Presentation on devastation caused by Katrina

In all his years of higher education, on-the-job experience and management successes, Peter Batey didn't have training for the kind of devastation that Hurricane Katrina brought to his refinery!

Peter Batey is the refinery manager at the Alliance Refinery for ConocoPhillips.

His refinery was one of the largest to be completely shut down by Hurricane Katrina when it made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2005.

It took 235 days to regain full operation, and it wasn't until January that the refinery was partially operational.

Batey will deliver the opening keynote address at ISA EXPO 2006 in Houston, Texas on Tuesday, 17 October at 8:30 a.m, presenting some of the experience gained over that period.

In all his years of higher education, on-the-job experience and management successes, Peter Batey didn't have training for the kind of devastation that Hurricane Katrina brought to his refinery.

"We faced an unbelievable combination of unique challenges in trying to recover from the damage Katrina caused.

Things you take for granted like communications, transportation, and accommodation became huge stumbling blocks in our recovery efforts," said Batey.

"There's no training for the combination of challenges that we faced".

His presentation will touch on the shutdown of the refinery, the recovery process, lessons learned, and plans for the future.

Reconnecting all of the instrumentation systems and repairing the physical damage caused by the storm was crucial in the months after Katrina, and Batey remembers an important lesson learned during that time.

"As a manager of a facility, never underestimate the drive of employees and loyal contractors to really commit themselves to rebuilding.

Hundreds of people, whose own homes had been destroyed, chose to work hours on end to re-establish refinery operations.

They could have been home, waiting for their insurance claims, but they were here, working hard every day to bring this refinery back," he said.

The keynote presentation at ISA EXPO 2006 will be one of the event highlights.

"We are so pleased to have Mr Batey deliver this year's opening keynote," said Dale Lee, ISA Director of Convention Services.

"It will be an honour for us to hear this story of recovery".

Batey began his career with Conoco in 1974 at the Humber refinery in England as a process engineer.

In 1976, he moved to Ponca City, USA, to work in the engineering headquarters.

Between 1976 and 1983, Batey occupied various process engineering positions in Ponca City and at the Humber refinery.

He was appointed to the lead design team for the fluid cat cracker unit at Humber, which was successfully commissioned in March of 1986.

He was operations superintendent at the Lake Charles refinery until 1990, when he relocated to Houston as director of operations planning for the four Conoco US refineries.

In 1991, he became the production manager for the Billings refinery and was named chief operating officer at the Melaka refinery in Malaysia in 1996.

After the merger of ConocoPhillips in 2002, Batey managed the Trainer refinery in Pennsylvania.

ISA EXPO provides automation and control professionals a venue for dialogue, discussion and discovery.

More than 15,000 professionals from around the globe meet each year to interact, learn from industry experts, and test-drive best in class solutions from industry leaders and cutting edge start-ups.

More information about ISA EXPO 2006 is available on the ISA website.

Back to top