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Amoco

Amoco was the oil and chemical business of Standard Oil Company (Indiana), with refineries, oil fields and chemical plants. In our library it appears as a refinery operator cited by federal safety inspectors over asbestos in 1973, as a buyer and tester of Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos for plastics and drilling fluids in the 1970s, and as a defendant in asbestos lawsuits. It made no asbestos insulation of its own that our records show, and has no asbestos trust.

Draft. The history on this page was written from the documents in our library and has not yet been reviewed by a person.

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The company

Union Carbide's own company history describes the "huge Standard Oil of Indiana (Amoco) Refinery" at Whiting, Indiana, whose off-gases were to feed a new Union Carbide chemical plant planned nearby.1 In the 1974 federal safety case described below, Amoco Oil Company was represented by a lawyer from Standard Oil Company (Indiana) in Chicago.2 By 1999 the company was part of BP Amoco.6 This entry covers only its asbestos story.

The Casper refinery case

In August 1973 an inspector from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspected Amoco Oil Company's refinery at Casper, Wyoming, and cited it under the new federal asbestos standard.2 After a hearing in March 1974, Judge James A. Cronin, Jr., of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission found that asbestos insulation was stored "in the open" in a sheet-metal building that became "full of dust" when the wind blew, that loose insulation lay "all over the floor" of a storeroom, and that loose asbestos insulation hung from pipes and lay on the ground in several parts of the plant.2 He found that insulators and pipefitters had almost daily contact with asbestos, laundered their own work clothes, and had never been told how to handle contaminated clothing.2

The judge also recorded the company's position. Paul D. Halley, Amoco's director of environmental health services, had directed asbestos studies in 1972 at the company's Texas City and Whiting refineries; the company concluded from them that there would be "no exposure at Casper," and its own monitoring at Casper in September 1973 and February 1974 found no exposure above the standard in most of the cited areas, although samples taken during insulation removal and clean-up in one pump house were above the limits.2 The judge held that the refinery had not monitored as the standard required, had posted no caution signs, and had not met the medical-examination and housekeeping rules. He fined it a total of $420 and vacated the charges about laundering and bagging clothing.2 In April 1975 a Union Carbide technology manager wrote to Montello, Inc., the Oklahoma distributor of Union Carbide's asbestos for drilling muds, that a copy of the decision would follow, that it was "not as clear-cut or as favorable as we had hoped," and that the ruling on signs and housekeeping had been appealed to the full commission.78

Calidria asbestos in plastics and drilling fluids

Amoco Chemical Corporation appears on a North American Asbestos Corporation list of fiber customers from 1960 on, and on Union Carbide's 1980 list of Calidria ship-to addresses.910 In January 1973 an Exxon contact told a Union Carbide salesman that Amoco "has stopped using asbestos in their polypropylene compounds."11

In 1974 Amoco Chemicals tested Calidria. A December 1974 Union Carbide call report says Amoco bought 525 pounds of RG 600 and 500 pounds of RG 100 that July to test in high-density polyethylene. It records that an Amoco chemist asked for dust-count data and asbestos and health literature, and that the salesman's aim was "to sway Amoco" toward asbestos-filled products.3 In January 1975 Amoco held an internal meeting on RG-600 and invited Union Carbide to part of it to discuss toxicology. The Union Carbide report says the questions concerned in-plant handling, fiber counts, medical exams and special clothing, that the likely use was structural foam pallets or bins for food transport, and that Amoco was "very active in the industrial hygiene picture."12 Amoco's development engineer gave Union Carbide two air samples of unstated origin to analyze; the report's added note calls the results, 3.4 and 69.5 fibers/cc, "baffling."12 By March 1976 the pallet project had "died," according to a later call report, mainly because demand for the pallet had fallen.13 In December 1976 Amoco Chemicals staff attended a Johns-Manville presentation on asbestos and health.14

Asbestos also went into oil-field drilling fluids. Patents assigned to Amoco Canadian Petroleum (1971) and Amoco Production Company of Tulsa (1973) describe drilling-fluid additives made with chrysotile or ground asbestos.1516 A Union Carbide salesman reported Montello's technical director as saying that sales could "Sky rocket" if a new oil-wetted pellet product went ahead, and that "Amoco is extremely interested in it."8 A 1984 Union Carbide listing of customer asbestos dust counts includes entries for Amoco Production Co. and an Amoco drilling rig near Lubbock, Texas.17

Our product records also list one Amoco-named product, Oleoform 2016, which a 1986 reference book describes as "40% anthophyllite."18

Industrial hygiene and asbestos removal

In 1983 Organization Resources Counselors, Inc., prepared a recommended revision of the OSHA asbestos standard. An appendix headed "Work Done by Standard Oil (Indiana)" reports air monitoring during installation, removal, demolition and clean-up of asbestos insulation in Amoco Oil Company refineries and chemical operations. It argues that a half-face cartridge respirator gave adequate protection and that three samples reported above 20 fibers/cc may have been statistical anomalies.19

Other companies looked to Amoco. In 1985 Union Carbide's Texas City plant listed Amoco, with Monsanto and Shell, among firms to contact about their asbestos plans.20 A 1987 Union Carbide memo reported that Amoco, with Tennessee Eastman and Eastman Kodak, had adopted a "stucco embossed" metal weather barrier to mark asbestos-free insulation on replacement projects.21 In February 1987 M. S. Crowley, a senior research associate at Amoco Corporation, presented a paper titled "Alternatives to Asbestos" to a refinery maintenance conference; our library holds a catalog record of it.22

Lawsuits

Amoco Oil is listed among the employers on the service list of a 1989 filing in an Illinois asbestos case, Bank of Alton v. A. P. Green Refractories.23 In 2001 answers in a Cameron County, Texas, suit, Amoco Corporation said that it "was a financial institution" that owned no Texas premises, and that neither it nor Amoco Oil had ever run a refinery in Pasadena, Texas, where the plaintiff said he was exposed.4 Its answers added that Amoco had "always sought to minimize the inhalation of all dusts, including asbestos," and that its industrial hygienists surveyed refineries for asbestos exposure.4 Union Carbide stated in another Texas case that Amoco had operated a facility before 1959 on the Brownsville port property where Union Carbide later built its plant.24 Later plaintiffs sued BP companies "as successor in interest to Amoco, Inc. and American Oil Company" (Welch v. Brand Insulations, Washington, 2023) and "as successor-in-interest to American Oil Co., and Amoco Shipping Co." (Bartel v. Alcoa Steamship Co., Louisiana, 2014); those descriptions are the plaintiffs' allegations, not findings by the courts.2526

References

  1. UC-5356: Cal/OSHA Standards Board Summary of April 26, 1979 Fresno Public Hearing, with Excerpts from 'A History of Union Carbide Corporation' (1979), p. 60
  2. UC-1311: H. B. Rhodes to Ken Campbell (Montello, Inc.), with Enclosed Amoco Oil OSAHRC Decision (1975), pp. 4–26
  3. UC-666: Union Carbide Calidria Reports of Call on Amoco Chemicals Corp. (1974–1975), p. 1
  4. UC-1891: Amoco Corporation's Answers to Plaintiff's First Interrogatories, Requests for Production and Admissions (2001), pp. 1–12
  5. Asbestos trusts A–Z
  6. UC-1653: Union Carbide Proxy Statement/Prospectus Supplement on the Dow Merger (1999), p. 214
  7. UC-1311, pp. 1–2
  8. UC-709: Union Carbide Call Reports on Distributor Montello, Inc. (1973–1984), p. 2
  9. UC-1118: North American Asbestos Corporation Transmittal of Textile and Fiber Customer Lists, 1954–1975 (1976), p. 12
  10. UC-245: Calidria Shipments to UCC Facilities and Customer Ship-To List (1980), p. 7
  11. UC-271: Union Carbide Calidria Asbestos Call Reports on Exxon Contacts in Texas and Louisiana (1973–1979), p. 6
  12. UC-5368: E. J. Kleber's Call Report on Amoco Chemicals Meeting About RG-600 Toxicology (1975), p. 1
  13. UC-303: E. J. Kleber Call Report on Amoco Chemical Corp. Regarding RG-600 in Structural Foam Pallets (1976), p. 1
  14. AIA-112: Johns-Manville Corporation, A Condensation of Environmental Facts on Asbestos and Health, with Customer Seminar Attendee Lists, p. 62
  15. Asbestos, March 1971, p. 54
  16. Inert low solids drilling fluid (US Patent 3,723,311, 1973), p. 1
  17. UC-1288: John L. Myers to S. L. Baye on Air Monitoring Reports and a Proposed Listing of UCC Asbestos Dust Counts (1984), p. 3
  18. Oleoform 2016 (Amoco), citing the Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, vol. 2 (1986)
  19. UC-1264: Organization Resources Counselors, ORC Asbestos Standard: A Recommendation (1983), p. 89
  20. UC-1083: F. S. Provenzano Transmitting the Texas City Plant Asbestos Insulation Action Plan (1985), p. 3
  21. UC-2416: H. G. Clem to G. B. Elder on Identification Code for Asbestos-Free Insulation in Union Carbide Plants (1987), p. 2
  22. UC-1487: M. S. Crowley (Amoco), 'Alternatives to Asbestos,' NPRA Paper MC-87-5 (1987), catalog record
  23. North American Refractories Company's Supplemental Rule 220 Compliance in Bank of Alton v. A. P. Green Refractories (1989), p. 6
  24. UC-1994: Union Carbide's Second Supplemental Responses in Ketchum v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. (Cameron County, Texas), p. 3
  25. Welch v. Brand Insulations, Inc. (Wash. Ct. App. 2023)
  26. Bartel v. Alcoa Steamship Co. (M.D. La. 2014)

Asbestos products

1 product our documents name Amoco as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

In the Union Carbide documents

Amoco is named in 12 Union Carbide documents dated 1984 to 2001 (12 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Amoco, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: Amoco Corporation.

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names Amoco, across collections. Titles and affiliations are taken from the documents themselves, and units and subsidiaries are grouped under the company they belong to.

Cite this page

“Amoco.” AsbestosClaims.Law Library. https://asbestosclaims.law/library/organizations/amoco.

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This page is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. Every asbestos case turns on its own facts, exposure history, diagnosis, deadlines, available evidence, and applicable law. Reviewing this page does not create an attorney-client relationship. For advice about your specific situation, call 833-4-ASBESTOS for a free case review.