Historical analysis of accidents in the Saudi Arabian chemical industry

Abstract

The chemical industry oversees the transformation of raw materials into products through unit operations that require appropriate organization to avoid accidents. Hence, it is important to do analyses to identify any possible mistakes, substances involved, or common sources of accidents in the industry to avoid such errors and design better safety measures to create a safer space for the chemical industry, which is hugely important and boasts a worldwide presence. This document presents an analysis of chemical industry-related accidents in Saudi Arabia, namely fires, explosions, and toxic clouds which occurred in the chemical and petrochemical industries and while transporting hazardous materials in the last 46 years. Three databases—one for each type of accident—were created with information collected from articles, newspapers, videos, and papers. ‘Explosion’, ‘fire’, and ‘toxic clouds’ were the key words used for the research, focusing on accident taking place in Saudi Arabia. Once the information had been collected, the accidents were filtered, checked, and moved to a fourth general database. It is shown that 54.0% of all related accidents were fires, 25.4% toxic clouds, and 20.6% were explosions. The provinces with the most registered accidents were Riyadh (15), Jeddah (10), and Jubail (6).