give. Q. And can you tell us examples of high potential incidents? A. A large spill would be a high potential incident, a large fire, an injury, a high potential would be maybe that there wasn't an injury but could have been. So there are -- there are specific group -- BP group criteria that is used to define high potential. Q. You also track injuries occurring on the
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when it was built? A. No. No, I don't. Q. Do you know anything about any major fires that occurred there over the years prior to the explosion of March of '05? A. Yeah. I know -- you know, in my history with the company, I know, you know, what happened at Texas City. Q. Okay. Well, I am talking about before the merger when -- would you have been made aware of problems at Texas City prior to 2002? A. Well, in 2000, when I joined the company, then if there were problems at Texas City, I would become aware of it. Q. Okay. Were you ever briefed on what had happened at Texas City or other refineries when you were put into your position here in London in 2002? A. No. Q. So you really weren't given an education regarding the history associated with the various plants that you were charged with? A. I don't recall that. Q. When were you first made aware that there had been a fatality occurring every month -- every 12 to 18 months at Texas City going back, say,
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30 years? A. So after the ISOM incident, I saw data like that. Q. Were you aware that Mr. Parus was tracking that type of information well before the explosion of March, 2005? A. No, I wasn't. Q. Were you aware of a study that he had commissioned called the Telos Report? A. I knew that he had commissioned a behavioral firm to come in and do a survey. Q. When was it that you were first made aware that Mr. Parus had retained a behavioral study group to come in and do an assessment at Texas City? A. Well, Pat Gower had commissioned behavioral studies across the U.S. When he told me that he was doing that, he told me that Texas City was already doing one with a different firm than he had used at the other refineries. Q. So you -A. That would have been in 2004 sometime. Q. And when were you first made aware of any findings associated with the Telos study at Texas City?
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testimony. Q. (BY MR. COON) When we talked about this investigation Mr. Bonser is involved in now, do you know what, if any, role Mr. Gower has in that investigation? A. He's been interviewed. Q. Do you know why? A. No, I don't. Q. Do you know who else has been interviewed? You said, Mr. Gower, yourself? A. I believe Kathleen Lucas has been interviewed as well; but like I said, I am not aware of the terms of reference on this. So they are not briefing me on this process. It wasn't commissioned by me. Q. Who was it commissioned by? A. I -- I think Mr. Manzoni. Q. Mr. Manzoni has not told you anything about why he has commissioned this investigation? A. Well, he told me that, you know, it's a broader look at whether disciplinary action is required. Q. So your understanding is that your boss commissioned this study to determine whether or not other people high in management should be punished
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A. I visited Texas City, Don and his leadership, with Pat Gower in February of 2005; and there was -- there was kind of a general briefing about what was going on at the site. And I think -- at that time I think he told me something about what he had seen. Q. Do you remember Mr. Parus sitting down with you and Mr. Gower and walking through a number of the issues that he had gleaned from the Telos Report in that February 15, 2005 meeting? A. Yeah, I think he did that. Q. Do you recall a PowerPoint presentation that he had for you and Mr. Gower at that meeting? A. Yeah, there was a PowerPoint presentation. Q. Do you know that Mr. Gower has testified that he was totally unaware of the Telos Report or any of its findings until well after the explosion in March, 2005? A. No, I wasn't aware of that. Q. Do you have any idea as to why he would deny any prior knowledge of the Telos Report before the explosion of March, 2005? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know anything about Pat's
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in some manner as a result of what occurred or transpired on March 23rd, 2005? A. He didn't say "punished," but yes. I mean, it's an investigation that he commissioned as I understand it. Q. What did he say with respect to the intent if it didn't involve a potential for punishment? A. Discipline. Q. Well, is discipline punishment? A. It can be. Q. Well, discipline is never an award, is it, sir? A. It depends on what it is. It's not going to be a reward, no. Q. Did Mr. Manzoni indicate to you the types of discipline that could take place as a result of the investigation? A. No. Q. Have you heard anything associated to this investigation that would indicate that anyone has, in fact, been scrutinized for any disciplinary action as a result of the explosion? A. No. Q. Do you know of anyone that is being
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investigated other than Mr. Gower, yourself and Ms. Lucas? A. No. Q. How about Mr. Parus? A. I don't know what the scope of the investigation is. Q. Speaking of Mr. Parus, where is he now? A. I think he is still in the Houston area. Q. What is he doing? A. He -- he doesn't report to me. He was reporting to Mr. Pillari. Q. I am sorry. To who? A. Mr. Pillari. Q. In fact, until recently he was reporting to Mr. Gower, wasn't he? A. I don't remember exactly when that changed, but it wasn't that recent. Q. How much longer is Mr. Pillari supposed to stay in his position as president of BP Products? A. He has been replaced by Mr. Malone. Q. Has that replacement been formalized? A. Yes. Q. Who will Mr. Parus report to now? A. I assume it's Mr. Malone, but I don't
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using him to help him support the U.S. region. It wasn't Texas City specific but -Q. Would you defer -A. -- recruiting plans, I believe Don was working on for Pat. Q. Would you defer to Mr. Parus as to what Mr. Parus has done on behalf of BP, if anything, over the last year and a half since he was put on leave of absence? A. Yes. Q. So if Mr. Parus said he hadn't been doing anything on behalf of BP for the last year and a half, would you defer to that testimony? A. Well, I -- that's not my understanding from Mr. Gower but... Q. Has Mr. Gower given you anything in writing indicating that Mr. Parus has done anything on behalf of BP Products or BP London or any BP subsidiary in the last year and a half? A. I don't believe so. Q. Do you know anything about the extensions of Mr. Parus' leave of absence that have occurred this year? A. No, I don't. Q. Who do those go through?
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have any direct knowledge of that. Q. When is the last time you talked to Mr. Parus? A. Probably summer of 2005. Q. Have you ever asked what he is up to, what he is doing, how he is doing? A. When he -- when he was reporting to Pat, you know, we had him -- Pat had him working on some things for him. So, yes, I mean, we have discuss -- Pat and I had discussions about that. Q. Mr. Parus was doing things for Mr. Gower? A. Yes. Q. When? A. In 2005. Q. After he -- while he was put on leave of absence? A. He was -- he was -- intended to be supporting us, and so he did various different things for Mr. Gower. Q. Can you name one thing he did for Mr. Gower after he was put on leave of absence in May of 2005? A. I think he looked at some of the staffing and personnel issues across. So he -- Pat was
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A. I understand it's Mr. Pillari up until now. Q. Do you understand that Mr. Pillari had carte blanc with respect to the disposition of Mr. Parus during the pendency of any investigations undertaken by BP? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I am sorry. I didn't understand what you meant. Q. (BY MR. COON) Does Mr. Pillari have carte blanc to do with what he so desires as it relates to Mr. Parus? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know what Mr. Pillari's accountabilities relative to Mr. Parus are. Q. (BY MR. COON) Well, who do you understand can take Mr. Parus off his leave of absence and make his leave of absence permanent by discharge? A. I don't know. Q. What role, if any, did you have with respect to removing Mr. Parus from his day-to-day responsibilities at Texas City in the summer of 2005? A. Well, I recommended that we do that.
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Q. And why is that? A. Well, the incident had a huge effect on everybody at the site and certainly did Don. And I worked with Pat Gower to assess whether Don could lead the site afterwards, and he was -- we didn't think that he could effectively after this. So I recommended that we replace him at that time because we needed somebody that could focus on moving the site forward. Q. Who picked Mr. Maclean? A. John Manzoni and I, Pat Gower. Q. Did you have to go to Mr. Manzoni to approve the relinquishment of Mr. Parus' responsibilities at Texas City? A. Yes. Q. Did Mr. Manzoni have to seek approval from any of his superiors to make that happen? A. I don't know. Q. Do you know how or if Lord Browne was kept in the loop regarding the executive decisions associated with replacing any of the management team at Texas City? A. No, I don't know. Q. Did Mr. Manzoni participate in any of the meetings with you and others regarding the transfer
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affirmed? A. Yes. Q. Then Mr. Parus was replaced? A. Yes. Q. Now, let's talk about Mr. Maclean. What role, if any, did you have in recommending Maclean as the replacement for Mr. Parus? A. Well, I had a responsibility to find a replacement for Don Parus; and so Mr. Maclean was one of -- one of several that we considered. Mr. Maclean had run the Grangemouth refinery, Whiting refinery, Bulwer refinery; was in procurement. I discussed the possibility with him, and he was interested in doing -- doing the role. Q. Who else was on the short list to replace Mr. Parus? A. Mr. Gower, Mr. Lamana. Q. Anyone else? A. I don't think so. Q. Who made the decision to replace Mr. Parus with Mr. Maclean? A. So I made the recommendation. Q. To -Page 77
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of responsibilities and personnel at Texas City as a result of the explosion? A. Well, the meetings were between Mr. Manzoni and I. I don't remember there being others when I was with John talking about it. Q. How many meetings did you and Mr. Manzoni have regarding changing personnel at Texas City after the explosion? A. Well, we had many meetings around Texas City, not just personnel. I don't know how many; but we were discussing that, all the aspects of Texas City. Q. Do you know who else he met with? A. Other than me on that? Q. Yes, sir. A. No, I don't. Q. Do you know if anyone, other than Mr. Manzoni, would have had the ability to make a final decision on replacing Mr. Parus under these circumstances? A. Well, my recommendation was John. John approved that. That's as much as I know about it. Q. Okay. So as best you understand, after meetings with Mr. Manzoni and your recommendation to replace Mr. Parus, Mr. Manzoni concurred and
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A. John decided or approved it. Q. Okay. Do you know if Mr. Manzoni had to go anyone -- to anyone else to obtain final consent to replace Mr. Parus with Mr. Maclean? A. No, I don't. Q. Is there any kind of policy or handbook or anything that outlines specifically the responsibilities that are vested exclusively with Mr. Manzoni's title in making those decisions. A. I think there is a delegation of authority. Q. Do you know whether or not that delegation of authority sets out Mr. Manzoni as having the ultimate and final decision in circumstances such as we just described? A. So he has the -- that responsibility. It has to go through the HR department as well, just like all the executives. And I don't know what he did around that particular piece. Q. Okay. So you do understand that Mr. Manzoni is required under the delegation of authority to go through human resources to make the final decision and have it approved? A. Yes. Q. Does human resources have to go to the --
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any other executive board, the CEO or any other type of operational board here at BP London? A. I don't think so. Q. Why is BP London -- what do we want to call it BP, LLC? What is it -A. PLC. Q. Yeah. What is the company you actually work for called? A. I work for -- well, I call it BP; but the big group is called BP, PLC. Q. Is that who pays you? A. My checks come from BP North America. I am an expat in London. Q. And would you describe BP North America as a subsidiary of BP, PLC? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I am not sure what the legal description of that is. Q. (BY MR. COON) Did most of the personnel that you worked with at -- here in London work for BP, PLC? A. The non-expats work for BP, PLC, as far as I know. Q. Do you know why there is a distinction
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Q. Three or four years ago? A. It was -- I believe it was in 2000. Q. And Mr. Maclean was sent over to the Grangemouth facility after a series of explosions ripped through that facility, wasn't he? A. Was -- there was a fire on a fluid unit, and there was a steam pipe that -- that ruptured. Those are the two things that I know of at Grangemouth. Q. And somewhere through the system was it understood that with Mr. Maclean going on in there after that experience and settling things down that he was a pretty good troubleshooter? A. I am not sure I would describe it as troubleshooting. He is very good at kind of holding a vision for the site. He is a powerful, articulate leader. Part of the -- part of the issues that we saw in the Mogford report was that, you know, the site needed a little vision, understanding, what needed to happen. Colin is well respected within the group. Q. Was he already a personal friend of Mr. Manzoni or Lord Browne before going to Texas City?
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between who you receive your checks from here versus people who, I guess, are natural citizens here? A. Well, we have -- so we have legal entities in many countries; and I think being an expat is just kind of easier to have the paychecks come from your home company -- country. Q. Mr. Hoffman, why was Mr. Maclean on the short list for consideration to replace Mr. Parus? A. Because he was interested in doing it. He had a lot of experience with managing large, complex sites. He managed Grangemouth, which was also a chemical refinery site. He had kind of driven a lot of improvements there, was refinery manager at Whiting as well. So he had refining experience, had the ability to manage large integrated sites. Q. Was it in part that he was a good troubleshooter in handling crisis circumstances at refineries? A. Well, that's -- those are two different things, I think. Q. My understanding is that there was a significant event that occurred at Grangemouth. A. Yeah.
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A. I know he knows Lord Browne, and I know he knows Mr. Manzoni. I don't know if they are personal friends. Q. Do you know if they have visited or had anything to do with one another outside of a pure business relationship during office hours? A. No, I don't know that. That seems unlikely. Q. Why is that? A. It -- you know, it's just that he has been at Grangemouth, Whiting. I don't know where he would have that opportunity to have that kind of relationship. Q. Let's go back to the Telos Report. This is February of 2005. Was the first that you had actually heard of any results coming from that study at the meeting that you had with Mr. Parus and Mr. Gower? A. Yes, that's what I recall. Q. How did you take the news from that study? A. It was -- so it was a broad review. So we reviewed the 1000 day plan and other things. So it was part of a broader review.
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It was disappointing that the results from the employees didn't really show all the effort and investment that we put in. You know, it was like it was -- it was disconnected. There were some good things in there as I recall, too, where people believed that there was more focus than there had been in the past on safety. So that was something to build off from but... (Discussion off the record.) MR. COON: Okay. Let's go off the record then. THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Okay. We are going off the video record. The time is 11:25. (Recess taken.) THE VIDEOGRAPHER: All right. We're back on the video record. The time is 11:27. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, did you have an opportunity to meet with any of the surveyors -that is, Mr. and Ms. Gioja or Mr. Walker -- as part of the presentation, either before or after the meeting with Mr. Parus? A. Which surveyors are these? Q. These are the Telos surveyors. A. No.
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for some time about shutting down one of the CATs, the fluid units. We discussed shutting down one of the alkylation plants. Q. I take it those options were ruled out at some point? A. No. They -- they are shut down. Q. Okay. Maybe I misunderstood then. Which units were shut down as -A. A decision to shut down the CAT, the fluid unit and the alkylation plant have -- has been taken. Q. When was that? A. Well, we had already decided in -- by February to shut down the CAT; and we were looking at whether or not we should shut down the alkylation plant at the time. The decision had been made then. Q. Were these based on returns on investment and market demands or were these based on comments contained in the Telos Report or both? A. It wasn't based on comments in the Telos Report; but it was -- it was based on how much investment had to go into those sites, trying to simplify the site, kind of -- kind of a smaller more manageable footprint, the ability to invest
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Q. What, if any, decisions were made on how to respond to what was reflected on the Telos Report? A. I don't remember the specific responses that Don was proposing for that. There were a number of things going on already at the site that dealt with some of the issues. There was an auditing that was put together by Don to do audit for compliance and control of work and things like that. So there were a number of things that I knew about already that were addressing some of the issues. Q. Any consideration given to shutting down the plant or some of the units to further address specific complaints contained in the Telos Report by the personnel that worked there? A. I don't remember a discussion about that. Q. To your knowledge, was there ever any consideration to shutting down any of the units at Texas City or the entire plant prior to March 23, 2005? A. Yeah. We have done a lot of studies about what the footprint at Texas City needed to look like to be kind of sustainable -- a sustainable business; and so we had been discussing
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and sustain in other parts of the equipment. Q. When were you made aware that there even was an ISOM unit at the Texas City plant? A. I am sure I have looked at the configuration of the Texas City plant. Q. Had you ever been out to tour that facility prior to the explosion? A. I am not sure if I had seen specifically the ISOM. Q. How many times would you guess you had been to Texas City prior to the explosion? A. Maybe six or seven times. Q. Were these routine meetings? A. Yeah. Q. Was the February visit -- meaning February of 2005 -- was that part of a routine meeting or were you coming down specifically to address some problems identified at Texas City? A. It was a routine meeting; but it was to check up on progress, you know, at a high level. So we had a number of issues at Texas City. One was what's the long-term investment program, what's the footprint as I discussed we had been looking at, what units should we shut down, what kind of investments we need
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going forward. The 1000 day plan. We reviewed that at that time. By February, 2005, Pat Gower would have been the in year performance review. So he would do that quarterly. So when I would go to a site, it would be to review kind of longer term things, issues that they had. Q. When were you made aware that there had been three other fatalities in 2004? A. I knew about it when the fatalities occurred. Q. How is it that you are informed of fatalities occurring at the various plants? A. There is a -- there is a major incident announcement that goes throughout BP in the segment and to the group if there is a fatality. Q. Are you apprised or informed of any off site injuries or fatalities as well, those that occur somewhere off the premises themselves? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. So if -- so generally -- so if it -- say in lubes, if they have a fatality that's a road -a road fatality, then that gets reported as well. Q. (BY MR. COON) For instance, in Whiting I think there was an explosion a few years ago where
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Texas City back to the old Amoco heritage days? A. Which one is that? Q. That's the one dealing with removal or replacement of blowdown drums? A. No. I didn't know about that prior to the incident. Q. When were you first made aware that there was Process Safety Standard Number 6 that went back to the Seventies at the old Amoco heritage? A. The process safety standards that we have were unit specific. So I didn't know about the heritage ones, other than the ones that we had approved. Q. Were you ever involved in approving any phasing out or replacement of blowdown drums prior to the explosion? A. No. Q. Had that ever been something that was considered at BP? A. Not that I am aware of. Q. When were you made aware of the history associated with the ISOM unit at Texas City; that is, when it was built, why it was built, what was there before it? A. After the incident.
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some debris went into a neighborhood and killed a little boy sleeping in his bed. Would that be the type of thing you would be informed of as well? A. Absolutely. I wasn't aware of that. Q. I take it you have a fundamental understanding of the differences between blowdown drums and flares, do you not, sir? A. Yes. Q. When was it you were made aware that blowdown drums were still being utilized at the Texas City facility? A. After the incident. Q. Do you know if any comprehensive studies had been undertaken by BP to ascertain where blowdown drums were still being utilized within their system prior to the explosion? A. No, I am not aware of any. Q. Do you know if there had been any consideration by BP to replace or remove any of the blowdown drums prior to March 23rd, 2005? A. I am not aware of that. Q. Were you aware of what's called Process Safety Standard Number 6 that was in effect at BP
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Q. What were you told or informed as it related to the history of the ISOM unit after the explosion? A. That there was -- it was -- as I recall, it was an ISOM unit. It had modified some equipment from another unit when it was built. I don't recall what the year was that it was built. Q. Were you made aware at some point that the ISOM unit utilized the pre-existing open containment system being an F-20 blowdown drum in lieu of a flare when it was built in the Eighties? A. After the incident. Q. Were you made aware that the blowdown drum that was used there had been something designed back in the 1950s? A. After the incident. Q. Would you agree it was sound from a technology standpoint in the 1980s to utilize a flare instead of a blowdown drum in new construction? A. I don't believe that new construction would have blowdown drums. Q. And why is that? A. You know, standards evolve. Q. What do you mean by that?
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A. I mean -- well, part of what we do, part of process safety is that, you know, you continue to make improvements. The blowdown system, what we found after the fact, is that the blowdown was a standard that Amoco had used. You don't really see that outside of the Amoco refineries. Q. In fact, you are aware that Amoco had routinely utilized flares in new construction going back to the Sixties or Seventies? A. I didn't know when they started using flares, but certainly I am not aware of refineries that are built without flares. Q. That is because as Lord Browne's investigator -- was it Mr. Mogford -- acknowledged in the fatal report, that flares are inherently safer than blowdown drums in the petrochemical sector, are they not? A. Yes. Q. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that, does it? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't think so. Q. (BY MR. COON) And that's because process safety management, as it relates to refineries, means keeping the hydrocarbons contained within the
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Q. Do you have an understanding it was to circumvent environmental regulations that were in play with the EPA at the time? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No. Q. (BY MR. COON) Was that ever rumored to be one of the reasons or the primary reason that an F-20 blowdown drum would have been utilized in the construction of the ISOM unit in 1984? A. I have never heard that before today. Q. Were you ever made aware of the history of prior vapor clouds emanating from the blowdown drum at the ISOM unit? A. I have read the Mogford report which details the history. Q. That report reflected a history of several prior occurrences in which vapor clouds emanated from that blowdown drum, did it not? A. Yes, vapors. Q. Are you aware that testimony has been developed in this case that there were prior liquid overflows at that F-20 as well? A. I am not aware of prior testimony. Q. And sitting here today, you have never been made aware that there has been testimony
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system? A. That's part of what it means. Q. And when you have escapes of hydrocarbons from the systems in refineries and chemical plants, it poses risk to personnel as well as risk to the environment, does it not? A. Yes. Q. And, in fact, the history of fires that have occurred out at Texas City had primarily been associated with escapes of hydrocarbons in various systems and piping there over years, correct? A. As far as I know, that's true. I don't think it was wood fires or something like that. Q. And so that we all understand, a blowdown drum utilizes what's called an open containment system where any overpressures within the unit vents to the atmosphere instead of being burned off by a flare? A. So it's a -- it's a -- it's open containment. It has a drum before the blowdown to remove liquids and then vapors are released. Q. Did you have any understanding as to why when the ISOM unit was built in 1984 they tied it in to an antiquated blowdown drum? A. No, I don't.
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elicited in this case that there had been liquid overfills of the ISOM unit prior to March 23rd, 2005? A. I have read the Mogford record. So I know the information that's in that. Q. You have not been provided with any updated information regarding testimony or discovery in this case that would establish that there had been liquid overfills at that ISOM unit prior to March 23rd, 2005? A. No. Q. Were you ever made aware that there had been fires as a result of vapor cloud emissions from a blowdown drum prior to March 23, 2005? A. So other than the information in the Mogford report, that's what I know about the prior history of the ISOM. Q. Do you know whether or not the Mogford report reflects a history -- a documented history of an F-20 catching on fire in 2000 for at least a period of 24 hours? A. Catching on fire for 24 hours? Q. Yes, sir. A. No. Q. Are you aware of the history of liquid
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overfills at any of the other units at Texas City prior to March 23, 2005? A. No. Q. Were you made aware of an OSHA citation in 1992 emanating from a vapor cloud from another system at Texas City in 1991? A. No. Q. So that is the first you have heard of a 1991 vapor cloud emission resulting in a citation by OSHA? A. Yes. Q. So it's news to you today that as a result of that citation OSHA made a recommendation to the BP Texas City facility to take that open containment system and run it to a flare? A. Yes, that's news. I mean, that doesn't change what we are doing there, but that is -- that is -- we are removing the blowdowns at Texas City. Q. And that's something that could have and should have been done since they recognized the problems associated with blowdown drums in new construction in 1977? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) Correct?
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that the blowdown drum be removed and replaced with a flare as part of that construction project? A. No. No, I wouldn't have known that. Q. Is that news to you today? A. I knew that there was discussion after the incident about removal because I read the Mogford report, but -- but my role in that was I knew that they had an issue with benzene and that they proposed a project in order to remove the benzene and that was approved. Q. Did you know that Mr. Hale killed the project to tie the ISOM unit into a flare as a result of budgetary constraints? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No, I didn't. Q. (BY MR. COON) Where would those budget constraints have come from? Mr. Hale testified that he was being pressured not to spend the money that had been earmarked or computed to complete the Clean Streams project and run the ISOM to a flare. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know where that would have come -- I knew that the -- in the years that I have been in this job, we have increased the budget for
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A. I don't know what -- what you mean by "recognize the problems." I don't believe that anybody envisioned something like this happening as they made decisions on this. Q. You said nobody recognized or envisioned. Are you saying that nobody -- what do you mean by that? You said "nobody envisioned something like this." A. What I mean is that a lot of these refineries of Texas City is like this as well are, you know, quite old, that have been updated over time and what -- what hasn't been done is bring all current equipment up to whatever current standard is. So I don't know the decisions about where investment was done specifically to reduce risk, but that's one of the things that we do. Q. Well, were you aware of the Clean Streams project in 2002, 2003? A. I think that was a project to remove benzene from wastewater. Q. Did you know anything about the consultants that were retained there recommending
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Texas City and other refineries significantly. And those -- those kind of -- if that was a safety issue, that would have been one of the priority things to spend on. MR. COON: Object to nonresponsive. Q. (BY MR. COON) If Mr. Hale said that he was pressured by London not to spend any more money on a particular project, who would have been the persons here in London overseeing those types of operations to have pressured him not to spend the money? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Well, in your -- so each site proposes a plan. On capital, there is three different tiers of capital that we do. One is called license to operate, which is safety, compliance and other things; the second is called sustaining because we want the refineries to long term be sustainable, powerful businesses; and the third tier is commercial. And so the site gets a capital budget allocated. If they don't have enough money, then you start removing the commercial; and that's the site's accountability. So I don't -- you know,
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they would have had a capital budget. I don't know what the circumstance around Rick's decisions on that were. Q. (BY MR. COON) Well, did you know that a lot of the budgets associated with the Clean Streams project were not earmarked and in the budget, that they had not been budgeted items? A. No. Q. Did you know that the EPA threatened BP Texas City with closure if they did not obtain immediate compliance with environmental violations that were existing at the facility at that time? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I knew that there was an issue with benzene that needed to be addressed and that there was a project that was put together. Q. (BY MR. COON) And the benzene issue was one that was resulting from the excess emissions of benzene at that facility in violation of existing regulations, correct? A. Yes. Q. And you were aware that EPA was holding over BP's head a number of threats, one of which was closure of the facility if they did not immediately complete the things necessary to get
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A. No. Q. Do you understand certain individuals have retained individual counsel as a result of inquiries associated to this explosion? A. The only one that I know of that has personal counsel is Don Parus, but I wouldn't know that for -- for others. Q. Do you know why Mr. Parus would have obtained his own counsel? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No. I don't know what his thinking on that is. Q. (BY MR. COON) Did he have to obtain approval or consent from anyone at BP to obtain his own counsel? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know. It didn't go through me. I just know that he had -- has counsel. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you know if BP is paying for his personal counsel? A. No, I don't know. Q. Did you participate in any of the investigations associated with this explosion? A. No. Q. Did you provide any statements to anyone
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them back into compliance with respect to toxic emissions from that plant? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I didn't know about -- I knew that we were negotiating and discussing with EPA what we were going to do about the issue. We self-reported this. Q. (BY MR. COON) I am sorry. Are you saying that Texas City turned itself in to the EPA? A. They found the benzene, that was not what they expected, informed the EPA of that and then we began the mitigation of that. Q. Do you know whether BP, in making the decision with respect to this Clean Streams project and the reporting, was concerned about criminal charges being filed against some of their management associated to these illegal releases? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I didn't hear anything about that. Q. (BY MR. COON) Were you involved in the decision-making process with respect to the retention of any outside counsel for any of the personnel employed by BP as part of any ongoing investigations associated to this explosion?
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as a result of this explosion? A. I am not sure what you mean by "provide statements." Q. Did you give anyone a statement? Have you sat down with anyone and given a written statement that you signed -A. No. Q. -- or a statement that a court reporter has taken, such as the one we have here today? A. No, I haven't. Q. Have you talked to any of the investigative agencies? A. Yes, I have. Q. Which ones? A. CSB. Q. When? A. Probably three months ago. Q. Do you recall the person you talked to? A. No, I don't remember the name. Q. Can you elaborate on the circumstances, phone interview, personal interview? A. Phone interview. Q. Anyone else in attendance on this conference? A. There was a BP representative lawyer as
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1 well. I don't remember who that was either. 2 Q. Okay. The CSB, we are talking about the 3 Chemical Safety and Hazard Board? 4 A. Yes. 5 Q. What was it they were asking you? 6 A. Well, they are doing an investigation as well. They asked me some about the Mogford report. 7 8 They asked me about performance contracts. They 9 asked me about the process safety audits, how that 10 worked within BP. 11 Q. Did they ask you about any of the prior 12 audits that had been done out there, the Veba 13 audit? 14 A. I don't believe they asked me about the 15 Veba audit. 16 Q. The Telos study? 17 A. No, I don't believe they asked me about 18 that. 19 Q. Mr. Hoffman, speaking of the Telos study 20 again, do you recall in the summary of that report 21 the identification of the things that the personnel 22 at BP Texas City felt were prioritized in the 23 operation of that facility? 24 A. Were priorities? 25 Q. Yes, sir.
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Telos Report did comment that people felt like there was more safety focus than there had been in the past. MR. COON: Object to the responsiveness. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, my question of you, sir, was: Did it concern you that the personnel responding to the survey felt that BP Texas City put profits first -A. Yes. Q. -- and people last? A. That concerns me. Q. Were you ever made privy to any of the individual interview statements that were obtained as part of the Telos study? A. No. Q. Did you have an understanding as to how it was that the Telos Group obtained the information that was utilized in the survey? A. Well, after the -- after the ISOM tragedy, I know more about the Telos survey, that there was interviews done of quite a number of people at Texas City. Q. So you had over a thousand people respond by anonymous surveys, and then you had a hundred or
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A. Q. ranked A. Q.
I have seen that since the incident. That being that the survey participants profits Number 1 -That was their perception. -- at BP? Do you recall what they ranked last at Texas City? A. Maybe you can help. Q. It was people, wasn't it, sir? A. It could have been. I don't remember the exact ranking. Q. Would it be of concern to you that the majority of the personnel at that facility responded to a survey and that the overwhelming response to the survey was that BP Texas City put profits very first and people very last? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Well, I think that's a real issue. I talked about this earlier. I mean, one of the things that we were doing was investing a lot more in the site, improving the site; and it didn't seem to be recognized. Although when I would go to Texas City and talk to people, they would say, yes, things are getting better. I think actually the
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so people that actually met face-to-face with representatives of Telos and provided one-on-one interviews? A. Correct. Q. You were made aware of that at some point? A. Yes. Q. Were you provided with any of the information that was given to Telos by any of the interviewees? A. No. That was confidential. Q. Well, it was supposed to be confidential, wasn't it? A. Yes. Q. As a matter of fact, part of the agreement reached with the personnel that gave their statements was an assurance that none of them would ever be identified at BP with respect to who they were or what they said. They just wanted the information. A. I knew it was confidential. Q. Did you have anything to do with the request that Telos divulge those confidences after this explosion? A. No.
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Q. Do you know who did? A. It must have been legal. Q. Were you ever provided with any information that indicated anything specific that any of the interviewees said? A. I have been read some of the quotes. Q. Read some of the quotes given by the interviewees or the surveyors? A. The interviewees. Q. When was it and why was it that you were read specific quotes from specific persons that gave interviews? A. It was part of preparation for this. Q. Have you seen any of the interview forms that -A. No, I haven't. Q. But you now have an understanding as to what some of the interviewees may have specifically said in their interviews? A. Very limited. Q. You were not asked to participate in the Telos survey, were you, sir? A. No. Q. Were you made aware that other people here in London were asked to participate in the
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I know who he is. Who is he? He is a PSM expert. How many -- strike that. Who was the most knowledgeable person regarding PSM at Texas City prior to the explosion? A. The technical details of PSM would have been Bill Ralph. Q. Did you ever inquire as to why Mr. Ralph was not given a position in the leadership team in light of his knowledge of PSM and the importance of PSM in running a refinery? A. He was part of the safety -- safety department. No, I didn't inquire of that. Q. Did you ever inquire of Mr. Parus why he did not have anyone on his leadership team with that level of knowledge? A. No. Q. Does it concern you that Mr. Parus surrounded himself with people who had lesser knowledge and understanding of process safety management? MR. DENNY: Objection, form.
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survey? A. No.
1 2 3 MR. DENNY: Objection, form. 4 Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you know Mr. Kaufman? 5 A. I know who Mr. Kaufman is. 6 Paul Kaufman? 7 Q. Yes, sir. 8 A. Yes, I know him. 9 Q. Doesn't he work here in London? 10 A. Yes, he does. 11 Q. Are you aware if Mr. Kaufman provided a 12 statement? 13 A. No, I wasn't. 14 Q. Did you know that Mr. Gower was asked to 15 provide a statement? 16 A. No, I didn't. 17 Q. In the meetings that you had prior to the explosion of March 23rd, were you made aware of any 18 19 specific statements that any person gave in their 20 Telos statement? 21 A. No. The meeting that I had with Don was 22 the first time in February, the first time I had 23 seen it. It was a high level summary. 24 Q. Okay. Did you know Bill Ralph at Texas 25 City?
A. The -- so there was a safety, environmental and health manager that reported to Mr. Parus that had people with the deep technical knowledge reporting to them. Q. (BY MR. COON) Is that Mr. Barnes? A. Yes, it was. Q. He was head of HSSE at Texas City at the time? A. Yes. Q. What's your understanding as to what Mr. Barnes knew about process safety management as head of HSSE at Texas City? A. So Mr. Barnes had a very long and deep operating background; and in order to operate, you have to have the knowledge of process safety. So he would know how process safety fits into a refinery, the importance of process safety; and he would have the technical staff to help him on the technical details of it. Q. How much formal training had Mr. Barnes received in process safety management? A. I don't know. Q. If he says he didn't have any, would you defer to his testimony? A. It depends on what the context of that
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is, I guess. Q. Well, if Mr. Barnes testified he had no formal training in process safety management, would you agree or disagree? A. Well, if he says that, then I would have to agree with it. Q. Do you know the difference between process safety and occupational safety? A. Yes. Q. That's kind of a 101 of understanding safety practices in a refinery, is to know the difference between occupational safety issues and process safety management issues, agreed? A. Well, they are interrelated as well. Q. You would agree that steel-toed shoes are not part of process safety management, wouldn't you, sir? A. Yes. Q. You would agree that utilization of safety glasses is not part of process safety management? A. Yes. But control of work, for example, would be one where it would overlap. Q. Sure. Process safety has to do with the
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Q. How would you find out? A. Bill Ralph could tell me; but we also find out by tracking how we are doing against the process safety management standards, what are you doing about closing out action items, safety -- and process safety is one of the discussions that we have with every refinery manager. Q. Did you ever see Mr. Parus' business plan for 2005? A. Yes. Q. Do you recall that it said that unless things change at Texas City there would be another fatality within a year? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. That may be a different plan. So what -the business plan that I would have seen would be what are the programs that you have that you are going to put in place, what funding requirements do you have, what kind of profitability do you think you are going to have, what are your safety metrics, what are the targets. That would be the business plan that I would see. Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. Did you ever see the business plan that he presented to his
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equipment and infrastructure as distinguished from occupational safety, which has to do with protective equipment and personal safety, right? A. I don't think it's that black and white. As I mentioned, control of work, for example. So control of work is intended to make sure that we don't have loss of containment and make sure that the people working on the project are protected. Q. Okay. You would expect the director of HSSE at your largest refinery to know the difference between process safety management and occupational safety, though, wouldn't you, sir? A. I would think he would know about aspects of both of those, yes. Q. Do you know Bill Ralph testified that Don Parus didn't take process safety management serious? A. No, I didn't. Q. Would that concern you? A. Yes. Q. If your plant manager or BUL wasn't taking process safety management serious, would you want to know about it? A. Yes.
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leadership team in early 2005? A. No. Q. Were you aware that he made a business plan presentation to his leadership team that said unless they changed things for the better that they would have another fatality that year? A. No. Q. It's not a good way to go into a year with a new business plan, is it? A. I am not sure what he was intending to do with that; but if it was to have a stronger focus on safety, it may have been intending that. Q. You would agree that one fatality at a plant is one too many, wouldn't you, sir? A. Absolutely. Q. And BP Texas City you had had two dozen in the prior 20 or 30 years. Are you aware of that? A. Yes. Q. That's pretty unacceptable, isn't it? A. Yes, it is. MR. COON: Let's take our lunch break here. MR. DENNY: Break for lunch. THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Okay. We are
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going off the video record. This is the end of Videotape 2. The time is 12:01. (Lunch recess taken.) THE VIDEOGRAPHER: All right. We are back on the video record. The time is 1:02. This is the beginning of Videotape 3. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, could you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury when it was and how it was that you were made aware of the explosion? A. I was -- I was actually on vacation in Florida and I got a call from Pat Gower telling me that there had been an explosion at Texas City. Q. When was this? A. It was the night of the -- it was the afternoon of the explosion, the same day. Q. What did you do in response? A. Well, he didn't have very much detail. So, you know, I asked him, "Do you know more about this?" And he called me a little later and gave me some more detail about, you know, that there were fatalities and injuries. So at that time we started to coordinate across the group and so I arranged to get transportation to Texas and
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where people had time off so we could keep that going. We were trying to -- Pat Gower started to look at, you know, how do we secure the site so we can do the incident investigation; but it was just -- it was very emotional -- emotional kind of thing. People were very shook up. Q. How long did you stay in Texas City? A. I stayed that day, over that night. Q. Where did you go from there? A. I went back to Florida and then flew to London. Q. Did you have any continuing role after returning to London? A. So Pat Gower stayed at the site and so -and I worked with Pat to make sure that we had the right resources to support the site. And we began -- shortly after that -- I don't remember when that was -- John Mogford was appointed to do an incident investigation. So we made sure that he was supported properly. We set up Pat on the site, but we discussed who was going to handle the various agencies and how were we going to give the right
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flew out and got there at 2:00 in the morning. Q. So you would have arrived in Texas City on the 24th? A. Yeah. Q. Can you walk me through that day, please, sir? A. So I -- you know, I checked into a hotel. I think I got picked up and taken to the site probably something like 6:00 a.m. I went to the command center first. So it was the -- in any kind of major incidents, there is an incident command center set up. Pat Gower was there with me as well. So we tried to really assess what was going on, how the incident was being managed. Q. And what would you describe the state of affairs on the 24th at Texas City? A. So the incident seemed to be -- the emergency part of it seemed to be well handled. People were kind of very -- very shook up by the whole thing. They had been at work for a long time. So we tried to make sure that we started to put in place a rolling incident command
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kind of support to the agencies that were coming in. Q. Do you have an understanding that OSHA was coming out? A. OSHA was there. EPA was there. CSB showed up right away. So there was -- there were lots of different agencies. Q. I understand Lord Browne came out on the 24th as well. A. Yes, he was there. Q. Did you have an opportunity to meet with him? A. Yes. Q. What was discussed? A. It wasn't a discussion with me so much. I mean, he was there to see what happened, to talk to people. We went out and talked to quite a few people on the site, Lord Browne and I. I met John. John Manzoni was there, Pat Gower. Then he met with the mayor and did a press conference. Q. Okay. So Mr. Manzoni was there as well? A. Yes. Q. Who made the decision for Mr. Manzoni to come as well?
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A. I don't know. Q. Do you think that's something Lord Browne requested? A. I don't know. Q. Is it standard procedure for Lord Browne or Mr. Manzoni to come to an accident scene? A. I don't think there is a standard procedure for something that is as tragic as this. This was a very big deal. So I would -- you know, for a typical accident, it wouldn't be standard procedure; but this was way beyond anything we had ever seen. Q. What role did Mr. Manzoni retain other than coming out and participating in the oversight on the 24th? A. On that date? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) Did he have any other role in the follow-up investigation or oversight of the investigation? A. No. Q. What were his activities on the 24th? A. The same thing, talked to people. It was mainly about supporting the site, making sure the
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Q. Were you made aware of the general number of fatalities that had occurred by the 24th? A. Yes. Q. You understood most of those fatalities occurred in trailers located adjacent to the ISOM unit? A. Yes. Q. Did you inquire as to why those trailers were located there in the first place? A. No. Q. Did it cross -A. I don't remember. I mean, it was -- it was clear that the trailers shouldn't have been there. Q. Did you make an effort that day to say, "Why in the hell do you have trailers this close to a unit?" A. Well, there was an incident investigation going on. So that was clearly one of the things that would be looked at. Q. Was that something that was even discussed on the 24th? A. We had discussion about the trailers. Q. What were the discussions that were had about the trailers on the 24th?
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right resources were in place. I mean, that was what Pat Gower and I were doing. John Browne and John Manzoni did a lot of just personal discussion with people, talked to the responders, kind of tried to figure out what the group response was going to be. Q. What was your understanding as to what had happened? A. Well, when I went to the site, it was obvious -- although I didn't have the data -- that the tower had been overfilled. Q. What was that based on? A. Just my experience as -- as a refiner. Q. Did you go over to the explosion scene? A. Yes. Q. You could just tell from observation, nature of the explosion, impact area that -A. Not so much the nature of the explosion but what would have had to have happened. What -- since I knew they were in the startup activity, in order to get the relief valves to release that kind of material, then the tower had to be overfilled, I thought. I mean, that obviously had to be investigated to determine exactly what happened.
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A. That's where the fatalities were, that there was an explosion. You know, we went to the scene and saw that. So it was clear that the consequence of the overfill was severe because of the trailer siting. Q. Well, you knew from going out there and looking at the scene and having an understanding as to where the trailers were located that they should not have been there in the first place? A. Yes. Q. And in light of your role and responsibilities at BP, did you inquire of anyone responsible at that jobsite as to why they had allowed that to happen in the first place? A. That's part of the incident investigation. Q. Did you inquire about any of those matters on the 24th? A. No. Q. To your knowledge, were any of the persons that came out from London -- Mr. Mogford, Mr. Manzoni or Lord Browne -- asking anyone why those trailers were located so close to the ISOM unit?
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A. I think that question came up; but, you know, when an incident investigation is started, then the incident investigation needs to ask those questions so you can get, you know, kind of real -real data, you know, what really happened, why was that done that way. Q. To your knowledge, there was no preliminary inquiry the date that everybody was out there -- that being the 24th -- as to why were trailers located so close to a unit? A. I think that question was asked, but there is -- there is no way to go into finding that out. That was part of the incident investigation. Q. What else were the topics of discussion that day? A. BP response to that; what kind of support does the site -- fatigue; you know, who is operating the site; what other people do we need to bring in; what people would need to be brought in to do the incident investigation. John Mogford wasn't there at that time. So we had begun to set up the -- you know, secure the scene. Pat Gower started to arrange interviews. Q. Why was fatigue a topic of discussion on
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Q. Do you know that the people on that unit had worked there for more than a month straight? A. It could be. Q. Is it your recollection it may have been 40 days or more? A. I don't remember the date. Q. Do you recall that they were working minimum of 12-hour shifts? A. Texas City is on 12-hour shifts. Q. Is that a "yes"? A. Yes. Q. In your position and in your many years of experience, would you recommend working your employees that many days in a row that many hours per day? A. No. Q. And why is that? A. Because I think people need a rest. They need to get away. In turnaround and maintenance periods, it's not -- lots of times if you don't manage this properly, people will work many days in a row. Q. You understand people that work too many hours, too many days, they just don't think as well
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the 24th? A. It was a topic Pat and I talked about because we had the incident command set up and the people that we saw there had been there since the incident. So we had to figure out how to send some people home and continue to run incident command so we could have a shift change. Q. So you are talking about fatigue associated with the emergency response team? A. Yes. Q. Not as to the personnel that may have been involved in operating the unit at the time of the explosion? A. Right. Q. Are you aware that fatigue became an issue as part of the investigation as it related to the persons operating the units? A. I have read the Mogford report. Q. What is it that you understand may be relevant to these proceedings as regards to fatigue and the employees that were working that day? A. That the employees had worked a number of days in a row. Q. How many? A. I don't remember the exact days.
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as they would otherwise and they make -- they are more prone to making mistakes that are avoidable? A. That could be. I mean, I think generally working people many, many days in a row is not a good idea. Q. And, in fact, at the time of this explosion, BP had rules and regulations dealing with maximum amount -- maximum hours of work as it related to certain occupations within the BP infrastructure, correct? A. I am not sure which rules you are talking about. Q. Were there any rules that you were aware of that limited the number of hours any personnel could work at the time of this explosion? A. There were no rules that I know of in Texas City. Q. Are you aware of any rules that existed at the time of the explosion involving maximum hours of work for any employees in the BP system? A. There is -- so there is federal rules in the -- in the UK about the number of hours people can work. Q. What are the hours in the UK? A. I don't remember what the detail was, but
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it's specific. It's over time a number of days in a row. Q. I take it that the UK -- that's the United Kingdom -A. Yes. Q. -- including England? A. Yes. Q. There are regulations whereby the Government has set specific limits on the amount of hours individuals can work? A. Yes. Q. Does that apply in all sectors or in the refining sector? A. All sectors. Q. I take it that these rules, while you don't know the details of them, do not allow employers to work employees 40 days in a row, 12-hour shifts or longer? A. Right. Q. So if the same set of facts were to have applied at a facility here in the UK as opposed to Texas City, the company would have been in violation of those existing federal regulations -A. Yes. Q. -- or UK regulations as it related to the
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Q. Particularly working in a refinery sector? A. Yes. Q. Because if you make mistakes in a refinery sector, people can get hurt, right? A. The regulation was -- is general. It's not refinery specific. Q. Well, but in talking about the refineries, we are talking about safety being a significant consideration? A. For what? Q. For the number of hours somebody would work. A. I -- I guess I don't understand the question. Q. Okay. I will rephrase. You understand that fatigue is a serious issue in refineries? A. Yes. Q. You don't want people working under circumstances where fatigue is induced because of the risk associated, particularly with working in the refinery sector because you are dealing with hydrocarbons, right? A. Well, I don't think it's particular to
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number of hours employees could work? A. Yeah, because it's a -- it's a -- that's part of the regulation in the UK. In the US it's -- the ability to manage that is contractual. Q. Do you understand the concept of best practices? A. Yes. Q. What does that mean to you? A. It's -- well, generally it means what is the best way to achieve some result. Q. I take it you understand that the UK has limitations on the number of hours people could work consecutively in terms of days and number of hours total out of consideration to the fatigue factors involved with people working too many days, too many hours -A. Yes. Q. -- correct? Safety considerations primarily? A. I don't know what all considerations were taken in that. Q. Certainly safety would be a consideration when fatigue is involved, would it not? A. I think so.
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refining; but I think generally in manufacturing and production, I think fatigue is an issue that needs to be managed. Even in an office building, people still need to get to and from work. Q. Meaning that they can pose themselves a risk and -- a risk to others even in an office setting by working too many hours and just falling asleep trying to get home in their car? A. Right. Q. In fact, there are specific rules dealing with drivers that BP had already applied in their system, didn't they? A. Yes. Q. And that was an international rule, wasn't it? A. Yes, it was. Q. Why had BP provided for an international rule limiting the number of hours a driver could run a vehicle and had not extended those same rules to other sectors in their system? A. Because the incident investigations around driving -- in particular, incidents and fatalities -- one of the factors had been identified as fatigue; and so there was a specific
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to driving standard put in place. I don't know that there was any consideration at that time of expanding that to other pieces because work hours tend to be generally dictated by the country that we are in or the contract that we have. Q. Did you know there had been complaints of understaffing at BP Texas City for many years prior to this explosion? A. No, I didn't. Q. Did you know there was an established policy at that facility that it was better to understaff than overstaff? A. No. Q. Is that a good policy to have? A. No. Q. How were you kept abreast of what was going on in the investigation? A. I saw the interim report. I was generally kept abreast of when they expected to be able to complete the report. That's pretty much it. I knew the investigation was going on. I knew the resources that were being used. I didn't see the report before it was issued.
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Q. (BY MR. COON) You understood there were people involved in the investigation as part of the Mogford team that did not work for BP? A. No, I didn't know that. Q. Do you know who all the personnel were on the Mogford team? A. No. Q. Did you know that there were outside contractors on that committee? A. I knew there was some explosion modeling that was done. Q. Did you ever have any discussions with anyone on the team? A. No. Q. Did you know at the end of the day that there were persons on that committee who disagreed with the final report? A. No. Q. You have never been told that persons on the committee disagreed with the content -- some of the content in the fatal report? A. No. I was told that all the people agreed at the end. That's what Mogford said -Q. Mogford -A. -- that they sign -- signed it.
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Q. And this was the interim Mogford report that came out around December 17, 2005? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Yeah. Q. (BY MR. COON) I think it was 2000 -- I think it was May 12, wasn't it? A. Well, the interim came out earlier than that; and then the final report, maybe it was December. Q. I think the final report was December. A. Yeah. Q. Who picked Mr. Mogford to head this investigation? A. I don't know who picked him. Q. Did you have any say in it? A. No. Q. Do you know if Mr. Manzoni did? A. I know that Mr. Manzoni knew about it, but -- but I don't know who would have actually picked him. Q. Who was involved in the decision to extend the investigative team to include personnel in the BP system and people outside the BP system? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I am not sure what that means.
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Q. Mogford told you that? A. Yeah. Q. That all the people on the committee agreed with all the findings in the report? A. Yes. Q. Would it be news to you today if people testified that they did not agree with all the findings in the report? A. Yes. Q. Were you aware that there was specific criticism on some -- by some of the people on the committee as it related to focusing in on root cause as to the employees operating the unit at the time? A. Could you restate that, please? Q. Yes, sir. You know what root cause analysis is, do you not? A. Yes. Q. Are you aware of any criticism of the Mogford report by people on the committee, specifically as it related to focusing on blaming the operators? A. Well, I have -- not so much on the committee but I know that that -- I have heard
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that. I saw it in the media. Q. In fact, the labor representatives refused to sign off on the Mogford report because of the intense level of blame placed on the operators. Are you aware of that? A. No. Q. Did you have anything to do with the decision to terminate the employees that were on the unit that day? A. Well, I knew about the investigation that Kathleen Lucas ran. So I knew that was ongoing. I knew what the decision was. Q. Okay. When we talk about investigation, since we have just discussed several, there was the Mogford team investigation into the incident itself, correct? A. Yes. Q. And then there was a separate investigation being conducted by Ms. Lucas? A. For disciplinary. Q. A disciplinary investigation? A. Yes. Q. And she was assisted by Mr. Willis, I believe?
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and I was involved with Pat and with the site. This was a -- became kind of -- everything that I was doing at the time was around Texas City. Q. Is there anything more tragic that has happened at BP in all your years of employment with them and your predecessor? A. Well, there is nothing more tragic that I know of. I haven't been with BP that long; but certainly there was -- when I was at ARCO, there was an explosion in Channelview where a number of people were killed as well. That was in the Eighties. Q. Have you talked to Mr. Manzoni about him testifying in this case? A. No. Q. Do you have any reason -- do you -- you do have any reason to believe that Mr. Manzoni should not testify in this case? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I am here to -- to do this deposition. I mean, his -- the decision on that is with legal. Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. I am just trying to understand your perception based on your roles here. As I understand, you took what
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A. I don't know who assisted her. Q. Did she -A. I know she had human resources and legal support. Q. So she consulted with human resources London? A. She had -- there was a local investigation. So it was local human resources. Q. Were you kept in the loop with respect to her findings? A. Yeah. I mean, I knew who was being terminated and what her findings were. Q. And how were you kept informed as to what her findings were? A. She told -- told me. Q. Would this be in meetings with her, phone calls, visits, what? A. Phone calls and through Pat Gower. Pat Gower was... Q. Was she supposed to report to you or to Mr. Gower or both? A. Mr. Gower. Q. Then why was it you became personally involved in communications with her? A. Because this was a huge, tragic incident
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happened in Texas City to be very, very important. A. Yes. Q. And you're basically, what, the Number 2 man in the downstream side of BP to Mr. Manzoni? A. Refining, yes. In refining, yes. Mr. Manzoni has other direct reports. Q. Is there any reason to believe that Mr. Manzoni wouldn't take this matter to heart as much as you have and -A. He takes this very seriously. Q. Seriously enough to give a few hours of his time to tell us what he knows about it? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I think with legal advice that John will do what he needs to; but I don't think it -whether or not he deposes, that really says whether he is very serious about this or not because he certainly is. Q. (BY MR. COON) What were you told should be the outcome of the disciplinary investigation at Texas City? A. I am sorry. Could you restate that? Q. Yes, sir. In your communications with
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Ms. Lucas on the disciplinary investigation, were you told anything about whether or not anyone should be terminated or otherwise punished? A. Well, we launched an investigation. So she did the investigation and then recommended the terminations. Q. To whom? A. To Pat Gower and then to me, but it was a site decision that -- local discipline is done at the site. Q. So you had no say in agreeing or disagreeing with the decision to terminate any of the individuals? A. I agreed with the process and the authority of Kathleen to run the process and make the decision. Q. So if she said she wanted to fire some personnel as a result of this explosion and you disagreed, she still had authority to do so? A. If I disagreed, it would be because I didn't understand the process that was -- that it was going through. It's her accountability and authority to do, to make those decisions. Q. What about accountability and authority
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A. So I don't know whether he was involved in this or not. Kathleen ran the investigation. Q. Okay. I understand and appreciate your comments there, but the question was why would Mr. Parus not have a role and responsibility in the investigation as the business unit leader throughout the duration of the time of the disciplinary investigation? A. I don't know. Q. Okay. You understood that Mr. Parus was relieved of his duties May 13, 2005? A. That sounds right. Q. This was after Ms. Lucas made the decision to terminate the six individuals? A. Okay. I accept that. Q. It's also, I believe, one day after the interim report was prepared by Mr. Mogford, wasn't it? A. Yes. Q. Was Mr. Parus relieved of his duties in whole or in part as a result of the interim findings of Mr. Mogford? A. No. Q. It was just purely coincidental that Mr. Mogford's report was on the 12th and Mr. Parus
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with the plant manager? A. The group is running the -- another investigation. Q. Okay. I am just trying to understand where Mr. Parus' role would have been with the disciplinary proceedings and what say he would have had in them. A. He would have been involved with it on a -- normally, on a normal basis. Q. Do you know if he was involved in this case? A. I don't believe he was. Q. Do you know why? A. Because we had taken him out of being the site leader. Q. Well, he was not taken out of his site leadership until mid May, was he? A. We hadn't replaced him, but Kathleen was -- was the refinery manager. She -- it was her authority to do that. Q. Okay. But Mr. Parus still held the title as -A. Yes, he did. Q. -- business unit leader until May 13, 2005, didn't he?
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was relieved of his duties the following day? A. The -- from my perspective, the issue was not Mogford's report. It was his ability to lead the site. Because of the incident, because of the report, his ability to be a leader on the site was damaged. Q. So Mr. Parus no longer had an ability to lead but Ms. Lucas did? A. Yes. Q. Why was Mr. Parus no longer able to lead as the Number 1 man at the plant and Ms. Lucas was able to lead as the Number 2 person at the plant? A. Well, Ms. Lucas was relatively new to the plant. Don had been there a lot longer. Q. Why did that matter? A. His -- the way he had reacted to it. I mean, he was very distracted. He was spending huge amounts of time outside the plant, talking to injured, visiting hospitals, which was, you know, very -- he was very emotionally affected. We needed to put somebody in there to continue to run the day-to-day operations of the plant. Q. Are you saying Ms. Lucas was not emotionally impacted and Mr. Parus was?
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A. No. She was emotionally impacted; but Don was in charge of the whole site, including supervision of Kathleen. Q. But you didn't just remove him from some of his responsibilities. You removed him from all of his responsibilities? A. Replaced him. Q. Would you say that Mr. Parus was incapable of performing any responsibilities that would benefit BP at such a traumatic time in its history? A. Could you be more specific about the question? Q. Yes, sir. We understand today from the depositions that have occurred that Mr. Parus was removed of his responsibilities on May 13th officially and since that date has been asked to do little, if anything, on behalf of BP. Do you understand that? A. Uh-huh. Q. And I am trying to get an understanding from you as to why it was that he was removed of his duties on the 13th, all of his duties, and that he has had no major involvement with anything that
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Q. (BY MR. COON) Are you aware of any circumstances where they pay people to stay home and do nothing? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. It does happen. Q. (BY MR. COON) Tell me another set of circumstances where somebody has been paid to do nothing for a year and a half? A. Well, people -- they call it garden leave over here. It's kind of part of your -- here in the UK, it would be -- garden leave is kind of part of your retirement where you get paid for a while but you are not at work. Q. Well, is that something at the request of the employee? A. Pardon me? Q. Is that something that is done at the request of the employee? A. It's an agreement usually. Q. Is it just part of the contract for leave of absences paid? A. No, it's not -- it's not contractual. Q. Are you saying that Mr. Parus is on garden leave? A. No.
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BP has done with the investigation or anything else since. A. So my responsibility is for Texas City. So the decision that I took with Pat Gower was that we needed to bring in somebody else to run the Texas City complex. What Don has done since then is -I don't have that much knowledge, although I did tell you that he was working for Pat for a while. Q. Or at least you thought? A. I think he was. Q. Why is he not doing anything for BP now? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. He doesn't -- I don't have the responsibility for -- for Don. So I don't know why he is not doing -- or what his responsibilities are. Q. (BY MR. COON) Well, why would BP pay him if he stays home and does nothing? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I can't answer that. Q. (BY MR. COON) Well, would you expect BP to pay you to stay home and do nothing? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. They haven't done that.
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Q. Do you know Mr. Parus has testified that he wants to come to work and nobody will let him do anything? A. Okay. Q. Well, I mean, if you have employees that are at home and they want to work, would you want to put them to work or would you want to keep them at home? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I would put them to work. Don doesn't report to me. Q. (BY MR. COON) Well, I understand, Mr. Hoffman. I'm just -- it doesn't make sense to me -- or maybe I am missing something but it doesn't make sense to me to have someone with Mr. Parus' training, education, experience and background sitting home getting paid when he keeps telling his supervisors that he wants to work. A. I understand. Q. I am looking for an explanation. Is it that -A. I can't explain it. I am not his supervisor. My -- my accountability is to support Pat and get the site back. So once -- once
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Don didn't report to me, I need to focus on what we needed to do to Texas City. Q. Have you ever heard the expression "putting people on ice" before? A. Yes. Q. Has Mr. Parus been put on ice during the pendency of this litigation? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. What does that -- what does that phrase mean to you? Q. (BY MR. COON) That they are just put on ice, that they are -- they are just put somewhere to do nothing for some period of time, for some other purpose. A. Okay. Q. So in this case has Mr. Parus been put on ice; that is, kept on the payroll so that he's still under the control of BP, even though they have no responsibilities for him so that he doesn't talk without permission? A. I can't testify to that. I have already said Don is not my accountability. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. He doesn't report up my line. I don't know what the expectations of him are.
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forward in my system. Don is not my accountability. It's clear. Q. So it's okay for you to have people working for you that keep people on the payroll to do nothing? MR. DENNY: Objection -Q. (BY MR. COON) If they don't report directly to you, you don't care? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. It's not my accountability. Whether I care or not is immaterial. It -- there is nobody in my organization that is being paid for doing nothing. Q. (BY MR. COON) When Ms. Lucas advised you that she was recommending the termination of six particular individuals, did you ask her for any specifics? A. Yes. Q. Were they provided? A. Yes. Q. Did you agree with them? A. Yes. Q. Was consideration given to disciplining or punishing anyone else in the BP system? A. At the time -Page 149
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Q. (BY MR. COON) Well, you are responsible for wasted money downstream in your system, aren't you, sir? A. Yes. Q. Well, if you are paying a man who is a business unit leader his full salary and other bonuses and he does nothing for you, would you consider that wasted money? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Yeah, but that's not the circumstance here. I -- Don doesn't report to me. He is not my accountability. Q. (BY MR. COON) Well, would you want anybody that does report to you to waste money in that manner? A. No. Q. So now that you are aware that Mr. Parus is doing nothing, are you inclined to talk to someone that he is responsible for answering to about either putting him back to work or cutting the losses and terminating his employment with BP? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No, I am not. Q. (BY MR. COON) And why would that be? A. Because my accountability is moving
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Q. Yes, sir -A. -- Kathleen -Q. -- at the time? A. -- discussed other people that were considered and there was -- there was -- I believe there was more discipline than just termination that was done. Q. Let's talk about each one of those. Who else was considered for any kind of discipline? A. I mean, so the investigation was run by Kathleen. Q. Yes, sir. A. So she would have to -- to testify to that. Q. You don't have any recollection of anyone else that was being discussed for disciplinary proceedings? A. I know others were discussed, but I don't -- I don't have a recollection of the scope of that. Q. Do you recall the name of a single person who was in the crosshairs of an investigation for discipline other than those six persons that were terminated?
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A. Well, I know that she looked up the chain as well. So Willie Willis was -- was the managing operating leader. I know he was considered. Q. Well, wasn't it kind of ironic to have Mr. Willis considered for discipline and have him assisting Ms. Lucas in the investigation of others at the same time? A. Kathleen ran the investigation. Q. Wouldn't that be a conflict of interest to have someone who was under investigation investigating others? A. Yes. Q. In fact, isn't that what happened with other people when they removed Mr. Gower from the responsibility of supervising Mr. Parus because he was under investigation himself? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't understand the question again. Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. You understand Mr. Parus reported to Mr. Gower until the spring? A. Yes. Q. And you understand that he was relieved of those duties because Mr. Gower himself became the point of another BP inquiry? MR. DENNY: Objection, form.
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leave of absence by Mr. Gower in his visit to Chicago? A. Conversations about what? Q. About being put on leave of absence? A. No. Mr. Gower did that. Q. You don't recall any conversation that you had with Mr. Parus by telephone prior to his trip to Chicago in which you expressed some degree of apology for what was happening to Mr. Parus and the fact that he was going to be relieved of his duties by Mr. Gower? A. That could have happened. I do remember a phone call with Don. Q. Do you recall any of the details of that conversation? A. No, I don't. Q. Do you recall why that conversation took place? A. No. Q. Was Mr. Parus being removed from his responsibilities because he was captain of the ship at the time or specifically because he did something wrong? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. So the reason that I needed to remove Don
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A. No, I didn't know that. Q. (BY MR. COON) You are not aware of that? A. That Mr. Gower was relieved of the duties of supervising Don Parus? No, I didn't know that. I had never heard that that was... Q. Who all was involved in the decision to remove Mr. Parus? A. Pat Gower and I were involved. I discussed it with Mr. Manzoni as we have talked about. Q. When was Mr. Parus advised he was going to be relieved of his responsibilities at Texas City? A. I -- sometime in May. I don't know the exact date. Q. How was he advised? A. I believe Mr. Gower talked to him. Q. Do you know when? A. No, I don't. Q. Was this the trip to Chicago in mid May? Do you know one way or another? A. No, I don't. Q. Do you recall having any conversations with Mr. Parus before he was officially put on
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of his responsibilities is I needed to get somebody that could effectively lead the site forward and I didn't believe that Don, with the incident that had happened, could do that anymore. Q. (BY MR. COON) Did you talk to him about it? A. Yes. Q. Did he agree? A. No, I don't think he agreed. Q. Did this conversation take place before or after his visit with Mr. Gower? A. Before. Q. So you did have some conversation with him where he understood that he was going to be removed of his responsibilities -A. I believe so. Q. -- and this took place before he was told so officially by Mr. Gower? A. I believe that happened. Q. Was that a tough decision for you? A. Yes, it was. Q. Were you personal friends with Mr. Parus before then? A. I wouldn't say we were personal friends. Q. Who else was being looked at for
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disciplinary proceedings other than Mr. Willis? A. I don't know. You would have to ask Kathleen. Q. Did you recommend any investigation of anyone else upstream; that is, Mr. Gower or others? A. That investigation is taking place, as I have testified earlier. Q. Okay. That's not an investigation that was taking place in, say, the summer of 2005, was it? A. No. Q. Is that something that started taking place this year? A. Yes. Q. What triggered this new investigation a year after the explosion? A. I don't know. I have already testified I don't know the terms of reference or why exactly it was started. Q. Well, it's unusual or atypical to start an investigation into people a year after an incident, isn't it? A. Yes. Q. You have not inquired as to why an investigation of executives at this level is taking
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Q. -- that was driving this investigation other than the fatal report of December, 2005. A. John didn't tell me any -- any specifics. Q. Do you have any reason to believe it's anything other than -- being driven by anything other than the findings in the Mogford report? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you know anything about any other investigations that are still pending? A. No, I don't. Q. What dealings did you have with OSHA? A. What dealings did I have? Q. Yes, sir, as it related to the explosion. A. I didn't have dealings with OSHA. Q. Did you have any dealings with the CSB other than the one conversation that you had with them? A. Other than the interview, no. Q. Have you had anything to do with the public relations campaign associated with this explosion? A. No. Q. Are you aware of any public relations campaign that was set up expressly to deal with the
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place so late after an incident? A. I was told that it is taking place but... Q. Who were you told this investigation was being -- taking place by? A. By Manzoni. Q. What did Mr. Manzoni share with you? A. Just that, that he had asked Bill Bonser to lead an investigation. Q. When did he tell you this? A. Four or five months ago. Q. Did he tell you why he was doing it? A. That he needed to do this in order to determine, based on the -- you know, the findings of the Mogford report and other things, whether there needed to be more discipline. Q. Okay. The Mogford report and other things. What other things? A. Other things that an investigation could uncover. Q. Okay. Well, you said it was being triggered by the Mogford report and other things. I am just curious as to whether or not there was anything else specifically -A. He didn't say.
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explosion of March, 2005? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. The only thing I am -- I am aware of was questions and answers that were prepared post the Mogford report. Q. (BY MR. COON) Post interim report or final report or -A. Both. Q. -- both? A. Both. Q. What kind of questions and answers? A. Well, just -- so when we released the report, there -- try to be prepared to answer questions that the press or others might ask about. So there was an effort put together to anticipate and have responses to various questions. Q. How were you involved in that? A. I reviewed some of the questions. Q. This was something where people met with executives at BP to say here's the kind of questions that could be asked as a result of the report and here's ways we can answer or what to answer those questions? MR. DENNY: Objection, form.
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A. Well, I am not sure I would say it exactly like that. Here's questions that might logically be answered and here's either the response from the report, what our intent is. We take full responsibility, you know, to make sure that we were consistently answering the questions and consistent with the decisions that had been made. Q. (BY MR. COON) When you say "we take full responsibility," what do you mean? A. I mean, when Lord Browne had his press release on the 24th he said, "We take responsibility for this incident." Q. Why did he say that? A. Because it's -- it's at our site and we feel like we are responsible. Q. Do you feel like you are always responsible if somebody dies at your site? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Our intent is to have people that work on our sites be safe. So, yes, we have a responsibility to have a safe working environment on our sites. Q. (BY MR. COON) So if someone is killed on
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responsible. We -- certainly it's very clear and it has been for a long time that we don't want people to be injured or killed in car accidents. We don't want them to be on our site. You know, so we have had a focused effort at improving safety even when it's not our direct employees or our direct contractors. Q. Okay. I am just asking you, sir, if you actually know what you mean when you say you take responsibility. A. I know what I mean. Q. What do you mean? A. I mean that we are responsible for safely operating and the safety of the people that are working on our site. That's... Q. Okay. A. That's pretty clear. We don't take it trivially. If we have an incident, we are going to do a full investigation. We are going to try to learn and share or hold contractors accountable for their performance as well. Q. Well, have you seen information coming from the Texas City site where investigators are trained not to use words in their investigation
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your premises, does BP take responsibility? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Yes. I mean, we are trying to have a safe work environment. We are responsible. Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. And when you say "responsibility," what do you mean? Do you mean moral responsibility? Do you mean legal responsibility? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) What is responsibility? A. It means that our intent is that people will be safe working for us, whether it's our, you know, contract people or our own employees. Q. Okay. But if you hold yourself out publicly to take full responsibility for a fatality that occurs on your premises, I am just asking what you mean by that. Do you take legal responsibility for people who are killed on your premises? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. It's just responsible. I don't know what the legal definitions of that are. You know, I was there when John Browne said that we are responsible. I think we have been behaving
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acknowledging responsibility? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No, I haven't. Q. (BY MR. COON) When you say "take responsibility," do you mean responsibility for the medical bills of those persons who are injured or killed on your premises? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Responsible to prevent people from being injured. Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. Well, if they do get hurt, are you going to be responsible for taking care of their medical bills? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I mean, that's either a contractual or a legal issue. Q. (BY MR. COON) So the answer is you don't know? A. It's not -- it's not within the scope of what I am saying about being responsible. Being responsible is that we are going to have a safe work environment. We expect people to perform safely on our environment in our facilities, and we will be serious about injuries. Q. So you are saying that when Lord Browne
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said that y'all took responsibility that y'all were just saying that y'all were a responsible company? A. We took responsibility for the incident. I think that was clear. Q. Well, I am just trying to understand by "responsibility" you mean fault? It's your fault? It's BP's fault that this happened? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. It doesn't mean that. It means that what we are trying to do is prevent this kind of issue -- incident. Fault is a determinant in, you know, various different ways. Q. (BY MR. COON) So if you say you take full responsibility, you are not necessarily saying that it's your fault and you assume any legal responsibility? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. That's right. Q. (BY MR. COON) So to the extent anyone would read that or hear that to presume that you are acknowledging legal responsibility or legal fault, they would be mistaken? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Lawyers would have to determine what that
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A. Yes. Q. A responsible refinery wouldn't have employees working 40 days straight, 12-hour shifts, would it? A. I think that's a bad idea, yes. Q. It's irresponsible to have your employees working that many days consecutively that many hours, isn't it? A. That needs to be managed better than that. Q. It's irresponsible to do that, isn't it, sir? A. It's -- it needs to be managed better than that. Q. And being managed better than that, it means that if you are doing that, it's irresponsible? A. It means it needs to be tracked. We need to act within the contractural obligations that we have. We need to make sure that our employees are -- are not fatigued. Q. And if you are not tracking that and you are having employees working the hours that put them at risk and to be fatigued, you are not being responsible?
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means. Q. (BY MR. COON) So if some person just read a newspaper and had no clue about the law or the contracts between BP and anyone else and saw where the senior executive of BP said they take full responsibility for what happened if they felt that that meant that they -- that BP was saying they were going to be responsible for all their medical bills and all their other payments under all circumstances, they would be mistaken? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know what somebody reading that would be, but I am very comfortable with the meaning and what we have been doing about being responsible. We have done a full incident investigation. John Mogford published that to the world. It is very detailed. We have been very aggressive about supporting the people that were injured. We have taken responsibility. I don't know what that means in -- because I am not a lawyer in all the legal details. Q. (BY MR. COON) All right. Well, a responsible refinery would adhere to its own policies and procedures, wouldn't it?
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A. I think that's part of the responsibility. Q. And if you are not doing that, you are not being responsible? A. Yeah. Q. If you are not adhering to your own policies and procedures, you are not being responsible? A. We need to adhere to our -- that's about compliance, which is a big theme that has been going on both in the group and at Texas City. Q. And if you have one of your units that is not complying with its own rules, that facility is acting irresponsibly? A. Like following procedures? Q. Yes. A. That was clearly an issue, yes. Q. For instance, if you have a procedure that says, "Do not locate a trailer on these premises and allow them to be occupied without going through the MOCs and HAZOPs," that to allow that to happen would be irresponsible? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. That -- so the policy is that MOCs will be conducted in siting of trailers.
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Q. (BY MR. COON) Well, there is such a policy, isn't there? A. Yes. Q. And there was one at Texas City in March of 2005? A. And it should have been done. Q. And it wasn't done? A. Yeah. It wasn't done for all the trailers. Q. As a matter of fact, it wasn't done for hardly any of the trailers at that facility on the day of the explosion, had it? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I can't testify to that. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you recall in the fatal report that there were 50 trailers out there at Texas City at the time of the explosion? A. There were more than 50 trailers. Q. Do you recall there were 50 of them subject to MOCs at the time and only 4 of the 50 had a properly approved MOC? A. Yes. I knew that the MOCs weren't -weren't properly done. Q. And it wasn't just MOCs on the trailers that were devastated in this explosion. It was
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within 350 feet of an operating unit, correct? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know the detail of that. Q. (BY MR. COON) Does that sound about right to you? A. Yeah. Q. And that was as a result of standards that were established back in the mid Nineties by Mr. Sorrels. Did you know that? A. No. Q. Did you know Stan Sorrels? A. Yes. Q. Did you know that he was the one that was responsible for putting together the first handbook dealing with specific guidelines on building distances from units? A. No, I didn't. Q. Have you ever seen the handbooks involved in trailer siting or building siting, temporary building siting? A. The Amoco handbooks? Q. Yes, sir. A. No, I haven't. Q. Did you have an understanding that these
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many other trailers located all over that refinery on that day, right? A. Yes. Q. And that the subsequent investigation, as was pointed out in the fatal report, ascertained that there were 50 trailers at that refinery at the time of which only four had properly been MOC'd for occupancy on the day of that explosion? A. And the bigger issue on that is that the MOCs that were done didn't identify this as a big risk. In fact, this is an industry issue that the siting of temporary accommodations is -- needs to change because it wasn't being appropriately handled. Q. Well -- and when you say that it wasn't appreciated, the reality is that the trailer siting handbooks set out minimum distances from units specifically to address the potential impact from a vapor cloud explosion, right? A. Yes. Q. So in other words, the MOCs -- let's back up. The rules as it related to temporary trailers at the time of this explosion was that none could be located under the guidelines
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distances were set up in the handbooks to take into account specifically the potential adverse impact a building would have in the event of a vapor cloud explosion? A. I have never seen the handbook. Q. Did you know that there were general rules at any of the facilities regarding how close trailers could be located to units? A. I knew trailer siting needed to go through an MOC process, which has rules. Q. Well, when you were the business unit leader at Carson refinery, were there any rules or regulations dealing with how close trailers could be located to operating units? A. We went through the MOC process. So I don't know -- which is around risk assessment. So within that, certainly there's parameters that need to be addressed in the management of change process for trailer siting. Q. Well, I understand, Mr. Hoffman; but I am trying to get to a basic understanding as to why you have trailer siting handbooks and why you have distances that trailers are not allowed to be in terms of their proximity to a unit. A. Yeah.
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Q. And you agree with all your knowledge, even without looking at a handbook, that it's not a good idea to put a temporary trailer immediately adjacent to an operating unit? A. It's a -- it's a bad idea. I mean, that's why the consequence of this incident was so tragic. Those trailers were sited too close to that unit that was in startup. Q. And that's just the point. Those trailers had not been properly sited to be located there, had they? A. That's right. Absolutely. Q. And you told us that locating them there as part of the siting, you had two problems. One is that the siting itself in terms of even going through an MOC did not properly take into account the potential adverse impact of a trailer located that close to an operating unit? A. That's right. Q. And yet, the very concept of trailer siting and how close you can put them to a unit specifically takes into account primarily the adverse impact on a trailer in the event of a vapor cloud explosion? A. Yes.
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350 feet because if they are closer than that, they are likely to disintegrate in an explosion? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I mean, it's -- so it's -- I have already testified the trailers were too close to this. This was a big lack of recognition of risk, and it's exactly what you are saying. It's -- it's kind of beyond Texas City, although this was an extreme example. We know in the industry that the use of trailers had gotten to be very prevalent. So it's -- it's a big issue. Q. (BY MR. COON) And sloppy practices led to putting trailers too close to a unit? A. Yes. Q. And that was irresponsible, wasn't it, sir? A. That wasn't responsible. MR. COON: We will take a break there. THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Okay. We are going off the video record. The time is 2:01. This is the end of Videotape 3. (Recess taken.) THE VIDEOGRAPHER: All right. We
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Q. So the whole concept of putting trailers out there, it involves many things, which is is it going to be in the way of traffic. That's something that you look at as to whether or not to put it there, right? A. Yes. Q. Is it in a place that doesn't obstruct doors from opening if you need to get to a warehouse or something like that. You don't want to obstruct access to another building, correct? A. Yes. Q. Those are all things you look at. Can you get electricity there, that's another thing you look at, right? A. Yes. Q. But all those other things aside, first and foremost is don't put any trailer real close to a unit because if the unit explodes, you don't want the trailer to disintegrate and the people inside die? A. Yes, real close to an operating unit. Q. And with trailers, the handbooks at Amoco, the predecessor under the merger, was that trailers should never be located closer than
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are back on the video record. The time is 2:15. This is the beginning of Videotape 4. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, let's talk about some of these investigations that have been ongoing for some time. The CSB, have you had any dealings with them before the explosion of March of last year? A. No. Q. Have you followed any of their interim findings, what they have been up to? A. Just their -- I mean, they came out with some interim reforms last August, which was to ask BP to put a panel together to look at kind of systemic issues in the corporation. Q. What kind of systemic issues were involved? A. I don't know. That's what the panel was put together to look at. Q. Was the CSB expressing some concern about the history of safety culture problems associated with Texas City and whether or not those existed at other facilities throughout the United States? A. Yes. Q. I take it you were made privy to their
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interim findings of October, 2005, that they presented at a town hall meeting in Texas City? A. Yeah, I saw that. Q. When were you made aware that that meeting was to take place? A. Just shortly before the meeting. Q. Did you ask BP personnel to be in attendance at that town hall meeting? A. Well, sir, John Mogford was responsible for working with CSB around their findings. Q. Was that a "no"? A. I didn't ask, but it was handled. People were there. Q. As I understand, the CSB recommended that BP put together a panel to investigate these systemic issues -A. Yes. Q. -- throughout the country? And that became known as the Baker panel, did it not? A. Yes. Q. How was former Secretary of State Baker selected to lead this panel that BP put together? A. I wasn't part of that process. Q. Do you know anything about how it was
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Q. Have you ever had any discussions with his committee associated to the responsibilities they had as an independent panel? A. Not about their responsibilities. They have interviewed me. Q. What did y'all talk about? A. Lots of questions about how refining runs, how the group runs, who reports to who, what accountabilities are, process safety, how we manage process safety. Q. Was it informal or did you give a court reporter type statement -A. No, it's -Q. -- like we are -A. -- it's informal. Q. -- doing today? Who did you talk to? A. There are several panel members: Glen Irwin, Irv Rosenthal, Dave Wilson. I think there were a couple of others as well that were panel members. Q. Who does this panel report to at BP? A. It doesn't report to anybody at BP. Q. Is there a point person at BP for the panel to talk to?
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that Secretary Baker was chosen? A. I know that John Browne knew Secretary Baker and called him. I don't know his selection process to choose that. Q. Did you have an understanding that BP wanted to have someone in charge that they could have control of part of the investigation? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No. I had the opposite understanding. Actually, this was an independent panel. Q. (BY MR. COON) Let's talk about independent. What's your understanding of what "independent" means? A. "Independent" means that they are within the terms of reference that was agreed with the CSB. They are going to come up with their independent views. Q. You knew Secretary Baker from his years in the Reagan administration, didn't you? A. I knew of him, you mean? Q. Yes, sir. A. Yes. Q. Have you ever met him personally? A. No.
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A. There is a point person to provide them the information and set up interviews and things like that, yes. Q. And who is that? A. Cynthia Warner. Q. Who is she? A. She is the head of HSE for the segment. Q. I am sorry. HSE for whom? A. The segment. So refining and marketing. Q. Is she here in London? A. Yes. Q. Who does she report to? A. To John Manzoni. Q. Did she go to Mr. Manzoni with respect to guidance and instructions on that issue? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I know she discusses what she is doing with the Baker panel with Mr. Manzoni. Q. (BY MR. COON) What other involvement does Mr. Manzoni have in -- in an oversight role with Baker panel issues? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. It's Cynthia's accountability to provide the data. Mr. Manzoni has been interviewed by the Baker panel as well.
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Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Manzoni knows Mr. Baker, doesn't he? A. I don't know. Q. Weren't they personal acquaintances? A. I don't know. I have never heard that. Q. Doesn't Mr. Manzoni serve on the Baker Institute's Energy Task Force? A. I don't know. Q. Do Mr. Manzoni and Mr. Baker ever do anything together? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know. Q. (BY MR. COON) Have they ever had talks together before Mr. Baker was selected to run this panel? A. I don't know. Q. That's something else I guess we need to go to Mr. Manzoni for? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Okay. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you know how the other panelists were selected? A. As far as I know, Baker selected the other panelists. Q. Now, it's my understanding that OSHA
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1300 people were doing a comprehensive relief valve study. We are eliminating blowdowns. We've built a new training center at Texas City. We have moved hundreds of people out of the refinery. So there's many, many things that we are doing, but nothing specifically to get off the OSHA enhanced list, if we are on that. Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. Let's talk about the -- you moved the trailers out of the Texas City plant? A. Out of the U.S. refineries. Q. So you moved the trailers out of the Texas City plant and the other refineries in the United States? A. Yeah, out of the blast zones. Q. Why were these trailers in the blast zones in the first place? A. It's because we didn't recognize that that was that kind of risk. Q. Well, actually you recognized it because that's why you had a minimum distance for them being in a blast zone in the first place, isn't it, sir? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. If we wouldn't have -- if we would have
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placed BP on an enhanced enforcement list. Do you know anything about that? A. No. Q. Do you know what an enhanced enforcement program is? A. No. Q. Have you not heard before today that BP was placed on an enhanced enforcement program as a result of what occurred on March 23rd? A. No. Q. Do you know that that's a special list of employers that OSHA has on a short list of those that it deems to be the most unsafe employers? A. I think having us on a special list with OSHA after the 15 fatalities in Texas City is something that is reasonable. Q. What do you understand BP is doing today over the last year to try to get off the OSHA list of worst employers? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. We are not doing anything specifically to get off the list of the worst employers. What we are doing is addressing the learnings out of the Texas City incident. We have moved over 300 trailers out of the refineries.
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recognized the dangers around the blowdown, we wouldn't have put the trailers there. Q. (BY MR. COON) But you already had a rule in place that said don't put them there because they were in the blast zone? A. The MOC -Q. That's what the blast zone is. A. -- process. Q. That's what the blast zone is, the distance that trailers can be located in proximity to a unit specifically because of the risk of being torn up in an explosion? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) Right? A. The risk in this incident clearly wasn't recognized. People didn't put the trailer there recognizing that risk. That was the problem. Q. But, Mr. Hoffman, that's why you had the trailer siting rule in the first place, was because of the risk. Do you understand that? A. We had an MOC process around trailer siting. We've already talked about that. Q. Have you seen the testimony of Mr. Sorrels who was the person in charge of putting
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together the rules regarding trailer siting in the first place? A. No, I haven't. Q. Did you have an understanding that trailers were required to be minimum distances from units because they were susceptible to a blast; that is, a vapor cloud explosion emanating from a hydrocarbon release at a unit? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I have an understanding that trailers go through an MOC process to understand the risk of siting. Q. (BY MR. COON) But even before an MOC, they are not supposed to be within 350 feet of a unit because they are at risk of a vapor cloud explosion? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. An MOC process is about hazard identification, and that -- that's what has to happen. Q. (BY MR. COON) But you would agree -A. You were -- you were the one that told me about the 350 feet. Q. Well, I am sorry you didn't know that before, sir; but that is a rule that was in place
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management of change, right? A. Yes. Q. You are changing something. That's what an MOC is, isn't it? A. That's right. Q. So to go through the MOC, you have to change the existing rule, right? A. You have to assess risk. That's what it's about. Q. Well, an MOC -A. The MOC in this case is -- the change is that you have sited a trailer. Q. Sure. And you are siting a trailer on the premises of a BP facility? A. Yes. Q. And you are doing so with due respect to the fact that trailers are vulnerable to a vapor cloud explosion? A. Well, it's not just that, that you have to understand what the risks and unintended consequences of siting a trailer. Q. One of those is that if there is a vapor cloud explosion and you put the trailer too close to the unit -Page 185
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at the plant before the explosion. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. The rule is that there is an MOC process in order to assess hazards of siting. Q. (BY MR. COON) The rule is that if you put it within the blast zone, you have to go through an MOC; isn't that correct? A. Any trailer siting needs to be MOC'd. Q. And you understand that through blast analysis that there was already an understanding at BP Texas City and within the entire BP system that you should not put temporary trailers closer than 350 feet as a general rule because they can be destroyed in the event of a vapor cloud explosion? A. Yes. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) And the only exceptions to that is if they go through a MOC where you look at the true specific risk associated with putting a trailer in specific proximity to a specific unit under specific circumstances. A. Okay. Q. Correct? A. Yes. Q. That's what the MOC is about. That's a
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A. Yes. Q. -- it can disintegrate? A. Yes. Q. And that's why you at BP have buildings that are in proximity to these units that are called blast proof? A. Yes. Q. And temporary trailers are not blast proof, are they, sir? A. Some of them are but not -- not -- the ones in this incident weren't. Q. In fact, none of the trailers that you had out at Texas City at the time were blast proof, were they? A. Not that I know of. Q. But you could have bought blast proof trailers or required them to be on the premises as blast proof? A. There are blast proof trailers. Q. It just costs more to do that, doesn't it? A. I guess they are more expensive. I don't know. Q. You would presume a blast proof trailer --
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A. I presume so. Q. -- would be more expensive, wouldn't you? A. Yes. Q. So it's cheaper to have trailers brought out there that were not blast proof. Fair statement? A. Yes. Q. And there is a benefit to locating trailers in close proximity to units and that is for the convenience of the personnel? A. This is for typically during maintenance periods. It is so people have some place that they can work from that's close to the units so that they don't have to be transported. Q. Did you know that the rule under the handbooks required fixed structures to be located further away from a potential vapor cloud explosion than a trailer? A. No. Q. Does that make sense to you? A. What makes sense to me is that you do a proper MOC. I don't know what that -- do you have that documentation? Q. We have all the documentation, sir. I am
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Q. (BY MR. COON) Is that news to you today? A. Yes. Q. Would you want to be in a trailer that -in a vapor cloud explosion that was rolling over? A. I don't want any trailers in a vapor cloud explosion. Q. Well, but would you want to volunteer to be in a trailer rolling over from a vapor cloud explosion? A. Nobody should be in that. Q. Do you agree that there is something faulty with the premise or analysis if it provides to be in buildings that are rolling over from a vapor cloud explosion, that there is just something fundamentally flawed about that analysis? A. I don't know what the analysis was. So I can't comment on that. It doesn't -- the way you describe that doesn't make sense. Q. I want to take that one step further. Do you know that at Texas City there were additional rules regarding trailers? A. What kind of additional rules? Q. Rules regarding staking them down? A. No, I didn't know that.
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just asking if you were aware -A. No, I didn't -Q. -- that under the Amoco BP handbook on trailer siting, that fixed buildings -- that is, buildings that are more durable than a temporary trailer -- were still required to be further away from a unit than the temporary trailers? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No, I didn't. I didn't see that. Q. (BY MR. COON) Assuming that to be the case, do you understand how it was that they came to the conclusion that they could put trailers closer to a unit than a fixed building? A. No. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know. Q. (BY MR. COON) Did you know that when the risk analysis was put into play and that the blast analysis was looked at that the decision was made that trailers could be located closer to a unit and a potential vapor cloud explosion because in the event the unit blew up, the trailer could roll over in the explosion? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I have never heard that.
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Q. Do you know that at Texas City the rules were that you had to stake trailers down because they were susceptible to hurricanes? Were you aware of that? A. No. Q. Were you aware that the rule was at BP Texas City you had to stake the trailers down because if there was a hurricane they didn't want the trailers to blow away in the storm? A. I didn't -- I didn't know that. Q. Well, if you stake them down so they don't blow over in a hurricane, it stands to reason that they are not going to blow over in a vapor cloud explosion either. It's a fair deduction, isn't it? A. Yeah. But the issue in this case is the blowdown risk was not recognized when they sited that trailer. I don't think it made much difference whether it was staked down or not. Q. Well, when you talk about siting that trailer, that trailer never was commissioned for occupancy, was it, sir? A. That's what I understand. Q. So it really doesn't matter what they
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considered and what they didn't consider because at the end of the day, they weren't supposed to be occupied? It did -A. It didn't go through the MOC. Q. Now, let's talk about just common sense as it relates to putting those trailers there. Did you know that you have had personnel that worked out there who have testified they warned other people in management that those trailers should not have been there before the explosion? A. No, I didn't. Q. Now, you are not telling the jury that there was no consideration to the potential of the vapor cloud explosion emanating from the blowdown drums on that unit, are you, sir? A. I don't know what consideration was made. I know that the fact that they were sited there was inappropriate with the blowdown system that could have a vapor cloud. Q. Okay. Well, I thought you told me a minute ago, though, that nobody perceived or understood or appreciated any potential vapor cloud explosion emanating from that unit. A. I don't believe that people would have
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The Mogford report was run by John Mogford. I wasn't part of that. Q. Well, I understand, sir; but there has been criticism associated with the Mogford report in that it whitewashed the responsibility of management. Have you heard that criticism before? A. Yes. Q. And that's because in the report Mr. Mogford was very specific in pointing out the failings of operators on the date of this explosion. Do you recall that in the report? A. Yes. Yeah. Q. And yet, almost everyone who died was in a trailer that had not been commissioned for occupancy, correct? A. That's what I understand. Q. And you know from the years that you were a business unit leader people in management have responsibilities for areas of the facility, don't they? A. Yes. Q. And people in management were responsible
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sited the trailers there if they understood what the risks around the blowdown was. Q. Well, you don't know who even put the trailers there in the first place, do you? A. No. Q. As a matter of fact, the Mogford report for all its thoroughness in faulting operator error didn't do anything to determine who in management was responsible for allowing those trailers to be located there and occupied, did it? A. I didn't see that. Q. Wouldn't you want to know when you were the business unit leader at another facility that if someone in management allowed trailers to be occupied for months on end without being commissioned, wouldn't you want to know who was responsible for that? A. Yes. Q. Did you ever inquire as to why that was not done in this case, who in management would have been responsible and punished for allowing that to happen? A. Well, my focus on trailers has been to understand what the risk is and get trailers out of the risk.
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for making sure that trailers that were occupied by the contractors out there had been properly commissioned and that they have gone through a proper management of change? A. Yes. Q. And yet, in this case in spite of the gravity, in spite of the loss of life, Mr. Mogford in that report completely failed to ascertain who in management was responsible for allowing that to have occurred. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) Correct? A. I didn't see that in his report. Q. Did you ever inquire as to why that report was completely silent on an issue of that import? A. No. Q. Did you ever inquire of anyone as to why it never mentioned who in management was responsible for allowing those trailers to have been commissioned -- to have been occupied without being commissioned for all those months? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. My focus was on understanding what the risk of trailers are, making clear rules, getting
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the trailers moved out of my system. That's what I have been working on. The Mogford report was run by John Mogford. Q. (BY MR. COON) Now, you understood these trailers were occupied principally by contractors, didn't you, sir? A. Yes. Q. When you were the BUL at Carson, did you make an effort to keep the contractors apprised as to what was going on in the units where they were working or near where they were working? A. Well, based on what I know today, out at Texas City I don't think that we did enough of that; but, yes, we made an effort, but not to nearly the extent that we do today. Q. And you understand that a criticism associated with this particular explosion was that the contractors were not notified in advance that the ISOM unit was being started up that day? A. Yes. Q. And had they been warned, they could have vacated the premises during the startup period, couldn't they? A. If the alarms would have been started -sounded as well, there might have been a better
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doing work to help get a unit up and running to make profit for BP, weren't they? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. They were doing engineering work on a unit. Q. (BY MR. COON) Designed to get a unit up and operating, designed to make profit for BP? A. Yes. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) Correct? A. Yeah. They were there to replace a driver on a compressor. Q. Did you have anything to do with the Stanley report in the summer of 2005? A. Yes. Q. What triggered that report? A. I did. So John Mogford's report was to -the incident investigation was designed to look into the ISOM explosion and the incident and the causes of that. What I needed to know, then, was how systemic the issues that were being seen in the ISOM were in the rest of Texas City. So I got with Pat Gower. Pat found Stanley and then we put a
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chance of vacating. Q. Well, if all the alarms had even been working properly, right? A. All the alarms worked. Q. All the alarms worked properly that day? A. The emergency alarms were never sounded. Q. Are you saying all of the alarms worked properly that day? A. The emergency alarms worked properly. Q. Are you saying all of the alarms on the system worked properly that day? A. I'm not sure which alarms you are talking about now. I couldn't testify that every alarm on that unit worked properly. I don't know that. Q. Contractors could have been orally warned or warned in writing that the unit was going to be started up that day, couldn't they have, sir? A. Well, the -- so what we would do today is that we wouldn't have contractors there to warn them. During a unit startup, there shouldn't have been contractors there. Q. But the contractors were there, weren't they? A. Yes, they were. Q. And they were there because they were
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terms of reference around the various different experts to look more broadly across Texas City. Q. When you commissioned this report, did you have to go through the approval of anyone? A. No. Q. Did you talk to Mr. Manzoni about it? A. Yes. Q. What were his thoughts? A. I explained to him why I thought we should do this, and he agreed. And again, it's because we weren't going to find out more broadly at Texas City if the issues that we saw in the ISOM were systemic. So we wanted to look more broadly to make sure that we understood fully what the issues at Texas City were. Q. Mr. Hoffman, I take it you have never actually had hands-on experience in the field working on one of these units, have you, sir? A. Yes, I have. Q. You have? Could you tell me what years you actually worked hands on in a unit? A. When I was -- when I was at the Cherry Point refinery I was a process engineer. I worked turnarounds, worked, you know, unit regenerations.
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I was a supervisor of various different process units. Q. Did Cherry Point have any blowdown drums? A. No, not any light hydrocarbon blowdown drums. Q. Do you know why not? A. It wasn't designed with blowdown drums. Q. Do you know why not? A. No, I don't. It was a part of the original design. Q. Did everything go to a flare? A. No. There is atmospheric relief valves. Q. Were there any atmospheric relief valves in heavier than air hydrocarbon systems? A. Well, we are checking that across our system now. So we are trying to remove the heavier than air light hydrocarbon understanding the dispersion modeling. So there is a big study going on across the U.S. to check all of that. Q. Do you have any ISOM units at Cherry Point? A. There is a new ISOM unit at Cherry Point. Q. Does it go to a flare? A. Yes. Q. Did you understand that there had been no
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that had their own policies around relief studies. So we are doing comprehensive relief studies now across our system, but that hadn't been done before the ISOM incident and it didn't have information about what the heritage companies had done on unit specific relief valve studies. Q. Well, why was there no heritage study on how long it had been since relief valve studies had been done? A. I don't know. Q. That's irresponsible in and of itself, isn't it? A. Somebody has to recognize that it should be done, that it should be updated. Q. Well, BP's not the kind of company that just came up overnight and doesn't know how to do things, is it? A. I don't think so. Q. They have been around, what, 100 something years? A. Yep, I guess so. Q. And it doesn't take a lot of effort when you acquire another facility or if you merge with another company to find out what its history is, is there?
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relief valve study done on the ISOM unit in the 20 years of its operation? A. No. Q. Do you recall seeing anything like that in the Mogford report? A. Yeah, I read the Mogford report. Q. When you were the business unit leader at Carson, did you allow any of the units to go 20 years without a relief valve study? A. So in the late Eighties in ARCO there was a comprehensive relief valve study done both across the Cherry Point and Carson refinery, which I knew about. Q. You would agree it was not responsible for BP to have allowed that unit to go without a relief valve study over 20 years, wouldn't you, sir? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. MR. COON: Basis? MR. DENNY: It calls for speculation on his part, number one. Q. (BY MR. COON) You may answer. A. The way that BP came together was through merger and acquisition activities. So we have, you know, a number of different heritage refineries
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A. So I don't know what was done in the Amoco BP merger around that. I was involved in the Veba acquisition. Q. Yeah, but my question was whether or not you believed it was very difficult to ascertain the history of relief valve studies at a facility that you merge with or acquire. A. I think it takes a huge amount of effort to understand exactly what you have. It takes months of study in all areas. I mean, that's what we did with Veba. I testified earlier that we had A.T. Kearney as part of that but both -- kind of an assessment of environmental issues, assessment of operating issues, understanding what -- the opportunities at the site. There was many months of intense study in that case. Q. But you would agree that under most circumstances all it does is take a meeting with the head of process safety management at the facility to get a pretty good understanding as to whether or not relief valve studies have been done and if so, how comprehensive they are and how out of date they may be? MR. DENNY: Objection, form.
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A. Yeah. I don't know what was done during the Amoco/BP merger, but that question could have been asked. Q. (BY MR. COON) And you knew Mr. Ralph was there in 2000? A. That he was there, yeah. Q. Yes, sir. Do you know anything about mechanical interlocks on units? A. A little. Q. Do you understand there were no mechanical safety interlocks on the ISOM unit? A. That's what I understand. Q. Design principles for many years had provided for that fail-safe, had they not? A. I don't know about ISOM design. Q. Do you know anything about the software systems and the control boards on the ISOM unit? A. I think it's a TDC distributed control system. Q. I take it that's a "yes"? A. A little. Q. Do you know anything specifically about Honeywells? A. Yes.
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of historical problems associated with the startup of the ISOM unit? A. Yes. Q. Did the number of atypical startups concern you? A. What I read in the Mogford report, yes. Q. In fact, you believe the majority of the prior startups had included as one example the majority of them having higher than normal pressure in startup? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't remember that it was the majority. They looked at a number of different -a whole series of different startups, as I recall, and found others that had -- had higher pressure. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you recall that the sight glass was obscured? A. No. Q. That would be reflective of poor maintenance if it was, wouldn't it? A. I don't know what it would be reflective of. Q. Well, do you know what a sight glass is? A. Yes. Q. You are supposed to be able to see them,
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Q. Do you know that this system did not have any safety interlocks on it? A. So what -- what do you mean by "safety interlock"? Q. Didn't have anything that would shut it down in the event of an upset, for instance? A. So that -- that's not all that common to have automatic shutdowns. Q. Are you aware it did not have any? A. It didn't have any. Q. Have you seen the testimony of Ms. Bobbie Detmar? A. No. Q. Do you know who she is? A. No. Q. Do you know if she had any experience in software design? A. I don't know who she is. Q. Do you know if she testified that she could have put in such a system if she had been requested relatively simply? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know who she is. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you recall seeing anything in the Mogford report identifying a number
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aren't you? A. Right. I don't know why it was obscured. Q. If it was obscured, that would be a sign of poor maintenance, wouldn't it? A. It depends on why it was being obscured. Q. Well, if it was obscured because it had not been cleaned, that would be a sign of poor maintenance, wouldn't it, sir? A. It should have been cleaned. Q. If it had not been cleaned, that would be a sign of poor maintenance, wouldn't it -A. Yes. Q. -- sir? Did you know that there were pumps on that unit that were not working at the time it was started up? A. No. Q. If pumps were broken, would that be a sign of poor maintenance? A. Well, you said that there were pumps that weren't working; but it would be the decisions that would need to be taken on what's the criteria for starting up the unit. It's not necessarily poor maintenance. Q. Well, if you have a pump that is supposed
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to work and it's not working and the unit started up anyway, would that be a sign -- a potential sign of poor maintenance? A. No. It's completely dependent on what the pump is and what -- what its requirement is. Q. Do you know how many people were staffing the board in the control room on the date of the explosion? A. I think there was a board operator, one board operator. Q. Do you know -A. And extra people in the field. Q. Do you know what the history of the number of board operators in that particular unit had been? A. No. Q. Were you aware that from the time that unit was built in '84 until 2000 that there had been two operators in the control room? A. No. Q. Do you know why the number of personnel in the control room was reduced from two to one? A. No, I don't. Q. Do you know that it fell to the budgetary acts in 2000 as a result of Lord Browne's edict
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challenge to the business units, that would be a fraudulent document? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know what the document is. Q. (BY MR. COON) You said Lord Browne -I'm sorry, sir. You said Lord Browne would never do that. I am just saying if the document -A. I said it would be unusual. I wasn't around during it. Certainly that would be -- I have never had any experience where John Browne has told me to cut costs. That is not the way that the group runs. It runs through the line. Q. With all due respect, Mr. Hoffman, I'm not trying to be argumentative with you; but you didn't say it was quite unusual for Lord Browne. You said Lord Browne would never do that. A. Well, in my experience I have never seen him do that. Q. Okay. I am just asking a question. If there is documentation in this case that reflects that Lord Browne was issuing this 25 percent challenge, as you call it, to the business units, would that be a fraudulent document or would that be something Lord Browne could have himself emanated to the various business units?
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affecting a 25 percent reduction in fixed operational cost? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Could you repeat that, please? Q. (BY MR. COON) Yes, sir. We have established earlier you were aware that there was an edict from Lord Browne to cut operational costs at BP facilities? A. No, I never testified to that. I don't know of any edict from John Browne on costs; and as I testified earlier, the cost challenge came prior to my career in BP. Q. Okay. You used the words "challenge." That was the challenge from Lord Browne to reduce fixed operational costs 25 percent? A. I am quite certain that didn't come from Lord Browne, and I never heard that it was a Lord Browne challenge. Q. Where did it come from? A. It came -- I don't know. I wasn't there, but it would be -- John Browne doesn't challenge the businesses like that. That's part of the line function. Q. So if there is documentation reflecting that Lord Browne has issued this 25 percent
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MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I can't testify to documentation I haven't seen. Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. I am going to represent to you that there has been testimony in this case reflecting that decisions were made at BP Texas City to cut budgets 25 percent and that one of the things that was cut as a result of that 25 percent budget request was a reduction of board operators from two to one. A. Okay. Q. So now we are operating with one board operator in the control room of the ISOM. First, this is something that would be news to you today? A. That it was one board operator? No, I know that. Q. No. That it went from two to one as a result of a request to make a budget cut? A. I have heard that as well. Q. You have heard that as well? A. That request to go from two to one, not as a result of a budget cut. Q. Okay. So I take it you were not aware that the local union protested the reduction of
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board operators from two to one on safety concerns? A. No. Q. You have never been told that before today? A. No. Q. You have never seen the underlying documentation of that before today? A. No. Q. Were you aware that another unit was tied in to the ISOM control room in 2003, being the NDU unit? A. Well, after the incident, I knew that the NDU was run from there. Q. Were you ever made aware that the union specifically requested that BP reconsider the staffing needs in the control room as a result of tying in the additional unit and again requesting to go back to two board operators in that control room? A. No. Q. Did you know that the ISOM supervisor -that is, the salaried person, Mr. Paul Trapp -- as a result of the NDU unit coming into the control room in 2003 also asked the supervisors to go back to two board operators out of safety concerns?
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Q. You would agree that every fire poses a potential risk of an explosion, wouldn't you, sir? A. Yes. Q. Do you require that -- do you recall that in the years prior to this explosion there were at least four documented circumstances in which vapor clouds formed at ground level posing an explosion risk? A. I was aware that the -- there were a number of times that the ISOM relieved to the blowdown system. Q. Do you recall there was another fatality at the ISOM unit in 1992? A. No, I don't. Q. You know nothing about those circumstances? A. No. Q. Do you know the circumstances of any of the two dozen people who died in the years prior to the explosion of March 23, 2005? A. I know the circumstances for the time that I have been running the refining businesses. Q. Okay. Let's just go back to 2004. Israel Trevino, May, 2004. Do you know how he died?
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A. No. Q. Were you aware that the union specifically protested the failure of BP in refusing to provide two board operators in the control room during startup procedures? A. No. Q. Are you aware that the grievance filed by the union for failure to provide two board operators during startup times was denied by Mr. Carter in 2001? A. No, I wasn't. Q. In reviewing the Mogford report and things you may have been told as part of the investigation, were you aware that there was a fire at the ISOM unit in 1986? A. I don't remember that specifically; but if it was in the report, I read it. Q. Do you recall if there was another fire there in 1987? A. I saw the history of the ISOM in Mogford's report, but I couldn't testify to the specific dates. Q. Do you recall there was another fire there in 1988? A. The same answer.
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A. Israel was -- which was the incident that Israel was in? Q. I am just asking if you know. A. I know there were two instances in 2004. One was burn where we had two fatalities, and another one was a contractor working in a tower that fell. Q. So you knew that there was a contractor who fell in a tower and died? A. Yes. Q. You are aware of two other fatalities that occurred out there that year? A. Yes. Q. Do you recall how it was they died? A. Yes. Q. What was it that caused their death? A. Burning, hot water scalding. Q. Well, akin to being boiled alive and burned alive, wasn't it, sir? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. They were scalded. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you recall how that happened? A. Yes. They were separating a check valve, breaking a flange between a check valve and a valve
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and the valve wasn't fully closed. So hot water -they were on a platform and they were sprayed with hot water. Q. Do you recall that they were doing the work that they were assigned to do pursuant to the guidelines and instructions they had received? A. Yes. Q. Do you understand that at the end of the day, it was determined that they did nothing wrong to cause this incident to have happened? A. Yeah. There were two -- two issues. The way it was set up, control of work, they were in the line of fire. So there was an inadequate risk understanding of lack of isolation and the second is that there was no bleed between the check valve and the valve. And so we have instituted a policy across our system to install bleeds between the check valves and valves. Q. Were you aware of a public relations team that was in place at BP in 2004 at Texas City? A. The public relations team in Texas City? Q. Yes, sir. A. No. You would have to tell me who that would be. Q. I believe there was a Pat Wright and
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are the actions that you are going to take to prevent this from happening again. And the -- and the contractor in the fall, all the equipment was there. The contracting company had a great track record of safety. He was properly trained. He had used the equipment. So we couldn't find a reason for that. We didn't know why he decided not to use the fall protection equipment. And the other incident, it was -there was a big issue about risk awareness. At the same time, we talked about compliance to procedures and policies. So there was that -- Don put an audit team in place at that time to go run a check to make sure people were following the rules. Q. And we understand that you had another fatality just two weeks ago; is that correct? A. There was a fatality at Texas City, yes. Q. That was Mr. Graves? A. Yes. Q. What's your understanding of what happened to Mr. Graves? A. He was crushed between an I beam and a manlift that he was operating. Q. Any fatalities at any of your other plants this year?
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there was a Mr. Stephens, as I recall. A. I don't think they were at Texas City. Q. Maybe Houston? A. Houston, yeah. Q. Did you know that that public relations department was quoted, the day prior to the second gentleman's death, two months lingering after the incident, to be due to their own fault? A. No. Q. You don't recall any turmoil and controversy associated to Mr. Stephens casting blame at the foot of those people when, in fact, there was no blame appropriately cast at their feet? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. There was an incident investigation that went through the entire incident, including all the causes. So that's what I was aware of. I don't know about the public relations statements. Q. (BY MR. COON) Have you ever talked to Mr. Parus about those fatalities? A. Yes, I did. Q. In what context, sir? A. Well, the incident investigation, what
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A. No. Q. Any fatalities at any of your other plants last year? A. We had a fatality at the Cherry Point refinery, which was -- we think it was medically related. Q. You mean a heart attack or something? A. It was a heart attack but he fell into a little pool of water and then the actual cause of death was drowning, even though it was like an inch of water. So, it wasn't a -- there was speculation that it was a heart attack but there was never a definitive answer on that. He didn't fall from heighth or anything. Q. There's been a lot of personnel changes in the BP infrastructure in the last year or two. Do you know of any more that are scheduled to take place? A. No. John Browne is retiring in the end of 2008, I understand. I read it in the paper. Q. Is that where you have to go to get your information regarding what's happening at BP? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Generally I am not informed as to when
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people are -- are planning on retiring. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, I want to go back to the flare system versus open containment systems. In talking about the ISOM unit and going back over what you recall from the Mogford report, do you recall a history reflected in there of opportunities that had existed prior to the explosion to get rid of the blowdown drum that was utilized on that particular unit? A. Yes. Q. What do you recall about the prior opportunities that had existed to replace that blowdown drum with a flare system? A. That there were a number of opportunities, when the ISOM could have been tied in to a flare system, that weren't taken. Q. Of course it could have been done in '84 when the ISOM unit was built, right? A. Yeah. Q. And then it could have been done when the AU2 was built in the Nineties? A. Yes. Q. It could have been tied in to the flare from that one, right?
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initially designed in the Clean Streams program that was later killed, correct? A. The Clean Stream was about removing benzene. So I don't know what all was considered or wasn't considered as part of that; but that would have been an odd way to address that issue, which was around benzene. Q. Okay. Well, there was a dual benefit of getting rid of a vent stack. One was for the safety concerns and the other was for environmental concerns, wasn't it, sir? A. Well, I know about the environmental concerns, which was the clean fuels. I don't know the -- all the consideration that was made for various different options that they had. What I saw was the final project. Q. What role did you have in approving or denying certain components of the budgets coming out of Texas City year to year? A. So we have a -- basically, a central team that works for me that gets proposals from businesses about spending, what their programs are, capital budgets, and then we look across that at license to operate, the businesses need -- can decide -- they just need to manage their license to
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A. Yeah. That's what it said in the report. Q. And then, of course, you had 1997, the entire vent stack and blowdown drum was all replaced with a brand-new one because it had all rusted out. Do you recall that? A. Yes. Q. That would have been another good opportunity to run everything to a flare, wouldn't it, sir? A. Yeah. There were -- Mogford report talked about a few opportunities to do that. Q. And these were all opportunities that would have been encouraged under the pre-existing PSS Number 6, which had encouraged the phasing out and removal of blowdown drums at Texas City? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. That's what I understand, that in that Amoco policy that there was that they wouldn't build new blowdowns. Q. (BY MR. COON) And then, of course, there was an opportunity to do so in 2002 when the NDU was built adjacent to the ISOM unit, correct? A. Yeah, that's what I understand. Q. And, in fact, that was something that was
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operate. We expect that all businesses have at least five-year plans about sustaining investment and then proposed commercial investment and on commercial investment we try to choose the best projects across our system. The first funding is license to operate. They just need to tell us -- you know, Clean Streams would have been a license to operate around compliance; sustaining, expect all sites to have long-term sustaining programs that are funded once a year; and then commercial, if there is capital left over. Q. Do you go into the specifics of where the money goes, plant by plant, such as how much is allocated for training, maintenance, staffing, et cetera? A. So training -- training, maintenance and staffing wouldn't be capital. That's -- those aren't capital items. So that's part of the fixed budget. Q. Are you just involved in Capex? A. No. And then a budget is put to place -in place for all aspects of the business. So ask me what the variable costs are, what the fixed
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costs are, the programs that are being put in place. Q. You look at all three. You look at Capex, Revex and variable costs? A. Yeah, as part of the -- the business unit plan. Q. And does each business unit leader come to you with the proposals on the budget for the next year? A. Yes. Q. And you're in charge of trimming the fat out of those budgets, I take it? A. We are in charge of making sure that the -- so that would be part of it, is there fat in it but also is there adequate funding to do what we expect. We have done more and more around standards. So in some cases we have said businesses aren't spending enough on maintenance; and also, at times things happen during the year. So a business unit could come and say, "We found some things that need to be addressed and can we get extra money?" That's the business unit's decision about what to spend. They have a budget.
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THE VIDEOGRAPHER: All right. We are back on the video record. This is the beginning of Videotape 5. The time is 3:25 p.m. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, we may jump around some now, but I want to walk through with you a number of documents that we received that I believe were principally responsive to the subpoena duces tecum. I just need you to identify them and in some circumstances explain them. The next one is Exhibit 720. It is called a One-On-One Employee Safety Discussion. MR. DENNY: For the record, that is your highlighting? MR. COON: Yes, the record -- for the record it's not my highlighting. MR. DENNY: Well, it is not his. MR. COON: We will agree it is not mine or his. MR. DENNY: Okay. MR. COON: We will agree that somebody else did highlight it. MR. DENNY: But it's under your direction? MR. FERNELIUS: One of your staff members?
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Q. Did you have an understanding that Mr. Carter and Mr. Scruggs cut out most of the training as a result of the budget cuts in 2000? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No, I wasn't here then. Q. (BY MR. COON) Were you ever made aware of any significant cuts in training associated to the budget cuts in 2000? A. No. Q. Did you ever see a list of what was cut in 2000 as a result of the 25 percent challenge emanating from London? A. No, I didn't. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. How are we doing on time? THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We have about eight minutes. (Discussion off the record.) MR. COON: In light of that, why don't we go ahead and take a break now and allow me to start pulling up the documents we need for the next line of inquiry. THE VIDEOGRAPHER: All right. We are going off the video record. The time is 3:08. (Recess taken.)
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MR. COON: You-all know what I know. MR. DENNY: Just so it's clear, it's not his highlighting. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, having looked at that document, can you identify it for us, please, sir? A. What does that mean to identify it? Sorry. Q. Yes, sir. Can you identify it? I am just trying to ascertain what it is and who generated it. A. I don't know who generated this. It's a -- it's a document talking about changes that we were making around accountability at the Carson refinery. Q. It's what I guessed based on the date, but I didn't see where it was talking too much about that plant in particular. A. "LAR." So LAR is Los Angeles refinery. When we got bought by BP, I changed the name to Carson because that was actually the city that we were in and I wanted to identify more with the city.
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Q. Okay. Well, there you go. I did not know the secret acronym. A. Many at BP wouldn't. That was an ARCO acronym. Q. Okay. What was the purpose of that particular document? A. Like I say, I don't know where the document was generated; but it was actually to give context about what we were trying to do to improve safety at the time. Q. And what were the problems at Carson refinery in 1998 when you were the plant manager there that would have resulted in a document of that nature? A. Well, we had had a number of safety issues and near misses and we started to look into it. There had been a behavioral safety program that had been in place for a long time. The behavioral safety program was -- it was voluntary and discipline could not be an outcome of a behavioral safety observation but what had happened over time is there was kind of a degradation of people following rules. So it became that because behavioral safety observations were -- were not
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long-term financial challenges in the industry, I think it wasn't hugely uncommon, because I did see some of that, that especially the first line leaders didn't feel like they were part of management, just kind of didn't understand their role exactly. So a big effort that we made at Carson was to bring the first level leaders back into management and support them. Q. And having been personally involved in trying to turn around a plant where you had problems of the nature associated with lack of compliance, behavioral problems, when was it that you were first aware that there were similar problems emanating from the Texas City facility? A. Well, it was a general issue. So we -- so across the refining system what we did was, first of all, we got very clear about what our values were: Safety, people, environmental performance, financial performance, availability. So we made that as a very big -- and then this -- the ability to understand what's going on in the organization. We started to describe this is the way we want to operate and this was a lot about
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subject to discipline, then following rules wasn't 1 subject to discipline. And we had to really reset 2 that and we had to bring the first line supervision 3 back into management and kind of hold them 4 accountable for their performance and other 5 people's performance, too. 6 It was a pretty big kind of 7 resetting of our safety agenda. 8 Q. Well, looking at what the contents of 9 that particular document reflect, it seems like a 10 lot of the problems that you were observing at the 11 Carson plant in 1998 were similar to the types of 12 observations being made at the Texas City facility 13 prior to the explosion. That was an environment of 14 casual compliance with policies and procedures and 15 the lack of personal accountability. 16 Do you recall those same types of 17 comments being made by management and auditors and 18 consultants in the few years prior to the 19 explosion? 20 MR. DENNY: Objection, form. 21 A. At Texas City? 22 Q. (BY MR. COON) Yes, sir. 23 A. Yeah, I had seen similar issues. 24 It's -- because of the, I think, 25
getting the first level leaders. So I was really running kind of a general program to train leaders in leadership competency, how to hold people accountable, what we expect of people, what compliance means; and so we knew there were issues at Texas City. I had already talked about we put A.T. Kearney in place, compliance in place. Don was, you know, he commissioned the T. Dinley Strong study in order to better understand the culture and how he was going to influence it, but that was starting to come into what we were doing in the rest of the refining system. Q. Do you recall that Lord Browne admitted that Texas City had a failed safety culture in March of 2005? A. Yes. Q. You are not going to argue that point, are you, sir? A. No. Q. Do you have any particular things that you point or earmark to as to why Texas City had a failed safety culture in 2005 when BP was aware of safety culture problems, generically speaking, and had tried to address them at various plants?
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A. Yeah. So we had been trying to address them. Texas City was a little bit different in that it was part of the South Houston complex, which again was run with chemicals and refining. So the plans at Texas City were approved by a board -- not in 2005. That changed in 2004. But it took us longer to get Texas City into the refining program. I mean, chemicals had their own things and you know there -- but there was certainly a lot of focus generally on safety. And what we were trying to do was give our supervision and leadership kind of more clear expectations and tools in order to improve. (Exhibit Number 721 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, the next document I have is 721. This one, again, speaks about compliance and rules and appears to be specific to Texas City. It talks about a control of work audit for May of 2004. Do you recall what that control of audit -A. Yes. Q. -- control of work audit was and what was being discussed there?
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to the various refineries in the BP system or was Texas City isolated and identified for special treatment? A. No, it -- it was around the various businesses. It wasn't -- it was a segment. So it was refining and marketing. So it went to like an air BP terminal in the London area. It went to a lubes plant. It was -- so it was -- it wasn't Texas City targeted at all, but it was just not only do we expect you to comply, we want our leadership to be, you know, watching this and then we are going to check occasionally and write a report. In the case of Texas City, the report didn't generate discipline; but in some cases we actually fired people over what we found in these spot audits. Q. Was anybody fired at Texas City as a result of any of the spot audits? A. No. This was -- this was one segment and, you know, generally their compliance was better than we saw in other places. They still needed to work on improving the compliance as a result of this, and this was Don's response to that
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A. Yes. Q. It was pretty much still known in the BP system that Texas City was having problems associated with compliance in 2004. A. Yeah. It was -- so this was an issue that we had identified out of a number of getting HSE right assessments across our system and the segment, but the people's relationship with rules was not as rigorous as what we wanted it to be. And so out of that segment, John Manzoni made compliance to procedures the theme; and Pat King put together these spot audit programs that we did kind of across the segment in a random, unannounced way. And so one of -- one of them was done around control of work and the five golden rules, which it falls, things that -- falls and other things that have caused fatalities in the group generally. And this letter was what is Texas City's response to the audit, which was generally all right but not as rigorous as we would expect. So at that time Don put in place -- he put in place his own audit team that would go around and just check for compliance on control of work. Q. Was this something that was going around
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to do kind of two things: Put in place this audit team and put in place a structure for helping people understand how to analyze discipline when rules weren't followed. And that's just culture, which is referenced in here. Q. Okay. What is the just culture? A. Just culture is a framework for analyzing whether -- what the issues around noncompliance were. Was it failure to follow the rules but understood it? Was it a training issue or whatever? So it could give leaders a tool to help them think through whether discipline and what kind of discipline would be required or not. Q. Does just culture have something to do with being fair -A. Yes. Q. -- with your workforce? A. Yes. Q. If you look at being fair with your workforce, you can go back and look at some of the comments that were specific to the Telos Report which were the opinions expressed by the employees, both salaried and hourly, that worked out at Texas
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City in the months prior to the explosion. Have you ever seen any of their individual comments? A. No. They were confidential. Q. Have you ever asked to see them now that you understand that the study and the individual interview notes are no longer confidential? A. No. Q. Did you know that employees were asked whether or not any of them had ever been hurt on the job? A. No, I didn't. Q. I want to read you a few of the excerpts from that report, sir, under the heading of "Getting Hurt on the Job," beginning page 1 going to page 2. An employee commented that, "After an incident, we add more detail to the procedure and fire the victim." Would that be part of the concept of a just culture, sir? A. No. The issue with just culture at Texas City was that they weren't disciplining people. It wasn't that they were firing the
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MR. DENNY: Brent, would you identify the page or Bates number? MR. COON: Yeah. Those were all page 3, Bates Number 122326. MR. DENNY: Okay. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, were you ever made aware that these were the types of comments that were reflected in the Telos Report? A. No. Q. When you met with Mr. Parus and he was explaining to you his concerns in the Telos Report, did you ever get into any of the specific -- any of the specific comments made by any of the employees that were contained in the Telos Report? A. No, I didn't. Q. Did you ever ask to see for yourself the specific comments that were contained in the report that were causing Mr. Parus such concern? A. No. Q. Do you know of anyone else above Mr. Parus that was involved in the loop of knowledge associated with the Telos Report having been out there? People such as Mr. Gower, yourself or others ever having asked for the specific content of the report?
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victim. Q. If employees are saying that they had been hurt on the job and their comment was that "They said it could not have happened on the job; so suddenly it didn't," that would not be a good example of just culture, would it, sir? A. No. Q. If an individual said that they had been hurt on the job because they were working shorthanded and no concern was shown, that would not be an example of a just culture, would it, sir? A. No. Q. If an employee said, yes, they had been hurt on the job and that the employer just wanted to find someone to blame, that would not be part of a just culture, would it, sir? A. No. In fact, what just culture does is allows supervision, a structured way to think through what is the appropriate response. Q. If an employee says, "Yes, I have been hurt and had management punish me and make a fool of me," that would not be an example of a just culture, would it, sir? A. No.
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A. No, I don't know. Q. Have you ever made an effort to go back and read anything in the report since the explosion? A. Yes, I have. Q. What did you read out of the report since the explosion? A. That there was a -- that a lot of employees thought that the focus on safety had improved but there were still a lot of lagging issues or maybe real issues around the way people perceived safety and what the intent at Texas City was. Q. And in reading over the content that was expressed in this report -- this is, what, three or four months before the explosion, when all this information was rounded up? I think November or December, 2000? A. I don't know. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I only talked to Don in February. That's when I became aware of it. Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. Do you know when this information had been assimilated? A. No, I don't.
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Q. Did you have some understanding that the 1 information that was contained in the Telos Report 2 was information of relatively recent origin? 3 MR. DENNY: Objection, form. 4 A. In February? 5 Q. (BY MR. COON) Yes, sir. 6 A. Yeah. I mean, I -- what I understood was 7 this was something new that Don had done and he was 8 developing plans to address it. 9 Q. Okay. Do you recall seeing a lot of 10 criticism associated to postponing turnarounds? 11 A. No, I don't; but that's -- that's not 12 something that I accept either. We scheduled 13 turnarounds; and if there is a turnaround that it 14 needs to be postponed for operational reasons, we 15 go through a full management of change. 16 Q. Here is an example of one comment. 17 MR. COON: Counsel, it's 122340, 18 page 17. 19 Q. (BY MR. COON) It says, "Units are 20 90 percent of the time run to failure..." 21 What does that mean, "run to 22 failure"? 23 A. I don't know what that means. 24 Q. I am going to read you the entire quote 25
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Q. Were you aware that there were a large number of scheduled turnarounds that were on the books at Texas City in 2000 that were specifically earmarked for postponement as a result of the budget cuts emanating from London? A. No. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know where the budget cuts came from, but I certainly don't know anything about what was done in 2000. What we do today when -- is that we know what the turnaround schedule is for several years. We do -- we have a rigorous policy for when a scope is defined, when is it locked; and we've got -- you know, last year after the hurricanes, we got a lot of pressure from the Government to postpone turnarounds and we didn't do it because, you know, we can't execute turnarounds efficiently or run the operations well if we try and move those around. Q. (BY MR. COON) You know what the kit is, don't you, sir? A. The what? Q. The kit, k-i-t? A. I am not sure what that document says.
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here. It says, "Units are 90 percent of the time run to failure due to postponing turnarounds. So making money or saving money for that particular year looks good on the books. This is a serious safety concern to operating personnel. We do not walk the talk all the time. Cost and budgets are preached to reduce cost." A. I don't know how old that comment is, but we do not postpone scheduled turnarounds. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to do that for economic reasons. We have a turnaround standard that we operate to. So if turnarounds need to be postponed, it's for the site and it's for operating reasons or capability reasons; and like I said, there is a management of change on that. Q. Do you know what type of turnaround schedules, if any, were being postponed by Mr. Scruggs and Mr. Carter as a result of their attempts to cut costs as a result of any orders or perceived orders from London? A. I don't know anything about the operation of Texas City pre 2002 when I was put into this. I don't know.
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Usually it's more of a European term, but we -- a kit would be the equipment. Q. I want to talk to you briefly about some notes made in the Telos Report on comments concerning the conditions of the kit. This would be the conditions of the refinery or the units, right? A. Yeah, generally that's what that was -would mean. Q. One of the comments that were given under that heading was, "Process safety management, our deferred maintenance over the years is now hurting us. Our processes have now changed. We have much higher corrosion." Were these things that you were aware existed at Texas City in 2004? A. Well, the reason that we had been increasing our maintenance funding and we had done those specific programs about addressing corrosion that we had designed an inspection corrosion standard was to address and have a -- you know, standard expectations of that for all the refineries. Q. This one is at page 20 of the report. "The equipment is in dangerous condition and this
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is not taken seriously. At the refinery there is a frame of mind like 'We are the ones that make the money.' They take pride in running on thin air." What does that mean, "running on thin air"? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I have no idea. I can't even guess what running on thin air means. Q. (BY MR. COON) It says, "They take pride in running on thin air; but if they do it by killing someone every 18 months, then you don't have bragging rights about production." Would you agree with that statement? A. Well, I don't agree with production above safety at all, if that's what that is saying. Q. I will show you page 18, sir. Would you read the comments that were highlighted in that comment? And if you don't mind if -- you can read it out loud so we could have it. A. "It's all about acceptance. There is no outrage when it smells, when people die and when things fail. When we ask someone to do something, the incident investigation reveals they failed to
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A. Is this -MR. DENNY: Do you want to mark that, Brent? MR. COON: This is all part of the report. Yes, sir. This is the Telos Report. Let me just reflect the pages. It's already in the record as an exhibit. MR. DENNY: Do the Bates number just so it will be easier for us to find. MR. COON: Okay. 122341. That is 122355. Those comments there (indicating). Q. (BY MR. COON) And could I have you read that one for me, please? A. "We have cut routine budgets to the point where we are not doing the routine maintenance essential to keeping units up. We cut 10 percent, cut 10 percent, cut 10 percent without regard for the risk." Q. Let me talk to you first about that "cut 10 percent." Do you have any idea what they are talking about there? A. That must be a historic comment. Q. Were you aware that there had been a number of additional challenges emanating from
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assess the risk when, in fact, we failed to make them aware of the risks. These things are frightening and overwhelmingly being done because we have such a proud capable workforce that wants to be a winning team. That ethic contributes to their willingness to do things. And finally, it is an incredibly exclusive environment for contractors." Q. Would you agree with what was stated? A. Would I agree with... Q. Would you agree with the contents that were just stated by that particular employee? A. I don't know the context that he stated this in. I think one of the things that we found in the Mogford report around the exclusive environment for contractors, if that means that contractors were excluded, I would agree with that. We know that there was a failure to understand risk at the site. So when they talk about failed to assess risk, that -- we know that that has been an issue at the site. Q. I want to show you another one. It's at page 32, where another quote is talking about --
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London in the years prior to the explosion to cut the fixed operational budget at plants 10 percent? A. No. The Texas City operating budget had been increasing during those years significantly. Q. It was increasing because of significant deferred maintenance resulting in a lot of unscheduled shutdowns, hadn't it, sir? A. No. It was proactive maintenance as well. So that was some -- some was a result of deferred -- or things that were unanticipated, but the whole thing about improving the infrastructure integrity was all proactive. We were getting -- you know, in fact, we did this refinery system wide and said this is the expectations that we have for maintenance and here's the criteria which is you have to manage the backlog, you know, this is the management information that you must have for maintenance. So more and more we were focused on getting the right maintenance done on time. But certainly part of the increase in maintenance in Texas City was catch-up maintenance.
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Q. Well, there was a lot of catch-up maintenance that still existed at the time of the explosion in March of 2005, wasn't there, sir? A. I think we weren't fully caught up on maintenance at Texas City. And in addition to that, they hadn't -- and we just -- we just published in January of 2005 the maintenance procedures and processes. So they haven't implemented that yet. Q. In fact, after the explosion, there was an announced budget expenditure that I think was allocated somewhere around a billion dollars for catching up? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. It's not just catching up. It's improving the site as well. Some -- in response to some of the Mogford findings and the OSHA requirements, flare systems and new buildings. So a big part of that money is that. Q. (BY MR. COON) That didn't include the cost of modifying a building away from the facility to allow management personnel to work off site, did it, sir? A. There was -- you mean the Texas City building?
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Q. The significant or major consideration for this new building was to provide a safer operating facility for those personnel that were not necessary to be located on site at the plant itself? A. It was to allow us to get people out of trailers and move them off the site, clearly; and it was available. And we didn't have to build a new building on site because the Kmart building was available. Q. Well, you had a lot of people in administration that were afraid to go back to work after the explosion out of fear for their lives. That was expressed, wasn't it, sir? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I didn't hear that. Q. (BY MR. COON) Were you aware of how training had degraded over the years prior to the explosion? A. No. Q. Let me talk to you briefly about the section talking about training, development and organizational learning. It was the last pages of the report, pages 53 through 56; and let me show
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Q. Yes, sir. A. No. That was -- that was a lease. So there was just a modification done to the Texas City building. So it's not really -- it was 20 million or something like that. It wasn't a big part of that number, and that's where the training center is. It's not management personnel. It's training, engineering, a lot of the HR, a lot of the functions that we could get out of the plant. Q. But that building was renovated and leased by BP -A. Yes. Q. -- to provide for the transfer of a number of the administrative personnel off site to a location that was perceived to be safer than working there at the facility, wasn't it, sir? A. It was to address this issue of too many people in trailers and to eliminate trailers. So like I said, we established a training center -- you know, kind of state of the art training center where we could go and train people. We moved engineering out. We moved HR out. The operating management and the operations and maintenance were still on site because they were running the site.
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you first some areas on page 54. This is at Document 122377. The highlighted ones, please, sir. If you could read the first ones that I have highlighted there for you. What does that one say? A. "There were 20 unit trainers a few years ago and now there is four unit trainers, get used to fill in." Q. What happened to the other 16 trainers that were out there? A. I don't know what happened to them. Q. What does the next one say that I highlighted there for you, please, sir? A. "Quality and accuracy of operator maintenance training here is really poor." Q. I am sorry. Really what? A. Poor. Really poor. "Training is not effective and really nonexistent. Training is real poor here compared to other companies I work for." Q. What type of comparisons was BP doing, if anything, to their competitors to determine whether or not they were lacking in training, staffing, things of that nature?
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A. I don't know of any comparisons to competitors on training. On staffing, there is Solomon benchmarking. Q. Let me show you another page on training issues. This is 122378. If I can have you read each of those, please, sir, and comment briefly on them. MR. DENNY: The highlighted ones? MR. COON: Yes, sir. MR. DENNY: Okay. A. With no skills training for I&E crafts here, it's a real issue. In the 28 years I cannot remember any training in the step-up or transfer. Q. (BY MR. COON) What is a step-up or transfer? A. A step-up would be somebody that steps up into foreman or first level leader position from -from an hourly position. Q. Okay. Next one, sir? A. "George Carter cut training and said, 'Until you tell me I could go to jail, I won't change anything as long as the paper covers us.' We haven't recovered from that."
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effective enough for the training that we expect. Q. The next one, sir? A. "Training is critically bad for operators and maintenance. Oh, yes, we have documents to cover OSHA and say we did training but that's not designed to locate gaps of knowledge." Q. Were you aware of gaps in knowledge existing in the training department prior to the explosion? A. No. Q. Were there any kind of gaps existing out at Texas City that were still being worked on? A. There were lots of gaps being worked on at Texas City. Q. Okay. What were examples of gaps that existed at Texas City? A. You know, we talked about catch-up maintenance that they had to do, the infrastructure investment that we had increased, and general leadership capability was a gap. Compliance to procedures, those all had programs in place to address. Q. Why were there gaps in maintenance? A. Why did we have that situation? You know they didn't run the
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Q. Was that a very professional statement from Mr. Carter to have made? A. It's unacceptable if he made that statement. Q. Do you have any reason to believe that the personnel that would have filled out an anonymous statement like that would have dropped Mr. Carter in the grease on a comment like that unless it was actually made? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Well, I know in anonymous surveys people remember things differently and are more comfortable saying lots of things. So I don't know. I don't have context. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you know what kind of things Mr. Carter did cut, if anything? A. I know that there was a general cut, which is why we were, you know, focusing on increasing the funding for Texas City and had plans in place in order to improve the site. The Mogford report -- and I agree with that -- talks about inadequate training. That needs to be addressed. A lot of training went to -- to -- on computerized training so people would get on a screen and do that, and that is not
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maintenance department in a way that I think is appropriate. It was reactive maintenance, not good process around maintenance. I don't know how it got to be that way. There was -- we know there was cost cutting in the Nineties that needed to be addressed and caught up. Q. The complaints that many have made about BP Texas City being reactive instead of proactive was specifically targeted towards the many budget cuts that took place in the late Nineties and early 2000s. Would you agree with those? A. I think that's probably true. I mean, certainly there were budget cuts and what I saw when I got the job was they didn't have good maintenance process and they were behind in what I would expect on maintaining the site. Q. Why was that plant so dysfunctional? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know the full history of why they got to where they are. Q. (BY MR. COON) What was your understanding as to why it became so dysfunctional? A. Well, it's a very complicated site. It's one when it became an integrated site in order to
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try and capture integrated business, the complexity of the site went up. The board structure that Don reported to, I think, was very complex. Doing a performance plan for the site with multiple different businesses having inputs was very complex. They went to what was called a MALT, which was a matrix organization with maintenance and operations and I think as part of that, although well intended, they lost track of the clear accountabilities. Q. In light of all those deficits, aren't you playing Russian roulette with your units when the entire facility gets that dysfunctional? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. That's why we were doing so many things to address it. So inspection for -- since we knew that they were behind on inspection. So we started hiring new inspectors, built the department up. We had a clear policy and procedures around inspection, which in the beginning of 2005 they were implementing in Texas City. Q. (BY MR. COON) The Texas City facility was shut down in the fall of 2005, wasn't it, sir? A. Yes. Q. And it stayed closed for a number of
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the inspections and fixing the issues that were created by having the refinery down for such a long period of time. Q. (BY MR. COON) Are you getting rid of blowdown drums while the units are down? A. Yes. Q. Are you setting up better training protocols for employees while the facility is down? A. Yes. We are doing a lot of training. Q. You are reviewing the structure and supervision to make sure that that system works better and is better when the systems are -A. Accountability is clear. People understand what their job is, yes, we are. (Exhibit Number 722 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, I have 722. Can you tell us what this is? It's called the "Final Results for Group and Segment HSSE." A. Yeah. It's a report with health, safety security and environmental data. Q. Is that something that's done for each plant every year? A. Well, this is -- this is an aggregation of plants. So, yes, each plant feeds into this;
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months? A. Yes. Q. This is something that could have been done prior to March 23, 2005, wasn't it, sir? A. That the site could have been shut down? Q. Yes, sir. A. Yes. It's possible. Q. And many of the things that could have and should have been done before March 23rd are now being done or were being done after the plant was closed down in September of 2005; that is, getting rid of blowdown drums, streamlining processes, improving training, et cetera? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. So today what we are doing is first -the first big issue we had on bringing the -- the site back was that we have a third-party provider of steam and when they shut down the steam system, we weren't able to properly close -- shut the refinery down. The steam system hadn't been down for years, and so we had to make a lot of repairs on the steam system in order to get to a place where we could properly shut the refinery down. And now what we were doing is catching up on all
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and this -- this is a group report, I believe. Q. You also have one that is done month to month? A. Yes. Q. What is the purpose of this monthly and annual summary of HSSE results? A. To monitor our safety performance. Q. Is this how you compare Texas City to the other units? A. Right. Q. Where has Texas City been running as compared to the other units on -- first let me back up. What are looked at with respect to performance when you are comparing the various facilities? A. Well, on safety days away from work case. So people that are injured and miss work. Recordable injury frequency in the US. That's an OSHA standard. Vehicle accidents are looked at. Spills. So loss of containment is tracked. Fatalities. Greenhouse gas. So the CO2 emissions. Those are part of the group tracking. Q. And where was Texas City running as compared to your other facilities in 2004?
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A. So one of the things we reviewed in 2005 was that Texas City had gotten their recordable injury frequency to a point where they were in the top third of all of our refineries on recordable injury. Their spills had been decreasing over that period of time. That was one of the 1000 day goals, which was to reduce spills and there was particular integrity programs put in place to do that. Those -- that data was showing that Texas City was moving in the right direction. MR. COON: I will object to the responsiveness. Q. (BY MR. COON) Maybe I didn't say this very well. Where did Texas City rank in 2004 on these indicators as compared to the other facilities? A. So it depends -MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. -- on which indicator. Q. (BY MR. COON) Just overall was it ranked top, middle or bottom? A. Well, it's difficult to say overall.
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identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) And have you seen that document before? A. Yes. Q. What is that, sir? A. It's a communication to -- I believe this was to group leadership. So the -- the BP executives so they could understand both what our response was around the ISOM explosion and some of the facts around this. So this was intended to be for people kind of not with refining experience. Q. And who was that distributed to? A. I believe it was distributed to the executive leadership of BP. Q. Who would that be? A. Well, it would be upstream business unit leaders, my peers in the various different businesses, including upstream, staff people. Q. Do you know who put that together? A. I am not sure specifically who put it together. Q. Was it done under your supervision, direction or anything else? A. It wasn't under my supervision. I would have -- I am pretty sure I would have seen this
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They were -- they were in the top third in recordable injuries. They were still in the bottom quartile, I would say, on spills, although that had been improving. You know, the vehicle accidents is not a big deal in refining. So that wouldn't be one that we would really compare sites. CO2 emissions on Texas City has -- it was a big site. So it has high CO2 emissions; but on energy efficiency, Texas City was doing well. So they were probably kind of the middle of the pack on energy efficiency. Q. Was there an aggregate score where you looked at all the indicators and then ranked each one of the plants? A. No. Q. Has anything like that been done where you rate and compare each plant to one another on the same criteria? A. Not on lagging management information like that. Q. Mr. Hoffman, I have here what's called "BP Confidential Texas City Refinery Explosion and Fire." It's marked 723. (Exhibit Number 723 marked for
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before it went out. (Exhibit Number 724 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, next I have Exhibit 724. Can you identify this document for me, please? A. All right. So this would have been -- I believe this was a letter to refining and marketing group leadership that -- or a proposed letter. Q. And why are you included in the loop on that communication? A. Because this letter was posed -- was being drafted for John Manzoni and I to send to refining and marketing leadership. Q. Who was drafting that for you? A. Stacey McDaniel. Q. And why would she prepare this document for you to distribute? A. She worked for me. Q. Was this just a draft of the memo that would have been circulated? A. Yes. Q. Do you know if one, in fact, was circulated?
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A. I believe so. Q. Same content as what we have here? A. I don't know if it was exactly the same. Q. Going back to the last document, sir, 723, the group leadership briefing pack, was there any subsequent meeting of the group to explain more of the details or particulars as to what happened? A. So there -- I think there's been a number of meetings. There wasn't a -- like a big central meeting where all the leadership got together. That would be hundreds of people. But what we tried to do with this information pack was give our group leaders information that they could talk to our employees about what had happened and we provided that information at various different times, including after the Mogford report. Q. Was this something generated before or after the interim report? A. I don't know what the date on that is. There's been several different communications like that. Q. Okay. It talks about on page 8 the Texas City actions and response, and I want to talk to you briefly about those.
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A. That BP will fairly compensate the victims and families? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) Yes, sir. A. As far as I know it is. Q. Do you know that there are many people who have not even received an offer of settlement for their injuries to date? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know the status. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you have any role or responsibility in clarifying or assisting in clarifying any statements of fact BP may have made in their public relations campaign to the -- either to the general public or to their own employees? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know what that would be. Q. (BY MR. COON) If, in fact, they had fairly and timely compensated everybody, wouldn't that be an example of one? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't think so. Q. (BY MR. COON) Let's look at -- I want to ask you about a few of these. Actions complete, one of those is
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Is this something that you reviewed for content for accuracy? A. I believe so. Q. If you can, the first thing here says, "Texas City Action and Response." We will go over each one of those briefly. What is the first thing you said you were going to do? A. Clarification of roles and responsibilities. Q. Just right underneath the heading "Texas City Actions and Response," what does -A. Fairly compensate the victims' families as rapidly as possible. Q. It says BP will? A. BP will. Q. And what responsibility, if any, did you have to see that that happened? A. I don't have any responsibility to see that happened. Q. To your knowledge, who was involved in making sure that happened? A. Our legal department. Q. Did that remain an accurate statement of facts?
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"written shift handovers are now required." What was meant by that? A. That meant -- means when a shift change happens, from days to nights, that each operator will have a checklist before they hand over their replacement. Q. Why was that an action undertaken as a result of this explosion? A. Because part of what we saw was we had very sloppy shift handover. That was in Mogford's report as well. Q. Well, why would you have sloppy shift changeover in light of the nature of what you guys do out there, working with hydrocarbons? A. You wouldn't. It's not acceptable. That's why we fixed that. Q. What was BP doing at your level prior to this explosion, from an audit standpoint, to go out and make sure that there was no casual compliance with rules, that they were being expressly and accurately followed? A. So we did -- we already talked about the audit that the segment did specifically to rules compliance. Don had put together an audit team at Texas City to go along and make sure that rules
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were being followed. The just culture structure, which was developed on the chemical side, was being used in order to help people understand how disciplined -- a logical way of going through decisions around discipline. Q. Well, if you understood those problems to exist prior to the explosion, why were they not permeating the staff prior to the explosion? A. Why weren't they permeating the staff? Is that what you said? Q. Yes, sir. I mean, you recognized the problems before the explosion and yet at the time of the explosion, the problems that you recognized were still ongoing? A. Well, that's certainly true. I mean, the -- the focus on the compliance issue and what we had seen was not around shift handover at that time. It was around control of work. So there was a big focus on control of work. In fact, there was a standard that was -- that we were heavily involved with in refining, working with a group to define what we expect on control of work.
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A. We have some at Whiting. Q. Why do you still have some being utilized at Whiting in recognition of the hazards associated with them? A. Because we also have to recognize the hazards of getting rid of them. So we have to go through all the engineering to build new flares. That's in progress. And in recognition of the hazards, we -- like I said, we put new administrative and operating controls around those so we don't have people in the area. Q. You can shut the unit down until the unit had been redesigned and a flare had been installed, couldn't you, sir? A. Yes, we could. Q. The decision was made not to do that, wasn't it? A. So far what we have said is that we can manage the safety aspects of that system through the administrative controls and the -- and the control of the area. These systems have run for many, many years. Q. So if you are going to let your children play with guns, just make sure they know how to use them?
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Q. Okay. Talking about actions in progress, one of those was "BP will eliminate light hydrocarbon blowdown systems." Have you identified where all your blowdown systems were still being utilized in the BP system? A. Yes. Q. Have you eliminated all of them? A. They are not all eliminated yet. Q. Some units are still being operated with light hydrocarbon blowdown systems in use? A. So we have -- we have to go through engineering. We have to design flares. In the meantime, we have taken administrative procedures to be sure that we don't have the risk that we saw, so we don't have people -- people around blowdowns. We have additional controls around those systems. We have gone through and made sure the systems are safe to operate, that they are properly maintained, people understand that they are safety critical systems. We don't have any light hydrocarbon -- heavier than air light hydrocarbon blowdowns running at Texas City now. Q. Are they running at other plants?
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MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you understand the analogy, sir? A. Well, I don't think it applies in this case. The blowdown system is -- is part of a relief system, which is a safety system. It was not recognized for its hazard at Texas City, but certainly we recognize it now and we are taking moves to eliminate the hazards completely. But in the meantime, we have put other safety systems and administrative controls. Q. Mr. Hoffman, I appreciate you saying over and over that you didn't recognize the hazards associated with blowdown drums. So I am going to ask you some questions about that again. You told me earlier you were not aware of the 1992 OSHA citation at Texas City for a vent stack system allowing for a vapor cloud to form posing an explosion hazard? You were not aware of that citation, were you, sir? A. That's correct. I was not. Q. Assuming that that citation was issued, you would agree with me that personnel at that facility were made aware of it?
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MR. DENNY: Objection to form. A. Well, I know if there was an OSHA citation issued then the facility would have had to have addressed and closed the OSHA citation. Q. (BY MR. COON) And, in fact, were you aware that a BP legal team went and negotiated with OSHA on that citation and others and were able to make promises and agreements that resulted in the dismissal of that citation? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. When was that? Q. (BY MR. COON) 1992, sir. A. That would have been Amoco. Q. Yes, sir. A. So I wasn't aware of the citation. So I wouldn't have known how it was closed. Q. And if that citation included express language in it that a way of eliminating or reducing the likelihood of such a vapor cloud in the future would be to run that unit to a flare so that it did not pose the same potential for an explosion, assuming that that statement was in there, it's kind of hard to argue that BP/Amoco was not aware of the potential risk of an explosion associated with an open vent system?
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only aware of puking but had seen it occur personally -MR. DENNY: Objection -Q. (BY MR. COON) -- in his life experiences in refineries? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No, I wasn't aware of that. Q. (BY MR. COON) Are you aware of the concept of liquid overfills emanating from blowdown drums or from flare towers? A. Yes. Q. Have you ever seen a circumstance where there was a liquid overfill of a blowdown drum or a flare resulting in liquids emanating from the top of the tower or vent? A. I have seen a flare that had liquids coming out of it. Q. Where was this at? A. At Cherry Point. Q. What caused a liquid overfill in that particular flare? A. There was pressure from a diesel unit that carried over liquid. This was in the Eighties. I don't remember the specifics of it. Q. Did it cause a fire?
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MR. DENNY: Objection to form. A. Well -- so what I know about OSHA citations generally is that they need to be addressed and agreed with OSHA. So I don't know what specifically happened with that citation or what it said. Q. (BY MR. COON) Well -- and you are aware of what's called puking, are you not, as it relates to the refining industry? A. Puking? Q. Yes, sir. Have you ever heard of the term "puking" used? A. No. Q. You have never heard of puking being referred to instances in which liquids come out through a blowdown drum or from a flare, flare stack? A. I don't think I have heard that term. Q. Do you know that a number of people that worked out at Texas City at the time of the explosion, or in years prior, were aware of puking and what it was? A. No. Q. Do you know that Mr. Hale, who was the business unit leader out at Texas City, was not
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A. It -- there was a -- well, it was at the flare. So it was on fire. The liquid was on fire. Q. Okay. Well, you have a flare, which is kind of like a pilot at the top of the flare stack, right? A. Yeah. Q. And any vapors that come out of the unit as a result of overpressurization can normally safely go off to this flare, usually in a flare yard, and burn off as it's lit by the pilot at the top of the flare, right? A. Yes. Q. That reduces the potential for a vapor cloud forming at ground level and also reduces the potential for toxins to be released into the atmosphere, does it not? A. Yes, it does. Q. So you get two benefits. One is a safety benefit, and one is an environmental benefit. A. Yes. Q. And you were aware that not only could you get vapors through overpressurization in systems coming out through the top of a tower, that you could also have circumstances where you had such an overpressurization or overfill that the
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liquids came in behind the vapors and came out through the top of the blowdown drum or from the top of the tower as well? A. I have seen that with a flare. Q. And what happened when it came through a flare system was that the pilot at the top of the tower lit the vapors and the liquid causing a fire? A. Yes. Q. And with vapors, those flames tend to stay up somewhere near the top of the tower, do they not? A. With vapors? Q. Yes, sir. A. Yes. Q. And so for people that know anything about refineries or live in areas around refineries, they have occasionally seen these large amounts of flames coming out from the top of these towers and that's when vapors are being run through the system and burned off? A. From the top of the flares -Q. Yes, sir. A. -- yes. Q. And these pilots allow for a controlled burn of the excess vapors?
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the ISOM was built where an overfill of liquids would drop back into the unit itself? A. Into the yard. Q. Yes, sir. A. Yeah. It wasn't into the unit. It's outside the unit. Q. Barely outside the unit. It was not in an area away from people and away from equipment, was it? A. Well, clearly. MR. COON: We will take a break here. THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Okay. We are going off the video record. The time is 4:25. This is the end of Videotape 5. (Recess taken.) THE VIDEOGRAPHER: All right. We are back on the video record. The time is 4:39. This is the beginning of Videotape 6. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, we were talking about the circumstances of a flare overfilling and igniting causing flames to come back down to the ground and I take it based on your personal observations of that event and hearing that occurring in other circumstances, you would
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A. Yes. Q. And then the problem that you have is when the vapors come out and are burning and then there is a liquid overfill running in behind it, catching fire and dropping back to the ground? A. Yes. Q. Because liquids are heavier than the air and they all tend to, once ignited, fall back to the ground, right? A. Yes. Q. And that's something that you have personally observed in your years working in the refineries? A. Yes. Q. And it's something that you have heard has happened over the course of the years at refineries? A. Yes. Q. And in light of that, that's one of the primary reasons that flare yards are built so that these flames that come out from liquid overfills burn in areas away from the units and away from personnel? A. Yes. Q. And in this case, this particular unit at
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not allow trailers to be located at the base of a flare, would you, sir? A. No. Q. That's because of an acknowledged risk of what you personally observed, which is liquid overfills through a tower catching on fire and dropping to the ground level? A. Yes. Q. And that's why you have flare yards so that if you do have an overfill like this and liquids ignite, that they fall to the ground away from personnel and equipment? A. Yes. Q. An I think I asked you this this morning, but were you aware of a liquid overfill that occurred at a unit near the ISOM in October of 2004, one that did not catch on fire? A. I don't believe so. Do you know which unit it was? Q. I want to say the UU4, but I am not sure. I would have to go back and check. Maybe your counsel here will recall what it was, where Mr. Coley worked where that worked? MR. FERNELIUS: It was -MR. COON: Was it the CAT cracker?
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MR. FERNELIUS: It was not the UU4, that I recall. MR. COON: Do you have a recollection of what it was? MR. FERNELIUS: I can't -- I can't -- you're testing me, Brent. Q. (BY MR. COON) Suffice it to say, you have not been provided with the history of prior liquid overfills emanating from other vent stacks or flares at the BP -A. No. Q. -- Texas City facility? A. No, I didn't. (Exhibit Number 725 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, we next have 725. This looks like a follow-up to the one marked 724. Is this a copy of the actual notice to employees that went out by you and Mr. Manzoni? A. Unless it got changed again. So this is a copy that was done prior to John Manzoni's review. Q. Okay. Do you have a recollection that
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Q. Again, something he could have delegated out to you and others but assumed personal responsibility for? A. Yeah, we worked on it together. Q. Now, there was another document. This one I am going to mark 726. (Exhibit Number 726 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) There was a statement that was given by Mr. Pillari in May of 2005, which appeared to be a press statement following up with the interim report. Do you recall getting a draft of that statement? MR. FERNELIUS: Brent, is that something previously marked as another exhibit number or -MR. COON: The draft is not. MR. FERNELIUS: Okay. MR. COON: The actual statement is. MR. FERNELIUS: All right. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you recall ever -A. Yes. Q. -- seeing the draft of Mr. Pillari's
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either that letter or something similar went out to the employees? A. Yeah, we sent something out. Q. Did you and Mr. Manzoni undertake a responsibility to try to keep the employees of BP informed as to what had transpired at Texas City? A. Yes. Q. That was something Mr. Manzoni could have dedicated to -- delegated to you and others, isn't it? A. Yes. Q. But he took some degree of personal responsibility for making sure that that happened and put his name on a number of the documents that went out? A. So if it was just -- had just been to refining, then it would have been me; but because he -- it was expanded to refining and marketing employees, then John was appropriate to send himself. Q. And did he retain some level of responsibility for communicating to personnel at BP what was developing in the weeks and months after the explosion, keeping them informed? A. Yes.
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statement to read to the press and public? A. Yes. Q. Did you review it for content? A. I don't believe that I had input into what this was. I think if there was something completely wrong with it, I could have done something. Q. Is -- was there anything you recall seeing in what Mr. Pillari read to the public on that date that was -A. With what I -Q. -- inconsistent with your personal knowledge? A. No. Q. Was that statement something that was also reviewed by Mr. Manzoni prior to its release to the public? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Yeah. I am sure that Mr. Manzoni would have -- would have reviewed it as well. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you know if Mr. Manzoni was requested to have any of these press statements or public statements, such as the one you have in your hand, reviewed prior to them being read to or distributed to the public?
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A. Could you just repeat that? 1 Q. Yes, sir. 2 Did Mr. Manzoni have a 3 responsibility for reporting to any of his 4 superiors the content of any of these press 5 statements or press releases that were going to the 6 public? 7 MR. DENNY: Objection, form. 8 A. I don't know what he did as far as 9 reporting to his superiors on this. 10 He did review this. John Manzoni 11 reviewed this. 12 Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you recall him having 13 any comment on what Mr. Pillari was to read to the 14 public on May 17? 15 A. I don't recall. 16 Q. Did you have a conversation with him 17 regarding that particular press statement? "Him" 18 being Mr. Manzoni. 19 A. I don't remember having a particular 20 conversation about this. 21 The conversations that we had were 22 around how we were communicating and who needed to 23 be informed prior to the release of the -- of the 24 report. So we wanted to let the contracted 25
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Fluor and Jacobs, did they express any criticism of BP associated to the explosion? A. No. It was -- it was the opposite, that they were very complimentary of the way it had been handled. Investigation, communication, their involvement, they were complimentary of that. Q. You are saying that the management people at Jacobs and Fluor were complementary of BP regarding how they were handling this tragic event? A. After the incident, yes. Q. Were there ever any questions of the contract management, specifically Jacobs and Fluor, about the trailer siting? A. Were there questions about that? Q. Yes, sir. A. They didn't ask me specific questions around that, but that was clearly in the Mogford report as an issue. Q. Did the management people at Fluor and Jacobs ever express any degree of anger at BP for allowing those trailers to have been sited there or failure to warn -A. Not to me. Q. -- their management teams that those trailers were in harm -- potential harm's way with
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companies with people involved know, CSB know; and so each of us had accountability for that communication. Q. Each of us being whom? A. Well, it was distributed. So Mogford talked to the CSB. Buck McElroy was with Fluor. So I had contacted Buck to give him a copy of the interim report and the press release so he would know what was coming. Q. Okay. Did you keep the lines of communication open with the contractors that BP worked with? A. Yes. Q. Who all did you communicate with other than the representative at Fluor? A. Jacobs. Q. Who was your contact at Jacobs? A. I can't think of his name right now, but the vice president. Q. Was it Mr. Norfleet? A. Pardon me? Q. Mr. Norfleet? A. No. It would be a higher level than that. I will think of it. Q. In your talks with the representatives of
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the startup of the ISOM unit? A. They didn't express that to me. Q. Do you know if that -- any level of anger was expressed by the contractors to any of the personnel at BP? A. I think that they would be angry. I mean, that would be something that I would expect. I was angry. Q. And what, in particular, were you angry about? A. Just that the incident happened. You know, I have worked my whole career to try and prevent this kind of stuff and all the things that we had going on in Texas City to try and improve and we still had this, you know, horrible incident. It was just -- it's just -- it was a terrible thing. Angry that the trailer siting was there, angry that the procedures weren't followed. It's just -- I don't know. Just general anger that this many people would have been affected by this. Q. Have you ever reflected on the failure to determine who was responsible for allowing those trailers to be occupied there and go back and commit to another investigation to specifically
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attempt to identify who was responsible for allowing that to have happened? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. So my -- what I then focused on was how we prevent this from happening again, which is how do we make sure that people understand who is accountable for the trailer siting, the MOC, to eliminate trailers within blast zones, improve the relief systems. I am not going back and trying to figure out muddled accountabilities, who actually did that. Q. (BY MR. COON) Well, I thought one of the problems with the safety culture that was identified at Texas City was, in particular, a lack of accountability for the personnel that worked there; and that was a problem that you were having before the explosion. A. Yes. Q. And that part of the effort to fix that problem was to specifically initiate a practice of calling out people who were responsible for things and calling them out when they exercised casual compliance as opposed to following rules with particularity and holding those individuals
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would be utilities, and then you have maintenance. Q. So are you saying that after an intensive investigation by BP and Mr. Mogford, no one could ever determine who in management was responsible for the area where they were locating trailers on their facility? A. So we know that they went through a procedure to place the trailers. They didn't adequately understand the risk of the blowdowns, but out of the Mogford report and that investigation, there wasn't kind of a clear line of accountability on that as I understand it. Q. Well, do you know who was called in to initially fill out the management of change form? A. No. Q. Did you know it was a man named Kyle Seele? A. I don't know. Q. Did you know that guy didn't even work in the West Plant, that he was called over to the East Plant just to get the ball rolling on the management of change for the trailers? A. Was he a maintenance person? Q. I don't believe that he was, sir. I know that he testified that he was not responsible for
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accountable and disciplining those individuals when appropriate. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) Isn't that something that was undertaken before the explosion as a method of fixing the safety culture problem? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Holding people accountable, yes. Q. (BY MR. COON) And even though that was something that you recognized was a problem before the explosion, after the explosion and after 15 people lost their lives, BP did not go back out and try to identify the person in management responsible for allowing those trailers to be occupied, did they? A. I think John Mogford, in his report, did go through that, who was -- was it maintenance, was it the site; and one of the issues with that was that nobody had area accountability. Q. Doesn't every plant have someone in charge of an area for accountability? A. It should be that way, but you still have -- you have an area that's owned by operation. You have in between areas that -- which would be connected by lines, you know, a flare area, which
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any activities on the West Plant and never, frankly, understood why he was asked to provide an MOC on these trailers. MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) Have you seen his testimony? A. No. Q. Do you have any reason to understand why it would be that someone inexperienced with trailer siting would be brought in on an MOC on trailers on the side of the plant he never even worked in? A. No, I don't. Q. That would not be a good practice, generally speaking, would it, sir? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't think it would be a good practice. I don't know what his background or expertise was, but we know that the MOC that was done was inadequate. Q. (BY MR. COON) Did you review drafts of the fatal report? A. Of which report? Q. Of the fatal report, the Mogford report. A. The Mogford report? No.
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Q. Are you aware there were many drafts of that report before the final report came out? A. I was aware that they spent a lot of time writing the report. Q. Did you have anything to do with the review or revisions to that report? A. No. Q. Do you know that in one of the drafts of the report it specifically identified persons in management with knowledge of the trailers being located there without proper commissioning? A. No. Q. Do you know a man named Marty Risinger? A. No. Q. Do you know why the report would have taken out the identity of persons in management who may have been knowledgeable about the trailer siting issues? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I wasn't involved in any aspects of writing the report. Q. (BY MR. COON) I will ask you the question again. Do you know any reason why the names of the persons in management who were
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Q. Were you asked to be kept in the loop regarding any public comments from the radio, TV or others regarding the explosion? A. No. I didn't need to be asked. There is a news service that BP runs that comes out every day that pulls out articles in all aspects of our business. Luc wouldn't have anything to do with that. He's -- he's running what's called strategic accounts. So he runs executives that manage big accounts for BP. Q. I am sorry. Could you elaborate on that, please, sir? A. Luc is not in public relations or anything else. What he does is he -- we have a key account called Ford. So he runs the executives that service the Ford account or service minding. You know, he is a business guy. He is running a business. Q. Does he not work for BP? A. Yeah, he does; but he is not public affairs or anything. Q. What do you mean he services accounts? A. He runs the organization called strategic
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identified as knowledgeable regarding the trailer siting issues would have been removed -A. No. Q. -- from the final report? (Exhibit Number 727 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, I am going to show you next Exhibit 727. It's an e-mail to you from a Luc Bardin. Who is Luck Bardin? A. Luc Bardin. Q. Luc Bardin, who is that? A. He is the head of strategic accounts. He was one -- he was one of my peers as a direct report to John Manzoni. Q. Do you recall receiving that e-mail and the attachments dated April 27, 2005? A. Yes. Q. Do you know where the story came from? A. I have a couple of these. I guess I don't know where this came from, from external. Q. Why was this sent to you, if you know? A. Why did Luc send it to me? Q. Yes, sir. A. Because he didn't know if I had seen this.
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accounts. So there are some businesses that are large enough that we have an account executive that represents them to deliver all the different products of BP. So it might be lubes and gasoline and, you know -- so he runs that. It's -- so we have a lubricants business, which -- like Castrol, which would be in the store; but what Luc does is go to, like Ford, and say, "We would like you to use our products for first fill." And that's the activity that he wants, kind of high-level brand management. (Exhibit Number 728 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. Next I have 728. This one is to you from Mr. Manzoni dated May 15. What is this one about and why was it sent to you? A. This was a list of questions that was generated. I think this was as part of the questions that were thought of as part of the release of a preliminary Mogford report. Q. And where did those questions and proposed responses come from? A. The questions came from -- I think it was primarily public relations and communications.
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Q. Was some sort of think tank established to address the types of questions and answers that could be asked and the type of answers to provide in response to those questions for the media? A. Yeah. There was a group of people that were -- that were working on this, very similar to what we would do with an earnings announcement and things like that. Q. Who do you recall being involved in this strategy session or think tank or whatever you call it? A. Well, the public relations people. You know, I know that Ross Pillari would have seen this; Mogford; I looked at it. Q. Were the business unit leaders at the various facilities asked to weigh in on the questions that could be asked in the press statement in May and the types of answers that could or should be given? A. No, I don't believe any of the business unit leaders were in this. Q. Was there any discussion as to how to mitigate adverse or hostile questions from the press regarding what had happened out there in March?
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A. (Examines document.) Q. It looked to me to be the solicitation of input from the BULs regarding the press statement. Can you tell one way or the other if that is what the case is? A. This isn't about the press statement. This is about -- I think this is about additional information that we might want to give the refinery managers, not -- not about a press statement. Certainly Colin Reid wouldn't have had anything to do with the press statement. So this would be a response more to the materials that we were putting together to allow leadership to communicate. Q. Well, what was the -- if you look at the grid that is attached to that, it looks like it's all -- I think that next page, sir. A. Yeah. Q. Who put together that information? A. I -- well, it looks like Colin Reid put that together. Q. Do you know why he would have prepared those additional lines of questions or thought? A. I believe he would have put it together in order to try and help the business unit leaders
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A. It was very much making sure that we got the facts right. It wasn't to participate in any discussion about mitigating. Q. Was there any discussion prior to the press announcement of May 17 as to how to address any inquiries as to why people higher up in management were not a part of the disciplinary procedures? A. I wasn't part of any discussion about that. (Exhibit Number 729 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) Let me show you the next one. This one is from Linda Ritchie. Who is she? A. Linda Ritchie is my executive assistant. Q. This was sent to -- it looks like it was forwarded to you from her, but it came from originally Colin Reid at Whiting. Who is Mr. Reid? A. He was the operations manager at that time. Q. Let me show you the e-mail and the attached, what I call, BUL Q&As; and that way you can enlighten us as to what that is.
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discuss the incident in the report with their organizations. Q. Is that something that anyone asked him to do or did he just undertake a decision to just do that on his own? A. I don't think -- I mean, I don't remember asking him to do this. I mean, what we did do is send the information to our business unit leaders so that they could communicate with our employees. So he may have just taken it on himself to do that or it could be that my executive assistant asked him to do it. Q. Well, he put one of these in a grid under area being organization, leadership, supervision and culture; and he listed some questions that could be asked. And then he put in additional context behind the questions. And the questions he was asking, for instance, "What's going to happen with TXC" -that's Texas City, right? A. Yeah. Q. (Continuing) -- "site management (Don Parus)?" Do you know what he was inquiring
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of there? A. I think that -- he was saying that would be -- a natural question is: What's going to happen to Don Parus? It wouldn't be something that we would be communicating with the sites. Q. When we get into the next section here, when it talks about disciplinary, legal and external authority, one of the questions here, it talks about "Could the discipline be seen to unfairly rest on one section of the working population?" Do you know what he is talking about there? A. It's talking about, you know, the issue -- I assume that he's talking about how far up the chain did that discipline go. Q. And, in fact, I highlighted an area that he thought would entail follow-up there. Could you read that one for me, please, sir? A. "Will it be that operators are disciplined and no consequence for management?" Q. Why would he have that type of comment? MR. DENNY: Objection, form.
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up the food chain of responsibility was being held out for any level of responsibility as a result of an explosion like this? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Well, we don't discuss discipline across our system generally. Q. (BY MR. COON) Well, discipline was discussed within the Mogford report itself because it faulted six individuals specifically, didn't it? A. I didn't -Q. And those personnel were fired? A. There were personnel fired, but that was a result of the investigation that was done around disciplinary action. Q. But it paralleled the findings in the Mogford report that indicated that there was a compromise of the system as a result of bad judgment on the part of six persons in the ISOM unit, correct? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Would you restate that, sir? Q. (BY MR. COON) Yes, sir. The same people that were disciplined by Ms. Lucas in the disciplinary action are the same people that were charged with making
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A. Well, what he was doing is trying to anticipate questions that he thought might be asked. Q. (BY MR. COON) Would it be reasonable to anticipate those kind of questions if it's announced that the causes of the explosion have been identified; and as a result, six low-level employees had been terminated and no disciplinary actions initiated against anyone else? A. So the answer to that question was operators and supervision. Q. And you are aware that Mr. Reid was aware by that date that the report was going to fault low-level employees -MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) -- meaning front line leaders and hourly people? A. I don't know what he was aware of. Q. Well, this is something that is dated several days after the date of the interim Mogford report, isn't it? A. I can't testify to what he -- whether he read the report or not. Q. Would it be reasonable under the circumstances for people to ask why no one higher
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bad judgments in the ISOM unit the day of the explosion? A. So I know that Kathleen used the Mogford report as part of her investigation into that, to decide the disciplinary actions. Q. And the question that some people had since then is: Why was no one else higher up in the organization held at least partially accountable publicly for what happened on March 23rd? A. Okay. Q. And your answer would be what? A. That -MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. That I understand that people have asked that question. Q. (BY MR. COON) And for the people that would ask that question, in light of your position here, Mr. Hoffman, what would you tell them? A. Well, I would say that we don't discuss disciplinary action higher up the chain. Q. Why do you discuss discipline at the lower levels in the chain? A. We don't. Q. What disciplinary action was taken
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against anyone else up the food chain? A. So consideration of this in bonuses that we had talked about already was taken. Q. Okay. Who, in particular, was sanctioned or disciplined in any manner, any individual, other than the six people that were working on the ISOM unit that day? A. So the scope of what Kathleen did around discipline, I don't -- I don't know what else, but it wasn't just -- it wasn't just firing people. There were also letters in files, et cetera. Q. Okay. Who got a letter in their file? A. You know, I don't remember who it is. Q. Can you sit here today and tell us anybody in management that was held responsible and punished in any regard as a result of what happened on March 23rd? A. It depends on what you mean by "punished." Q. Well, any individual, any particular individual that was punished in any manner, whether it was demotion, termination, suspension, transfer? A. So compensation reduction? I mean, so the incident was -affected Kathleen's, Pat Gower's.
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A. It goes back -Q. -- position -A. -- to -- I'm sorry. Q. -- at the time immediately prior to the explosion that was potentially years in the making? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Could you repeat that, please? Q. Yes, sir. Is it part of a just culture to punish someone financially for having just been transferred to a new jobsite where the problems associated with an explosion were attributed to many years in the making? A. So that was a statement. What was the question? Q. Yes. Is that part of a just culture? A. No, it's not just culture. It's part of the performance contracts. So safety is a component of the performance contract. Q. Okay. So this was a contractual matter where she is going to be subject to a specific amount of reduction in pay based on fatalities that occur while she is on that jobsite? A. Yes.
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Q. Did it just apply equally to everybody that was under VPP? A. No, those are separate. Q. Okay. So you are saying that from a compensation standpoint, after the explosion, Ms. Lucas was financially punished? A. Her -- her bonus was reduced. Q. Hers specifically? A. So the ones that I am involved in are group leadership that report through my chain of command. So Kathleen and Pat Gower both do. Q. Okay. What did Ms. Lucas do wrong that you felt it was appropriate to punish her financially? A. She had fatalities. Q. What did she do to contribute to those fatalities? I thought you said she had just gotten to that jobsite. A. So we didn't make a -- we didn't say that, "You did something wrong." We said that, "We are not going to give you a full compensation when you have had an incident on your site like this." Q. Okay. Does that go back to a just culture, punishing somebody financially for just happening to be transferred to the --
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Q. This was not something that was specifically and separately identified as a penal factor applying to Ms. Lucas? A. That's right. That's -- we generally do that. Q. Well, other than that set of circumstances, was anyone specifically isolated and identified to apply any type of financial penalty or other type of penalty to? A. Not that I know of. Q. Did she get a letter in her file? A. No. Q. Why not? A. Because we didn't find that she had done anything wrong. Q. Okay. Well, I just want to clarify that. Any financial penalties she had wasn't even due to some attribution of fault or responsibility. It was just part of the contract when she came to work there. A. It's the safety components of the contract. Q. And so sitting here, is there anyone that you can name that was actually punished in some manner by a termination, transfer, demotion?
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A. Other than the ones that you have already discussed? Q. Other than what you just mentioned? A. No. Q. Who came up with these questions on Exhibit 728? A. I think this was the communications and public relations people that came up with the questions, but I am not sure where they all were generated from. Q. Do you know who they talked to to get the ideas as to the types of questions that could be asked of the public? A. No. Q. Do you know if they consulted with anyone in the management field regarding the type of messages to send in response to the questions? A. You mean the answers to the questions? Q. Well, it doesn't say key questions, key answers. It just says, "Here's the questions and here's the messages to give." And that brings up -- let me just ask it this way. Why, under this public relations team scenario, is there not a direct answer to the question? Why is it instead that a message is
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absence pending further investigations? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I wasn't part of why that was said one way or the other. Q. (BY MR. COON) Wouldn't that have been a more accurate statement of the facts? A. I don't know Mr. Parus' duties. Q. Well, if, in fact, he had no duties, wouldn't that have been a more accurate statement of the facts? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I think he is available to support the investigation and other activities around this. That's still true. Q. (BY MR. COON) But he has not been called upon to provide any full-time support to anything in a year and a half, has he, sir? A. Well, as I talked earlier, when he reported to Pat Gower, he was working on projects for Pat. Q. Why has BP not gone back and revised or clarified its position with respect to the business unit leader that, in fact, he has had no full-time responsibilities that he has assumed since his removal as the BUL at Texas City?
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given in response to the question? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you recall any conversations with respect to how to advise the public that Mr. Parus was being relieved of his duties and yet, that it was not to be perceived as something that was disciplinary measures? A. Well, I remember the statement that was made about Parus. Q. That was that he was going to assume the full-time responsibility for assisting in the investigation? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I am not sure that's the exact statement, but for assisting where needed. Q. (BY MR. COON) Okay. The messages that were to be given, which is what Mr. Pillari said, was that Mr. Parus was going to be relieved of his normal duties in order to provide full-time support to the ongoing efforts required to respond to the incident. A. Okay. Q. Why was it, instead, not said that Mr. Parus was just going to be put on leave of
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MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know. Q. (BY MR. COON) Do you feel it's not important to tell the public what has really happened to Mr. Parus in the last year and a half? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. What's important is for the public to know that we are focused on improving Texas City. Q. (BY MR. COON) Why has BP not advised the public that there's another ongoing investigation into executives at BP emanating from the explosion of March 23rd, 2005? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I don't know. Q. (BY MR. COON) Is it concerned about reputational damage if the general public had a better understanding as to the extent of the investigation into the executives at BP regarding their responsibilities for the explosion of March 23, 2005? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. We don't publicize investigations generally. Q. (BY MR. COON) BP's press relations and persons who spoke publicly about this matter over
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the last year have used the word "transparent" several times. Are you familiar with that? A. Yes. Q. What is your understanding as to what is meant by BP's desire to be transparent with the public and with the investigative authorities regarding what happened on March 23rd? A. That, you know, we did an incident investigation. It was conducted independently. That the full results of the investigation were published. When root cause analysis was done, that was published. We gave that to the agencies as well. We are committed to not only improving us, but letting the industry understand what we have learned about this as well. Q. Did you know that a large portion of the discovery that has been initiated in the private litigation has been done under the cloak of confidentiality and protective orders? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No. Q. (BY MR. COON) Would you agree that conducting the private litigation under the cloak
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identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, I am going to show you next exhibit, 730. This is to you from Marcus Richards. Who is Mr. Richards? A. I am not sure what -- what his role is, actually, in this. Q. Who is he? A. He's a BP employee. I believe he was in -- at St. James. Q. And what is the attachment about, first of all? A. It's about the status of the injured workers, disciplined individuals, external response to disciplinary actions, initial reaction to Colin Maclean, assessment of morale at Texas City. Q. Did he generate this document? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I can't tell from that. Q. (BY MR. COON) It says here, "Texas City update ICC telephone call." Do you know what that's about? "North America meeting." A. Let me see it again, please. Q. (Tenders document.)
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of confidentiality and privilege reflects a lack of transparency? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I believe that the report that was written was very transparent and we have gotten a lot of positive comments about our transparency in this incident. Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, would you recommend the release of all the documentation generated in the private litigation to provide a better picture of what BP knew and what BP was doing before, during and after the explosion of March 23rd, 2005? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. I wouldn't recommend anything. That's not my accountability. Q. (BY MR. COON) Well, to the extent that BP is doing anything with any of the investigations, whether they be private or under state or federal authority, you would agree that if they are restricting release of documentation, they are being less than transparent? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. No, I wouldn't agree with that. (Exhibit Number 730 marked for
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A. No, I don't. Q. Is there some conference call that you were involved in that is reflective of the document here? A. I wouldn't have been involved in this conference call. This is a forward to me. It's a document that was generated and then forwarded to me. Q. Did you get any feedback from the union in Texas City regarding their comments or opinions regarding the disciplinary procedures and actions undertaken with respect to the hourly personnel? A. I knew that they grouped -- grouped those disciplinary actions. Q. Do you recall if there was any criticism from the union in Texas City with respect to a failure of BP management to accept a level of responsibility higher up the management food chain? A. I saw that comment in the -- in the news from the steelworkers. Q. And what were your thoughts on that? A. That's kind of what I would expect. The union's role really is -- would be to grieve that. I would expect that they would grieve it. Q. What were your thoughts with respect to
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their concerns that there was no level of disciplinary action taken publicly against any of the persons higher up the chain of command? A. We didn't -- we didn't publicize disciplinary action as part of this. Q. Did you communicate to anything -- or did you have anything communicated to the representatives of the hourly workforce with respect to any disciplinary action that was considered or undertaken against persons higher up the chain of command? A. We don't publicize disciplinary action. (Exhibit Number 731 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) I have next what's marked 731. What is this document, sir? It has got your name on it. A. I don't know where that document was generated. Q. Do you know why it has your name on the bottom there as one of the three individuals and it says, "Mike Hoffman, we are committed"? Do you know what that's about? A. Well, I can read what it says. It's -- I
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remember if Mogford was. I think he was. I think we were all there. Q. Do you recall meeting with anyone at BP who explained to you the areas that you should talk about publicly regarding BP's position on commitment? A. I didn't have a public role in this. Q. Do you have any understanding as to why this document reflects your responsibility to be -regarding the theme of "We are committed" and the bullet points that you were to elaborate on with respect to the commitment of BP? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. A. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't -- I didn't have a public role. Ross Pillari was the spokesman. Q. (BY MR. COON) Is this the first time you have seen this document? A. I don't remember seeing it before. Q. Were you receiving any briefing by public relations departments, internal or external, regarding anything you might would say publicly regarding the investigation? A. My role wasn't to -- to say things publicly.
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think this is messages from these different levels -Q. Well -A. -- is what the document is, but I don't know where it was prepared. Q. Okay. Well, we don't have our Elmo here to show these to the jury as we are walking through it, but there's basically three persons identified here. Mr. Pillari, Mr. Mogford and yourself, correct? A. Yes. Q. In looking at that, can you tell whether or not this was something that set out the themes to be related to the public when the Mogford report went to the public mid May? A. Is there a date on this? Q. I didn't see a date. That's why I was asking. A. Yeah. So I can't tell. I don't recognize the document. Q. Were all three of you available in Texas City on May 17 or so when Mr. Pillari made the public statements regarding the Mogford report? A. I was in Texas City then. I don't
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Q. Were you getting any instruction from the public relations people irrespective of what you understood your role to be? A. No, I didn't get instruction from public relations. (Exhibit Number 732 marked for identification.) Q. (BY MR. COON) Mr. Hoffman, I want to show you next what's marked as Exhibit 732. Can you tell me what this document is about, please, sir? A. (Examines document.) Q. Yes, sir. What's that e-mail about? A. This is about the Texas City projections of their spending. Q. Is that the draft of the budget for Mr. Maclean for 2006? A. Yeah, I think so. Q. And he basically provided a guesstimate as to what he thought his budgetary needs for 2006 were and then you provided comment on it? A. Yes. Q. And after Mr. Maclean, as the new business unit leader at Texas City -- let's see.
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This would have been what? About a month after he came out there? It's dated June 17. So he would have been there about a month? A. Yes. Q. And one of the things, I take it, he was asked to do early on was to provide you with some insight as to potential budget projections for 2006? A. I think so, yeah. Q. And this e-mail seems to document the fact that he did so? A. He boiled up a bunch of activity numbers, yes. Q. And after he provided you with these -what he felt were the budgetary needs for 2006, you responded back to him and copied Mr. Gower and Mr. Pitzer? A. Yes. Q. Who is Mr. Pitzer? A. He is the commercial director for refining. Q. You understood his projections included a significant increase in the budgetary expenditures -- expenditures for 2006?
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with, was not doable. It wasn't -- you could not have the site do that much. So we had to stop activities, which meant shutting down units, which we did, in order to get a program that the site could execute. So at that time what we agreed was we were going to shut down and leave down one of the fluid units. We were going to shut down the alkylation unit, and we were going to shut down the acid plant because we were spending lots of money on units that were marginal at best in order to reduce activity so the site could be successful and focusing on the efforts it needed to. Q. Did you believe Mr. Maclean to be competent when he was appointed to replace Mr. Parus -A. Yes. Q. -- in 2006 or 2005? A. Yes. Q. Do you still believe him to be competent -A. Yes. Q. -- as a business unit leader at a large refinery for BP? A. Yes.
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A. Yes. Q. And your response to what he said was the appropriate budget for 2006 -- if I could have you read that quote, please, sir. I have highlighted it for you. This is what you sent back to Mr. Maclean, is it not? A. (Reading) This is not just disappointing. It is not acceptable. You must find stuff to stop spending more and not -- spending is -- more is not being more focused on limiting discretionary activities. It is just adding on. If you think about activity, you are almost 200 million over in budget and cost, which is simply not doable efficiently. You must prioritize and stop stuff. I plan on coming to Texas City on the 28th, and I will review the priorities. Q. And did you come out and re-review those priorities for Mr. Maclean? A. I believe so, with Mr. Gower. Q. Did you and Mr. Gower subsequently reduce Mr. Maclean's budgetary request for 2006? A. So this was at -- what we were trying to do was reduce activity. The activity level that was included in this roll-up, which Colin agreed
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Q. Has he submitted his budget recommendations for 2007? A. Not yet. Q. When is that due? A. It will be probably November when it will be finalized. Q. That's kind of late in the year, isn't it? A. Well, Texas City -- I mean, this was issued then. It's the scope of the activity that we are trying to do at Texas City. We need to plan it and manage it. So we are trying to help Texas City understand how they can manage the scope of activity. It's not actually a cost issue. It's an activity issue. Q. Mr. Hoffman, has BP had problems with any other refinery like it has had with Texas City over the last five years? MR. DENNY: Objection, form. Q. (BY MR. COON) Of the nature and magnitude? A. No. Q. Has it had the same level of cultural problems, safety culture problems at any other
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facility comparing to what they had demonstrated at Texas City? A. Not at this level. Q. Have you had a history of fatalities at any other facility anywhere near akin to what you have had at Texas City over the last two or three decades? A. We don't have a facility the size of Texas City. So, no. Q. Are you aware statistically of any refinery owned by BP or your competitors that has a history of fatalities anywhere near akin to what you see at Texas City? A. I haven't seen those kind of statistics; but as I testified, the recordable incident frequency in 2005 and this year as well is industry leading. It's very, very good. Q. It's kind of hard to have a lot of people hurt when the plant is shut down, isn't it? A. No. It's just the opposite of that because there is a huge amount of maintenance activity going on. This is the issue there, is how do we safely manage all of the activity going on, rebuilding the steam system, doing maintenance on units, building flares.
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A. Q. A. Q. it, sir? A.
Yes. People come first? Yes -Profitability comes behind those, doesn't
-- first. Profitability is an outcome of running well. If you can't run safely, if you can't maintain your people, then you will not be profitable. Q. Have you understood the questions I have asked you, sir? A. Yes. Q. We have been here a long time today. Is there anything in reflection you think you need to clarify or modify as a result of what we have discussed? A. The only thing that I did remember is Don Parus was working on Solomon benchmarking for Pat Gower when he worked for Pat. Q. Have you seen any written product from Mr. Parus in that regard? A. I have seen the Solomon benchmarking work from the US, and as I said, he helped prepare that. Q. Any plans to have Mr. Parus return to
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So it's way more people and more activity than we normally have. Q. Are you keeping all the trailers out of the gate now? A. Yes. Q. Are you getting rid of all the blowdown drums now? A. Yes. Heavier than air light -- none of the heavier than air light hydrocarbon blowdowns are operating today. Q. Are you making a concerted effort to provide a better training program for your personnel now? A. Well, as I testified, we rented -- leased the Kmart building and built a dedicated training program. Q. Are you affecting better lines of communication with your personnel now? A. Yes. We hired a full-time communications person within Texas City to make sure that we communicate in a professional way to all of our employees about what the agenda is, what the vision is, how important safety is, what we expect of them as far as pointing out issues. Q. Would you agree that safety comes first?
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work? A. Not in refining. MR. COON: No further questions. MR. DENNY: Thank you, Mr. Hoffman. We will reserve our questions. THE VIDEOGRAPHER: All right. We are going off the record. The time is 5:37. The deposition of Mr. Hoffman is complete. (Deposition concluded.)
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1 2 3 CAUSE NO. 05CV0337 MIGUEL ARENAZA, ELIZABETH ) IN THE DISTRICT COURT RAMON, DAVID G. CROW and ) JUANITA G. CROW, et al. ) ) VS. ) 212TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT ) BP PRODUCTS NORTH AMERICA ) INC., B.P. CORPORATION ) NORTH AMERICA INC., DON ) PARUS, AND JE MERIT ) CONSTRUCTORS, INC. ) GALVESTON COUNTY, TEXAS CAUSE NO. 05CV0337-A IN RE: BP AMOCO EXPLOSION ) IN THE DISTRICT COURT MARCH 23, 2005 ) COORDINATED DISCOVERY ) 212TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT PROCEEDINGS ) ) GALVESTON COUNTY, TEXAS REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE ORAL VIDEOTAPED DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL P. HOFFMAN AUGUST 2, 2006 I, Stephanie Barringer, Certified Shorthand Reporter in and for the State of Texas, hereby certify to the following: That the witness, MICHAEL P. HOFFMAN, was duly sworn and that the transcript of the deposition is a true record of the testimony given by the witness; That the deposition transcript was duly submitted on _______________ to the witness or to the attorney for the witness for examination, signature, and return to me by ______________. That the following is the computer-calculated amount of time used by each party at the time of the deposition: Mr. Coon (5 hours, 38 minutes) Attorneys for Plaintiffs
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EXAMINATION CHANGES AND SIGNATURE PAGE LINE CHANGE REASON ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ _______________________________ MICHAEL P. HOFFMAN
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 FOR DEFENDANT BP PRODUCTS NORTH AMERICA, INC.: 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 I further certify that I am neither counsel for, related to, nor employed by any of the parties in the action in which this proceeding was taken, and further that I am not financially or otherwise interested in the outcome of this action. Further certification requirements pursuant to Rule 203 of the Texas Code of Civil Procedure will be complied with after they have occurred. That a copy of this certificate was served on all parties shown herein on _________________ and filed with the Clerk. Mr. Otway B. Denny, Jr. Mr. Stephen M. Fernelius Fulbright & Jaworski 1301 McKinney, Suite 5100 Houston, Texas 77010-3095 Fax: 713-651-5246 Telephone: 713-651-5151 That pursuant to information given to the deposition officer at the time said testimony was taken, the following includes the parties at the deposition: FOR PLAINTIFFS JAIME ANDREADE, ET AL.: Mr. Brent Coon Brent Coon & Associates 3550 Fannin Beaumont, Texas 77701 Fax: 409-833-4483 Telephone: 409-835-2666
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I, MICHAEL P. HOFFMAN, have read the foregoing deposition and hereby affix my signature that same is true and correct, except as noted above. ___________________________ MICHAEL P. HOFFMAN THE STATE OF _______________) COUNTY OF __________________)
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Before me, _________________, on this day personally appeared MICHAEL P. HOFFMAN, known to me or proved to me on the oath of ______________ or through ______________ (description of identity card or other document) to be the person whose name is subscribed to the foregoing instrument and acknowledged to me that he/she executed the same for the purpose and consideration therein expressed. Given under my hand and seal of office on this ________ day of ______________________, ________. ________________________ NOTARY PUBLIC IN AND FOR THE STATE OF ___________ My Commission Expires: _________
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Certified to by me on this _________ day of _________, ______________.
AU
t rip sc d . an e gy Tr sign olo n Ed ally ch PY ie te O rtif onic al e r C g C al c ect lLe TI i n el e a EN r i g a s R TH e o w ing e us Th fil
__________________________________ Stephanie Barringer, CSR Texas CSR 6198 Expiration: 12/31/06 U.S. Legal Support Firm Registration: 122 519 N. Sam Houston Pkwy., Ste. 200 Houston, Texas 77060 Main number: 713/653-7100 Fax number: 713/653-7143
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FURTHER CERTIFICATION UNDER TRCP RULE 203 The original deposition was/was not returned to the deposition officer on _____________________. If returned, the attached Changes and Signature page(s) contain(s) any changes and the reasons therefor. If returned, the original deposition was delivered to Mr. Brent Coon at Brent Coon & Associates as the custodial attorney. $_____________ is the deposition officer's charges to the Plaintiffs for preparing the original deposition and any copies of exhibits; The deposition was delivered in accordance with Rule 203.3, and a copy of this certificate, served on all parties shown herein, was filed with the Clerk. Certified to by me on this ________ day of ____________________, ________. __________________________________ Stephanie Barringer, CSR Texas CSR 6198 Expiration: 12/31/06 U.S. Legal Support Firm Registration: 122 519 N. Sam Houston Pkwy., Ste. 200 Houston, Texas 77060 Main number: 713/653-7100 Fax number: 713/653-7143
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DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006 Page 1

***************************************************** ORAL VIDEOTAPED DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL P. HOFFMAN AUGUST 2, 2006 *****************************************************

U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

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Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

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Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

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DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

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DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

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DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

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DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

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DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

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DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

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Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

13 (Pages 46 to 49) U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

16 (Pages 58 to 61) U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

17 (Pages 62 to 65) U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

18 (Pages 66 to 69) U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

19 (Pages 70 to 73) U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

20 (Pages 74 to 77) U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

21 (Pages 78 to 81) U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

22 (Pages 82 to 85) U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

23 (Pages 86 to 89) U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

24 (Pages 90 to 93) U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

Electronically signed by Stephanie Barringer (001-253-197-1154)

DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL HOFFMAN - 8/2/2006

25 (Pages 94 to 97) U.S. LEGAL SUPPORT - HOUSTON 713-653-7100

* ORAL VIDEOTAPED DEPOSITION OF MICHAEL P. HOFFMAN AUGUST 2, 2006 *