Most major refinery incidents do not start with dramatic failures. They start with small, unremarkable changes that go unnoticed until it is too late.

At the AFPM Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Hydrocarbon Processing’s Mike Rhodes sat down with Emerson’s Marcelo Carugo, Senior Director of Global Refining, to discuss one of the most persistent challenges in modern refining operations: safety. Here is their podcast interview, Live from AFPM Annual: Key strategies to help prevent major incidents in refineries.

Why it Matters

Refineries today operate under tighter margins, higher utilization rates, and greater complexity. When visibility is limited, small problems can grow into safety incidents that threaten people, assets, and production. Improving the ability to detect weak signals early helps refineries manage risk while maintaining safe and reliable operations.

Key Takeaways

• Most serious safety incidents begin as small, detectable deviations, not sudden failures.
• Longer run lengths increase the importance of monitoring asset behavior between inspections.
• Loss of containment risks develop slowly and require early trend detection to manage effectively.
• Non-intrusive and wireless measurements can reduce worker exposure to hazardous environments.
• Better visibility into critical assets allows operators to act early, rather than react after incidents occur.

Interview Highlights

While major incidents often dominate headlines, Marcelo emphasized that serious safety events rarely start with catastrophic failures. Instead, they usually begin with small deviations that develop slowly over time. When refineries are running harder, extending operating cycles, or postponing turnarounds, small deviations can quietly become serious risks if not detected early.

Marcelo explained that today’s biggest safety vulnerabilities emerge where operational complexity meets real-world constraints. Longer run lengths and higher utilization rates can create conditions where equipment degradation goes unnoticed. The issue is not a lack of safeguards. It is difficult to see early warning signs between inspections, turnarounds, and proof tests.

Top-performing refineries, he noted, distinguish themselves by paying close attention to weak signals. These operators monitor trends instead of waiting for alarms or failures. They act early, before small changes escalate into safety incidents.

Loss of containment remains one of the most significant safety risks in refining, largely because degradation tends to happen slowly. Leaks, corrosion, and wear often develop over months or years. The refineries that reduce risk most effectively are the ones that can identify subtle changes and treat early alerts as meaningful signals rather than background noise.

Occupational safety is another critical concern. Many worker injuries occur during routine tasks such as manual rounds, maintenance on hot equipment, or work at elevation. Marcelo pointed out that newer measurement technologies, including non-intrusive and wireless solutions, allow refineries to monitor assets more frequently without sending people into hazardous areas. Combined with data analytics and modern software, these tools help operators focus human attention where it is truly needed, rather than relying on broad and frequent manual inspections.

Even with multiple layers of protection in place, incidents can still occur. Safeguards typically do not fail overnight. They degrade gradually over time. That makes continuous visibility between inspections especially important. A strong digital foundation that combines intelligent instrumentation, control systems, and advanced analytics helps operators detect when safeguards are no longer performing as intended.

Taking Action

For refinery leaders looking to act without waiting for a major capital project, Marcelo offers a practical starting point. He suggests focusing first on critical assets and asking a simple question, “Do we have enough visibility into these assets between inspections?” In many cases, adding measurements or deploying newer non-intrusive technologies can significantly improve insight without requiring a turnaround.

Listen to the podcast and visit the Refining section on Emerson.com to explore additional refining safety resources.