With regard to the Investigation Report on the fire at our Chiba oil refinery on April 16, 2006, which was publicized and submitted to the relevant authorities on June 20, 2006 (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"), we would like to announce the following:
Details
1. An accident occurred prior to the 1996 conversion of the facility where the fire started
A component in the facility where the fire started this time (HP-V18) was converted from a baffle type to an inner nozzle type in 1996. It recently came to light that in December 1995, just before the conversion, an accident had occurred due to cracking. The cracking caused a linear opening with the length of approximately 7 mm, which caused a small internal gas leak but did not cause any fire, explosion, or personal hazard. In addition, some items of the data related to this HP-V18 facility before the conversion in 1996 were inadequately listed (i.e. data which were not verified by factual investigation were listed in 1996), therefore we decided to delete those items from this Report. We also found that regarding the accident in 1995 and the repairs, the necessary procedures under the High Pressure Gas Safety Law and relevant regulations were not adequately observed. We have now issued a report apologizing to the relevant authorities for the above oversights.
2. Countermeasures regarding this accident
The countermeasures defined in this Report will be promptly re-studied, with an eye to the convening of the Accident Investigation Committee, to investigate the need to change the currently established measures.
3. Apology and in-house remedial measures
As for the above item 1, the investigation into the accident this time was incomplete because a member of the Accident Investigation Committee failed to report known details of the 1995 accident to the Committee. The procedure set forth in the High Pressure Gas Safety Law and the relevant regulations were also not adequately observed at the time of the accident in 1995. And the related data were not appropriately maintained. We humbly apologize for these oversights.
We are conducting thorough dissemination of in-house measures to make the measures common knowledge throughout the company and are considering appropriate punishment for the persons concerned in this incident. Moreover, we intend to establish a better system of compliance so that a situation such as this will never occur again.
