BP BP Plc

LONDON—BP PLC has had several near-miss accidents at facilities around the world caused by lapses in how it handles engineering data, an internal report has found, six years after a fatal blowout in the Gulf of Mexico exposed its safety problems.

One 2014 incident involved an undefined "high potential" incident at its Whiting refinery near Chicago that cost the company $258 million in lost output of oil products, said the internal 2015 report viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Other potentially dangerous safety lapses occurred at facilities in Germany and the U.K., the report said.

The report comes after BP has spent much of the last six years seeking to repair the damage to its business caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010. The report, which the company confirmed was authentic, was obtained by Greenpeace and first reported by U.K.'s Financial Times newspaper.

BP said the report was part of its regular internal safety assessments undertaken to improve operations. The British oil giant said its safety record has steadily improved over the last five years.

The report "is not an analysis of any operational incidents, and any suggestion that this report indicates BP is wavering from its safety commitment is wrong," a BP spokesman said in an email.

The company revamped its approach to safety after its 2010 blowout killed 11 people and spewed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf. It created a new division to toughen oversight and changed its pay structure to better reward risk management.

The internal report said the company wasn't properly handling what it called "engineering information"—important blueprints, specifications for its facilities' infrastructure such as pipes, and other equipment information. It found examples of blueprints going missing and important safety devices having the wrong parts and settings.

The report said BP's practices lagged behind those of top competitors like Royal Dutch Shell PLC. It identified the Anglo-Dutch oil company as leading the pack thanks to efforts already undertaken to improve the consistency,accuracy and availability of information throughout the company.

The report, published last year and authored by BP managers with consultants from IBM and Worley Parsons, outlined several costly and sometimes dangerous incidents caused by mistakes, though it gave scant detail.

At the company's Whiting refinery—a sprawling 1,400-acre complex near downtown Chicago—the report blamed "multiple deficiencies" in the management of engineering information for the costly 2014 incident that raised safety concerns.

At BP's Lingen refinery in West Germany, the misinterpretation of blueprints caused equipment to be used incorrectly and led to "repeated near misses," the report said. On another occasion at Whiting, inaccurate data caused the control system to accidentally flare all the fuel in one unit, breaching environmental rules, the report said.

Though the report focused on BP's refining and petrochemicals business, it also mentioned deficiencies in its exploration and production arm. It said the unit responsible for drilling and pumping BP's oil reserves had "further work to do" to match competitors' management of information and data, but is "significantly ahead" of the company's refining business.

Write to Sarah Kent at sarah.kent@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 13, 2016 11:05 ET (16:05 GMT)

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