Safety experts offer reassurance on refineries despite two blasts.

Although the Southland has been hit with a spate of refinery accidents recently, industry officials say the region's refineries overall are as safe as ever.

A state safety agency official said the state's refineries have been highly regulated in recent years, and that a federally mandated program is phasing in stricter safety guidelines refiners must follow. Refinery representatives themselves, meanwhile, boast improved safety records.

Two separate refinery explosions rocked the South Bay within a week's time. Two explosions and a resulting fire broke out at Atlantic Richfield Co.'s Carson refinery Oct. 4. Four days later, an explosion occurred in the hydrogen-processing units at Texaco Inc.'s Wilmington refinery, rattling the surrounding community and injuring 16 people.

One incident coming so soon after another is probably coincidental, said Mark Carleson, deputy chief for field operations for the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Investigators haven't determined the exact cause of the Texaco blast and thus Cal/OSHA officials haven't decided what measures to take to prevent such accidents in the future, Carleson said.

However, the quality of safety operations at Southland refineries has been at least maintained and in some cases upgraded in recent years, he said.

For one, most Cal/OSHA investigations are spurred solely by complaints made to the agency. However, during the past six years, Cal/OSHA has initiated two in-depth investigations on its own of safety at the state's refineries. The second such proactive probe, dubbed "special emphasis programs," took place in 1990.

Furthermore, Cal/OSHA is phasing in new guidelines over the next several years, called the Process Safety Management Standard, that will give refiners a comprehensive program for overseeing safety at their plants. Cal/OSHA adopted the standard in August, Carleson said.

Cal/OSHA keeps records of all accidents reported to it by the state's refiners.

Between 1979 and 1990, Mobil Oil Corp. reported the most accidents, 14, at its Torrance refinery. Arco and Chevron Corp. reported 11 accidents each at their Carson and El Segundo refineries, respectively.

Looking at the other major refiners in the area, Unocal reported nine accidents at its Wilmington refinery and Texaco reported four at its refinery in the same city.

However, Carleson said, the numbers may be misleading because the statistics do not classify accidents in terms of severity.

Officials at some refineries, however, were quick to assert that safety records at their particular installations are exemplary.

For example, during the 82 years the El Segundo refinery has existed, there has never been an accident that exposed the surrounding community to undue harm, said Chevron spokesman Rod Spackman.

The refinery has had its share of in-house accidents but that accident rate hasn't risen over time. It has remained constant, Spackman said.

At the Wilmington Unocal refinery, the number of work-related injuries that either affected employees' ability to produce at full capacity or to lose time from work fell dramatically from 43 in 1990 to 27 in 1991, said Unocal spokesman Jeff Callender.

Unocal has placed a new emphasis during the past three years on encouraging employees to report job hazards, Callender said.

And Mobil has improved the safety record at its Torrance refinery since the late 1980s, when the refinery was under construction and there were several accidents, said Mobil spokesman Jim Carbonetti.

"We have had a large turnaround in our safety record," he said, adding that the refinery now rates among the top 5 percent of all refiners in the nation based on safety.

Even a Texaco spokesman said that, outside of the Oct. 8 incident, "the safety record at this plant is absolutely excellent."

In the last two years, only one employee lost time from work because of a work-related accident, Texaco spokesman Fred Schlicher said.

At the Arco refinery, meanwhile, the number of work-related injuries has dropped dramatically during the past five years because the oil company has stepped up awareness of safety procedures, said Arco spokeswoman Annie Reutinger.

Safety records at refineries in general are much better than they were, say, 40 years ago, said John Vautrain, manager of the Long Beach office of Purvin & Gertz Inc. oil consulting firm.

"There is a very powerful economic incentive for safety," he said.