Drowning in Oil: BP & the Reckless Pursuit of Profit (2010)

The definitive account of how BP's win-at-all-costs culture led to this era's greatest industrial catastrophe "A carefully and powerfully written story." Financial Times "When an author uses a loaded word like 'reckless' in a book's title, the burden of proof is high. . . . Steffy meets the burden by demonstrating that corporate behemoth BP (formerly British Petroleum) could have prevented the 11 deaths on April 20, 2010, aboard the Deepwater Horizon. . . . The deaths and the gigantic oil spill following the sinking of Deepwater Horizon will surely become a landmark of corporate ineptness and greed for the remainder of human history, thanks in part to Steffy's remarkable account." San Antonio Express-News "Steffy has produced a fascinating, gripping, revealing account. . . . The book details events aboard the Deepwater Horizon in April of 2010 to start, but it digs deeper into what is revealed as a culture of cost-cutting boiling over within BP. Steffy documents years of incidents and poor management decisions, detailing the rise of key characters like John Browne and Tony Hayward alongside riveting outlines of horrifying events in Texas City and at other BP locations. . . . The book reads like fiction at times, with the author's heavily-detailed accounts of explosions and conversations creating vivid, nearly fantastical images. The tragic history of BP is all-too-real, though, as the lost lives and environmental damage certainly attest to.. . . Steffy is a thorough, straightforward author. His concerns largely lie with the loss of life and the general culture of cost-cutting of BP, painting an apt and terrifying picture of rampant, steady, costly neglect." Seattle Post Intelligencer "Steffy provides valuable insight and crucial corporate context in explaining how so much oil ended up in the Gulf of Mexico." BusinessWeek "[Steffy's] investigations reveal a corporate culture of cost-cutting initiatives that put profits ahead of workers' lives and the environment, with repeated safety violations and an abysmal accident history. . . . Steffy details how, in the context of BP's record, the disaster was just part of a pattern of poor decision making in the relentless pursuit by BP to become the largest and most profitable oil company in the world." Booklist About the Book As night settled on April 20, 2010, a series of explosions rocked Deepwater Horizon, the immense semisubmersible drilling platform leased by British Petroleum, located 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. The ensuing inferno claimed 11 lives, and it would rage uncontained for two days, until its wreckage sank to a final resting place nearly a mile beneath the waves. On the ocean floor, the unit's wellhead erupted. Over the next ten weeks, as repeated attempts to cap the geyser failed, an estimated 200 million gallons of oil—the equivalent of 20 Exxon Valdez spills—spewed into the Gulf of Mexico, eventually lapping up on beaches as far away as Florida. Drowning in Oil , by award-winning Houston Chronicle business reporter and columnist Loren Steffy—considered by many to be the writer with the best access to the story—is an unprecedented and gripping narrative of this catastrophe and how BP's winner-take-all business culture made it all but inevitable. Through never-before-published interviews with BP executives and employees, environmental experts, and oil industry insiders, Steffy takes us behind the scenes of 100 years of BP corporate history. Beginning with the conglomerate's early gambits in the Middle East to its recent ascent among energy titans, Steff unearths the roots of the Gulf oil spill in the unwritten bargain between oil producers and consumers, whose insatiable appetites drive the search for new supplies faster, farther, and deeper. Beyond this, the Deepwater Horizon disaster took place after a history of cost cutting in pursuit of profits, particularly under the guidance of its two most recent ex-CEOs, John Browne and Anthony Hayward. Exhaustively researched and documented, Drowning in Oil is the first in-depth examination of how a lack of corporate responsibility and government oversight led to the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. It is an objective, no-punches-pulled account of the energy industry: its environmental impact and the intense competition among stakeholders in today's oil markets. This book puts all the pieces together, offering a definitive account of BP's pursuit of outsized profits as the industrial world awakens to the grim realities of Peak Oil. " They fumbled around the darkened room and found an instruction manual. By flashlight, they read the starting procedures. They were doing everything right. After five or six futile tries, they gave up and headed back toward the bridge. Back on the bridge, alarms were shrieking and the captain knew they were running out of time. The subsea engineer had hit the emergency disconnect for the well, and although the control panel showed the rig should be free, it wasn't. The hydraulics were dead. Fire continued to shoot from the top of the derrick. The rig had no power, and without power, it had no pumps for the firefighting equipment, no way to shut off the flow of gas from the well, and no way to disconnect the rig from the flaming umbilical that had it tethered to the wellhead. " —from Drowning in Oil The Unprecedented Account Of How Bp's Win-at-all-costs Culture Led To This Era's Greatest Industrial Catastrophe Award-winning Houston Chronicle Journalist Loren Steffy Delivers An Authoritative And Hard-hitting Account Of The Deepwater Horizon Disaster That Reveals How It's Only Part Of A Larger Pattern Of Corporate Hubris On The Part Of British Petroleum. Written By The Reporter Many Consider To Be Closest To Bp And The Gulf Environmental Catastrophe, Drowning In Oilis A Complete Narrative Of The British Energy Giant, As Well As The Impact Its Recent Miscues Will Have On Both The Us Economy And Global Energy Markets. Featuring Original, Never-before-published Interviews With Bp Executives, Environmental Experts, And Oil Industry Insiders, This Book Takes Readers Behind The Scenes To Reveal In Unprecedented Detail Bp's Win-at-all-costs Corporate Culture. Steffy Covers 100 Years Of Bp Corporate History From The Conglomerate's Early Gambits In Persia's Oilfields Through Its Role In Winston Churchill's Rise To Power Up To Its Recent Scandals And Disasters. Worthy Of Comparisons To Daniel Yergin's The Prize, And Burrough's And Helyar's Barbarians At The Gate, Drowning In Oil Will Become The Definitive Account Of The Energy Industry As The Industrialized World Nears The Age Of Peak Oil. Exhaustively Researched And Extensively Documented The First Full-length Examination Of How One Of The World's Biggest Corporations Set Itself Up For Failure On An Epic Scale A No-punches-pulled Account Of Energy, Environmentalism, And The Intense Competition Among Stakeholders In Today's Oil Markets Overview: Learn more than 3,000 English expressions and speak and understand the language easily. As a new speaker of English, you may hear some expressions in your daily conversations that you do not understand-yet. McGraw-Hill's Conversational American English will help you learn these expressions, so not only do you know what a person is saying to you, but that you can use the expression yourself! More than 3,000 expressions are organized by theme, so you can find what you are looking for quickly. And each topic is illustrated to further help you understand context. The book features: Common expressions are batched into 350 themes, ranging from general greetings and asking how someone is, to the more specific needs, like showing disbelief, asking someone's intentions, and expressions for a forgotten word or name; A comprehensive thematic glossary provides an additional means for the learner to locate expressions by key words and concepts; Topics include: Basic Social Encounters, Greetings, Small Talk, Introductions, Ending a Conversation, Good-Byes, Agreeing, Disagreeing Conversational Encounters, Focusing Attention, Launching the Conversation, Making Friends, Complex Matters, Disputes, Discussion and Resolution, Polite Encounters, Prefaces, Communication Barriers The first in-depth examination of how a lack of corporate responsibility and government oversight led to the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. On April 20, 2010, a series of explosions rocked Deepwater Horizon, the immense semisubmersible drilling platform leased by British Petroleum, located 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. The ensuing inferno claimed 11 lives and raged uncontained for two days, until its wreckage sank a mile beneath the waves. On the ocean floor, the unit's wellhead erupted. Over the next ten weeks, an estimated 200 million gallons of oil--the equivalent of 20 Exxon Valdez spills--spewed into the Gulf of Mexico, eventually lapping up on beaches as far away as Florida. Business journalist Loren Steffy--considered by many to be the writer with the best access to the story--presents the definitive account of this catastrophe and how BP's winner-take-all business culture made it all but inevitable.--From publisher description. Learn more than 3,000 English expressions and speak and understand the language easily. As a new speaker of English, you may hear some expressions in your daily conversations that you do not understand yet. McGraw-Hill's Conversational American English will help you learn these expressions, so not only do you know what a person is saying to you, but that you can use the expression yourself! More than 3,000 expressions are organized by theme, so you can find what you are looking for quickly. And each topic is illustrated to further help you understand context. The book features:Common expressions are batched into 350 themes, ranging from general greetings and asking how someone is, to the more specific needs, like showing disbelief, asking someone's intentions, and expressions for a forgotten word or name. A comprehensive thematic glossary provides an additional means for the learner to locate expressions by key words and concepts Contents 12 Preface 16 Chapter 1 Piercing the Fires of Hell 20 Chapter 2 Dawn in the Desert 44 Chapter 3 Rise of the Sun King 54 Chapter 4 “Flying Close to the Wind" 74 Chapter 5 “There’s Nothing Left" 88 Chapter 6 Imminent Hazard 102 Chapter 7 The Price of Failure 120 Chapter 8 The Fixer 130 Chapter 9 The Fall of the Sun King 142 Chapter 10 Not Enough 154 Chapter 11 “A Burning Platform" 166 Chapter 12 “Who Cares, It’s Done" 176 Chapter 13 Prelude to Disaster 190 Chapter 14 Drops in the Big Ocean 198 Chapter 15 A Fox in the Henhouse 212 Chapter 16 Reefs of Ruin 226 Chapter 17 Apologies all Around 236 Chapter 18 Meet the New Boss . . . 246 Chapter 19 Lost Faith 258 Chapter 20 All for Oil 266 Sources 280 Bibliography 292 Acknowledgments 294 Index 298 A 298 B 298 C 299 D 300 E 300 F 300 G 300 H 300 I 301 J 301 K 301 L 301 M 301 N 302 O 302 P 303 R 303 S 303 T 303 U 304 V 304 W 304 Y 304