That Gasoline Tanker Blast

I grew up in a rural community that is host to an an oil refinery. I have had my share of memories of accidental fires in the facility; of the two most vivid ones, one left a relative severely burned and disfigured and one involved an oil tanker that was burned while docked at the refinery's jetty at Batangas Bay.

It goes without saying that at an early age, I was already aware of the real danger posed by inappropriate handling of gasoline products. Come to think of it, our family home is less than a kilometer away from two giant LPG vessels. Do I know how to be wary of mishandling LPG!

I ended up working for some time for an American company that built a new refinery to replace the thirty year old relic. A few months before completion of the new plant, I witnessed a fireball that erupted from a flare caused by the build up of pressure due to a malfunctioning pump. I was in an airconditioned building some five hundred meters away from that flare but I still felt the extreme heat when the blast occurred.

Having been exposed to all these, I was first lured into studies concerning safety and later on began to look into the realm of the environment and the conservation of natural resources. Learning is a lifelong passion and so I continue to study up to this day.

Yesterday, past 10 pm, Manila time, a tanker carrying 14,000 liters of diesel fuel and 2,000 liters of gasoline exploded after crossing Nagtahan Bridge in Manila. One person was killed, a number injured and some 13 vehicles were burned.

This incident made me write this post. The Batangas refinery has a 110 thousand barrels per stream day capacity. The finished products are transported using gasoline lorries, LPG tankers or barges or pumped through the two pipelines laid out between Batangas and Manila. In moving these products, the trucks, lorries and tankers pass through residential areas of the City.

Now that I am thinking of it, I have suddenly realized that these products pass through a route that is barely two hundred meters away from my house!

It is high time that a review of the oil movement situation in Batangas is done. An accident has occurred in Manila and we should not wait for an accident to happen in Batangas. Let us act now and prevent similar incidents from happening.