Oil company Total UK pleaded guilty Friday to three charges stemming from a massive oil depot fire in 2005, the biggest conflagration in Europe since World War II.
At a hearing in the Central Criminal Court in London, Total submitted written guilty pleas to two charges under the Health and Safety Act and one of polluting water stemming from the explosion and fire at the Buncefield oil depot north of London on Dec. 11, 2005.
Forty-three people were injured in the incident and 2,000 people living nearby were evacuated, but no one was killed.
Four other companies pleaded not guilty to health and safety violations. They are Hertfordshire Oil Storage Ltd., British Pipeline Agency Ltd., TAV Engineering Ltd. and Motherwell Control Systems 2003 Ltd.
Those companies face trial beginning April 14. Total won't be sentenced until that trial is over.
In a civil case, Justice David Steel ruled in March that Total Downstream UK PLC and Total UK Ltd., both subsidiaries of the French oil company Total SA, were liable for negligence in the disaster, which occurred in Hemel Hempstead, 25 miles (40 kilometres) north of London.
Total and Chevron were partners in Hertfordshire Oil Storage Ltd., or HOSL, which operated the Buncefield facility. The court ruled that Total, which owned 60 per cent of the joint venture, was vicariously liable — meaning its employees were responsible.
A hearing on Total's appeal of that judgment is scheduled for next year.
The judge said Total had failed to provide an adequate system to prevent a tank from being overfilled, allowing fuel to spill out when a gauge became stuck and filling to continue without triggering an alarm.
"The cause of the explosion was the ignition of an enormous vapour cloud that had developed from the spillage of some 300 tons of petrol from a storage tank," the judge said. The fire eventually engulfed 20 other tanks.
