Anton Guinea
Entrepreneur, Speaker, bestselling author, and founder of The Guinea Group of Companies. For over 15 years, Anton has helped leaders move their teams to become psychologically safe, physically safe and overall better versions of themselves.
On what seemed like a routine night, Mark, who has 35 years of experience, made a significant error due to complacency. He miscalculated the fuel tank’s capacity, leading to an overfill of unleaded petrol.
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Just a straightforward night, normal day at the office. No dramas, yeah, had an easy shift. Although that’s all I had was the a-poon for the night and come back in a preload, just no pressure. Parked it up.
Get out, you go in and get your automatic printout from the counter. Check your dips and work out your figures with what product you’ve got on the vehicle. Work it out to make sure everything’s going to fit before you start.
And that’s where I went wrong.
“I’ve been in the industry for 35 years into the fuel industry and I’ll admit I became complacent.”
The incident was an overfill of a 95 unleaded tank. When I’ve added up my dip figures, instead of the ullage and what was in the tank, I’ve doubled what was in the tank. I thought I had room for 28,000 litres and I only had room for about 19.
That is where it all started.
What had happened, I don’t know whether there was a fault to the cap or it didn’t seal properly, but as soon as it filled the tank, the pressure blew the cap off and I looked around, I could smell unleaded, a strong smell of unleaded, looked around and she was coming out the fill point. So I’ve shut everything off, shut the supply out of my trailer off, raced over to the console, asked him to shut the service station down, the bousers down, everything, stop cars coming in and I raced out to put my witches hats out to stop cars going out because the fuel was running out on the exit of the service station.
And what had happened, by the time when this overfill did happen, there was three or so cars had already driven through this petrol, which would be the most dangerous thing you could ever do.
“It could have been a fatality.”
I could have been killed, other people could have been burnt or cinder. Very, very, very lucky. Yeah, well the impact could have been a total fatality because, well, one spark.
Yeah, I remember the night very clearly. It was about 6.30. I was still in the office up in Mackay. Dave, the Grey Spear Depot manager, called and basically said we just had it over fill a pulp 95 at BP Yapoon. Probably first thing was my concern was, you know, is everything alright as the site closed off?
And by that time the driver engaged all the emergency response required and there the site was closed down, emergency service levels on side. So then obviously, yeah, it’s a gut wrenching feeling getting that call.
“After this episode, from this situation I’ve learnt to double check everything that you do, don’t become complacent”
and just make sure that you keep your mind on the job. We don’t want to shame people that have made mistakes, but we want people to learn from them. So that for me is a big one as well as that, yeah. I think we proved to ourselves that our emergency responses are really good as a company. I’m just glad it wasn’t a lot worse than what it was and without a doubt though, your reputation, it does have impact on that. But I think how you respond to certain situations can sometimes counteract the initial issues.
So I think for me the word of advice to anyone in the fuel industry is despite, doesn’t matter whether you’ve been in the industry for a week or been in it for 35, 40 years,
“Stick to your procedures, stick to your routine.”
Don’t break your patterns, don’t put yourself under perceived pressure. I think too many guys think I will put almost a time limit on themselves and that forces people without even subconsciously to start taking shortcuts. So basically don’t put yourself under perceived pressure. If you’ve got an issue with what’s been scheduled for you and you think that the day is too big and you can’t achieve it and do it all legally and following everything as it needs to be followed. Contact the scheduler and if you don’t get the response there required, go to your manager and follow that chain.
