The Nickel Report

Last October we saw the State of California implement its "PSM for Refineries" standard and now the State of Washington's Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) appears to be following suit, releasing draft language to adopt a rule of its own. This new chapter will only apply to Process Safety Management (PSM) for petrochemical refining facilities.

The good news about the Process Safety Management (PSM) standard is that it is a performance-based standard. The bad news about PSM, well, is that it is a performance-based standard. While it provides the operator some flexibility on complying, it can often lead to being second-guessed by an agency. Not only does the operator have to comply with the regulations, the operator must  comply with and document compliance with relevant codes and standards or Recognized and Generally Accepted Good Engineering Practices (RAGAGEP). These include widely adopted codes such as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), consensus documents such as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), non-consensus documents such as the Chlorine Institute (CI) and in most cases Internal Standards.

Just before Christmas, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released controversial regulations, titled Accidental Release Prevention Requirements: Risk Management Programs under the Clean Air Act; Prepublication Final Rule, that EPA states will “modernize” the Clean Air Act Section 112(r)(7) Risk Management Program (RMP) regulations. These 1990s-era regulations, covering about 12,500 facilities across the country, require that facilities storing certain amounts of specified chemicals develop risk management plans to prevent the accidental release of those substances into the air and mitigate impacts of accidental releases that do occur. EPA initiated these RMP rule revisions under the directive of President Obama’s August 1, 2013, Executive Order (EO) 13650, Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security. After proposal on March 14, 2016, EPA received more than 44,000 comments, making rule issuance in just over six months’ time remarkable, especially given that the final rule and response to comments total about 600 pages.