Buncefield Oil Depot Fire

I shall shorten my speech to allow the Minister the maximum time to respond to the extremely important questions and issues brought up by hon. Members. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) on securing this important debate. I visited the Buncefield site with him earlier this year and was shocked by the scale of the incident, the severity of the impact on surrounding properties and buildings, and the sheer size of the footprint of the damage created by the blast. Clearly the explosion at Buncefield, which exceeded any previous worst-case scenarios for emergency planning purposes, has heightened concern among Members such as myself who have major fuel storage and processing facilities in their constituencies. I echo my hon. Friend’s call for an open and independent inquiry into the Buncefield incident. The results of the inquiry cannot be that we should carry on business as usual. It must lead to some real improvements in the way in which risks are assessed and managed at fuel storage sites. In my constituency, we have the UK’s largest fuel storage terminal facility. It is three or four times the size of Buncefield and has capacity for more than 9 million barrels of product. It has more than 80 tanks storing a range of products including gasoline, kerosene, jet fuel and crude oil. In close proximity to that storage facility, we have two of the UK’s nine major oil refineries, which are also located on the Milford Haven waterway, and two of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas import and storage facilities are being built alongside them. The major concentration of hydrocarbon storage and processing facilities in my constituency is heightening concern in my community about the risks that the local population is living alongside, particularly in the village of Waterston, where the storage facility is located. To say that the facility is close to the village is inaccurate: it is right in the middle of the village. Indeed, many villagers live just a few feet from the main entrance to the SemLogistics site. In the past year or two, they have lived with the disruption caused by the construction activities around the liquefied natural gas plant. They also live with the eyesore of the stacks and buildings from the old oil refinery, but their biggest concern at the moment centres on understanding the risks. They seek reassurance about the risks that they live alongside. At the start of this year, the fuel storage facility was sold by Petroplus to SemGroup, a US company which trades in the UK under the name SemLogistics. I have been extremely encouraged by the several meetings that I have had with the US and the UK components of the management team, who seem to be taking seriously their responsibilities to ensure that an incident such as that at Buncefield never happens in Pembrokeshire. At our first meeting, we agreed that the site needs more than a lick of paint and a change of badge. Serious investment is needed to upgrade the facility and provide reassurance for the community nearby. Two weeks ago, I visited the site and saw the new secondary containment features being installed in the tanks, and a new Bentomat geosynthetic clay liner being put in to prevent the leakage of product into the ground water. I looked at some of the high-level safety systems, which actually exceed current UK statutory requirements, that are being installed on the tanks. The company takes its responsibilities seriously. I was encouraged by the initial findings of the Health and Safety Executive’s safety alert review last month, which did not identify the Waterston site as one of the five in which there are problems and issues with bunding, risk assessment or the maintenance of firefighting systems on site. Those are reasons to be encouraged, but there are other reasons for dismay and huge concerns in my community. Our local fire brigade has a proud history, having tackled some major incidents at the oil refineries in Pembrokeshire in the past 40 years, but we are set to lose our only remaining 24-hour fire station, which will be downgraded to a day crew only. That is causing huge concern in my community. I repeat the calls that I have made many times for the Mid and West Wales fire authority to hold back from implementing that decision, at least until the full findings of the Buncefield inquiry are made public, so that we can better understand risks and how we respond to major incidents. As I said earlier, what has happened at Buncefield has reset the gauge for emergency responses to major incidents. We need facilities such as the ones in my constituency. I do not know enough about the matter to say whether Buncefield will ever reopen, but we need storage facilities in the UK for strategic reasons. At a time of energy price volatility, it makes good commercial sense for some of the downstream companies to have such storage facilities, but the risks need to be managed properly and understood. I hope that the Buncefield inquiry will result in some clear, concrete recommendations for improving the safety of these facilities and will provide reassurance for the communities that live immediately next to them.