BP has agreed to pay a record $50.6 million fine to the federal government for safety violations found by regulators last year at its troubled refinery in Texas City, Tex.
In addition to the record fine, BP has agreed to take immediate steps to protect those now working at the refinery and spend at least $500 million on that effort, according to the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Last October, OSHA proposed fining BP $87 million, later reduced slightly, after it found that the company had failed to correct problems at the Texas City refinery under a previous settlement. That settlement with the safety agency followed an explosion in 2005 that killed 15 workers and injured more than 170 people.
BP had disputed most of the 2009 findings. But under the agreement announced Thursday, the company accepted the government’s penalties for failing to fix problems as promised in the previous settlement.
BP is continuing to contest $30.7 million in proposed penalties for the 439 new safety violations that OSHA inspectors found in 2009. The company said in a statement that it hoped the agreement would provide a “platform to resolve the remaining citations.”
“This agreement achieves our goal of protecting workers at the refinery and ensuring that critical safety upgrades are made as quickly as possible,” the labor secretary, Hilda L. Solis, said in a statement. “The size of the penalty rightly reflects BP’s disregard for workplace safety and shows that we will enforce the law so workers can return home safe at the end of their day.”
In a conference call with reporters, Jordan Barab, the deputy director of OSHA, hailed the agreement, saying that BP had agreed to “an unprecedented level of oversight.”
Under the agreement, BP agreed to have the head of the Texas City refinery meet monthly with the top regional OSHA official and to have independent monitors verify its progress in meeting its safety commitments. In addition, BP agreed to include the United Steelworkers union, which represents the oil workers at Texas City, in the safety process.
Steve Cornell, head of BP’s American refining business, said that the agreement demonstrates BP’s commitment to work with OSHA and the United Steelworkers “in order to enhance safety performance at Texas City.”
“We have significantly improved the safety of our operations at Texas City over the last five years and are determined to carry this effort forward effectively in the future,” Mr. Cornell said in a statement.
The fine exceeds the previous record for an OSHA penalty — $21 million paid by BP in connection with the 2005 explosion. But it is dwarfed by the billions of dollars in environmental penalties that BP is expected to pay in connection with its three-month oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
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