News & guides
The HAZOP field, in writing
Industry news and market moves for working consultants, plus the evergreen guides their clients keep asking about.
News
A flash fire while moving a calcium carbide tote at Carbide Industries: a water-reactive solid, handled outside the process
Two contractors were burned on 6 October when a portable tote of calcium carbide was being moved at the Carbide Industries plant in Louisville. Early and limited as the detail is, it is a reminder that a water-reactive solid carries its hazard with it — into the yard, the tote and the transfer step, not just the reactor.
News
LNG Canada takes FID on Phase 2, doubling Kitimat to ~28 Mt/y — and the JGC-Fluor JV picks up the build again
The late-September final investment decision on two more liquefaction trains at Kitimat, with the same joint venture that built Phase 1 back as EPFC contractor, is a large design-stage safety-study signal — and the fact that it bolts onto a plant that is already producing is the part that shapes the scope.
Guide
HAZOP Beyond the Chemical Plant: Scope and an Indirect Benefit
HAZOP began as a study of chemical-plant process safety, but it now applies wherever people's safety is at stake. Sanjay Nigam on the broadened scope, and on how deviation guidewords force teams to think about abnormal conditions.
News
Every event starts with a loss of containment: the October 2026 Process Safety Beacon
The CCPS Process Safety Beacon for October 2026 takes loss of containment as its theme and draws four CSB cases together around one point — most LOC mechanisms show warning signs first, and most of them appear during non-routine work. It reads as a prompt to check how a study scopes maintenance, startup, and degraded conditions.
News
The CSB's BP-Husky safety video: 3,712 alarms, a 24-hour abnormal operation, and a release the operators mistook for water
The CSB's new video on the 2022 fatal fire at the BP-Husky refinery in Oregon, Ohio puts an alarm flood and a prolonged abnormal operation at the centre of the account. The findings — on alarm management, shift communication, and the safeguards relied on during upsets — land directly on how a study credits operator action under stress.
News
INEOS mothballs its Saltend acetyls units: the process-safety work that idling and restart quietly create
INEOS's 22 September decision to idle Europe's last world-scale acetyls plants at Saltend is an economic story, but mothballing and eventual restart are process-safety-managed transitions in their own right — layup, preservation, knowledge loss and the restart PHA all sit outside the steady-state study.
News
The CSB's Shell Monaca final report: a backflow hazard the PHA named, then left to eleven administrative controls
The CSB's 16 September 2026 final report on the 2025 furnace explosion at Shell Polymers Monaca found that the plant's own hazard analysis had flagged cracked-gas backflow as potentially fatal — but guarded against it with procedures rather than the engineered control the licensor had already supplied.
News
Hive Hydrogen awards Coega green-ammonia FEED to Técnicas Reunidas, with a FEED-to-EPC roll-over and a 2027 FID in view
The 15–16 September FEED award on South Africa's $5.8bn Coega green hydrogen and ammonia project moves a million-tonne-per-year plant into concentrated engineering — electrolysers, an air separation unit, an ammonia loop and large-scale storage — and puts a design-stage process-safety pipeline on a 2027 FID clock.
News
SABIC Agri-Nutrients takes FID on the $3.47bn SAN-7 ammonia–urea complex, with post-combustion capture bolted on
SABIC AN's 9 September final investment decision on a grassroots Jubail ammonia and urea complex — awarded to Samsung E&A — opens a dense design-stage safety-study pipeline, and the carbon-capture unit is where a lot of it will land.
News
Woodland Pulp contests the $794,456 OSHA penalty over the fatal January H2S release
OSHA's four willful citations turn on detection and non-routine operating modes — the gap between a PHA that credits gas detection and escape, and a cold-weather shutdown where that layer was not actually present.
News
Five leaks, one flaw: the ExxonMobil Fife CUI prosecution and the inspection that couldn't see
The HSE's August 2026 prosecution of ExxonMobil's Fife Ethylene Plant traces five hydrocarbon leaks to corrosion under insulation and an inspection regime the regulator found not fit for purpose. A neutral look at what it means for the mechanical-integrity credit behind a PHA's safeguards.
News
Told ten months out: the CSB's Nippon Dynawave update and the inspection that wasn't acted on
The CSB's August 2026 update on the fatal Nippon Dynawave tank failure finds the operator was warned in July 2025 that the tank was 'not fit for continued service.' A neutral look at what the sequence means for mechanical integrity behind a PHA's credited safeguards.
News
Applying heat to a closed cylinder: the August 2026 Process Safety Beacon
The CCPS Process Safety Beacon for August 2026 takes up a cylinder that burst after being heated. The lesson — that adding heat to any closed or pressurised vessel needs a hazard review and a written procedure — maps onto exactly the non-routine tasks a process-scoped study tends to skip.
News
Piper Bravo's 'major' hydrocarbon release: when a safety-critical valve keeps failing
The GB HSE has classified the February 2026 hydraulic-oil release at the NEO Next–operated Piper Bravo platform as a 'major' hydrocarbon release — the first in over a year — against a run of emergency-shutdown-valve warnings. For study teams, it is a case about safety-critical-element integrity as a recurring failure rather than a single node.
News
ADNOC Gas puts $8.2 billion of sour-gas and NGL work into EPC — a live study pipeline
ADNOC Gas awarded EPC contracts for two Rich Gas Development trains in August 2026 — Wison's Habshan gas-processing train and Tecnimont's fifth NGL fractionation train at Ruwais — worth about $8.2 billion combined. Acid-gas removal, condensate stabilisation and NGL fractionation are study-heavy scopes now entering design.
News
Decommissioning is a process mode: the CSB's Catalyst Refiners H₂S update
The CSB's August 2026 investigation update on the fatal 2026 hydrogen-sulfide release at Catalyst Refiners in West Virginia describes an incompatible-chemical reaction during facility decommissioning, with no disposal procedure and relaxed monitoring — a reminder that transient and shutdown modes carry hazards a production-scoped PHA can miss.
News
The CSB's Clairton final report: an undocumented step, a brittle valve, and buildings on top of the hazard
The CSB's August 2026 final report on the fatal 2025 coke-oven-gas explosion at U.S. Steel Clairton traces the severity to an informal maintenance practice that never went through hazard review, cast iron in flammable service, and occupied buildings sited directly above the release point — three findings that map straight onto how PHA and facility-siting studies are scoped.
News
CF Industries breaks ground on Blue Point, putting an ATR-with-CCS ammonia flowsheet into construction
CF Industries' Aug 5 half-year results confirm construction began in August 2026 on the Blue Point low-carbon ammonia complex in Louisiana — an autothermal-reforming plant with >95% CO₂ capture, and a live design- and startup-stage safety-study programme through 2029.
News
The CSB's Bio-Lab Conyers final report: when a warehouse is the process
The CSB's July 2026 final report on the 2024 Bio-Lab Conyers fire traces a community-scale toxic release back to reactive-chemical storage, run-to-failure maintenance, and an inventory that quietly doubled. A neutral look at what the findings mean for where PHA teams draw the study boundary.
News
A pH loop, a pooling pipe, and a scrubber switched off: the CSB's Woodland Pulp update
The CSB's July 2026 update on the fatal hydrogen-sulfide release at the Woodland Pulp kraft mill describes a chain of ordinary deviations that compounded during a cost-driven shutdown. A neutral look at what the sequence means for how PHA teams node transient operations.
News
When the safeguard has a delay built in: lessons from the Callide C3 clinker report
CS Energy's investigation into the 2025 Callide Unit C3 clinker incident traced the event to systemic process-safety weaknesses — including a control-logic timing delay that slowed a protective shutdown. A neutral look at what it means for how PHA teams interrogate safeguards.
News
Kletz's warning, revisited: risk normalization when margins are tight
A lessons-analysis piece on the 2026 process-safety discussion around deferred maintenance and incremental risk acceptance — and what it means for how HAZOP teams run revalidations under cost pressure.
News
INEOS and Recuro sign MoU for an advanced pyrolysis plant at Bamble — a hazard set PHA teams are still building
The 'Full Circle' project would tie a 33,000 t/y plastic-pyrolysis unit into INEOS's live Bamble olefins site in Norway. Early-stage, but a reminder that pyrolysis and brownfield tie-ins carry a distinctive study load.
News
Topsoe to supply SynCOR Ammonia tech for a greenfield blue-ammonia fertilizer complex in Nebraska
J Westling & Co's Project Meadowlark will build a 500 STPD low-carbon ammonia plant on oxygen-fired autothermal reforming — a dense, greenfield safety-study package in a region with little existing ammonia-synthesis footprint.
News
Gasunie, EBN and DNV launch CO2RE programme to pin down CO₂ impurity chemistry in transport
A two-year experimental programme will test how impurities in captured CO₂ react under gas- and dense-phase transport conditions — targeting one of the biggest open uncertainties in CCS hazard studies.
News
Orica takes FID on Hunter Valley Hydrogen Hub, integrating electrolysis into its Kooragang Island ammonia site
Orica's July 1 final investment decision puts a commercial-scale renewable hydrogen facility inside an operating ammonia plant — a brownfield integration with a dense safety-study pipeline through 2029.
News
CSB investigating fatal hydrogen sulfide release during decommissioning at Catalyst Refiners in Nitro, West Virginia
Two workers were killed and more than 30 people sought medical care after an inadvertent chemical mixing during equipment cleaning and decommissioning generated hydrogen sulfide inside an occupied building.
News
Oxea takes FID on Bay City oxo expansion, with new Air Liquide syngas unit on site
Oxea's July 9 final investment decision expands propionaldehyde, propanol, and butanol capacity in Texas, with a dedicated Air Liquide syngas unit — and a design-stage safety-study pipeline running to 2028.
News
CSB final report on Givaudan Louisville explosion: runaway reaction, undersized relief, and a control room 40 feet away
The CSB's final report on the fatal November 2024 reactor rupture finds an unrecognized runaway decomposition reaction, an emergency relief system four times too small, and facility siting failures.
News
EPA's RMP rollback proposal: what changes for PHA and compliance work as the final rule approaches
EPA's February 2026 proposal would scale back the 2024 RMP amendments — reduced STAA requirements and closer alignment with OSHA PSM. Comments closed in April; a final rule is expected late 2026.
News
hazop.cc launches: the HAZOP consulting market, indexed
21 firms and independent facilitators across 7 regions at launch — plus a weekly brief on industry news and who's winning work. Here's what we're building and why.
Guide
How to Choose a HAZOP Consultant (2026)
What separates a chair who finds scenarios from one who fills templates — certification signals, red flags, and the questions to ask before you book.
Guide
HAZOP Chair vs. Scribe: Roles, Qualifications, and Day Rates
Two roles, two skill sets, one study. Who does what, why combining them fails, and what each should cost you.
Guide
What Does a HAZOP Study Cost? (2026)
Day rates, study-size math, what drives the bill up, and why the cheapest facilitator is usually the most expensive decision.