Ashland_Oil_Inc.__Trouble_At_Floreffe

Ashland Oil Inc.: Trouble At Floreffe Intro/Facts Ashland Oil, Inc. with revenues exceeding $7 Billion in 1987 was the sixtieth largest company in the country and the nation’s largest independent oil refiner. The company employed over 42,000 people worldwide and had refining capacity of 346,000 barrels of oil per day. Key oil supplies came from the Middle East and Nigeria, where Ashland Oil Inc. (AOI) had a long-term production contract. To reduce its dependence on the volatile refining industry, AOI had diversified into other energy-related activities such as petroleum product transportation and marketing; chemicals; coal; engineering and highway construction services; as well as oil and gas exploration and production operations. Oil refining remained the backbone of the business, however, with Ashland Petroleum Company (APC) representing about 30% of sales in 1987(1 Harvard pg. 2). On January 2, 1988, a 4-million gallon oil storage tank owned by Ashland Oil Company, Inc., split apart and collapsed at an Ashland oil storage facility located in Floreffe, Pennsylvania, near the Monongahela River. The tank broke apart while being filled to capacity with diesel fuel for the first time after it had been dismantled and moved from an Ohio location and reassembled at the Floreffe facility. The mangled tank released diesel fuel over tank, ashland, permit, oil, water, legal, aoi, act, hall, feel, api, 650, ethical, been, spill, it’s, violation, standard, river, issue, whether, right, issues, case, reasons, law, because, based, under, steel, standards, press, company, should, regarding