Dec. 7, 2010
BOOK REVIEW: "Drowning in Oil"
BP's Abysmal Safety Record Contributed to Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Massive Gulf Oil Spill
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
After reading Loren C. Steffy's "Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of Profit" (McGraw-Hill, 256 pages, $27.00) I had no doubt that the April 20, 2010 explosion and resulting oil spill -- the worst in the nation's history -- was no accident. The resulting inferno claimed 11 lives and, as Steffy demonstrates, was caused by the abysmal safety procedures -- and lack thereof -- of BP (British Petroleum), which leased the Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible drilling platform 40 miles off the Lousiana coast.
Steffy, an award-winning business reporter and columnist for the Houston Chronicle, delivers the best account I've seen of the disaster, which raged uncontained for two days, until the wreckage sank nearly a mile to the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. 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.
A meticulous reporter who obviously knows what he's doing, Steffy is also a great writer. Here's a sample from the book:
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.
* * *
Steffy shows that the Deepwater Horizon disaster wasn't the first time BP, the London-based petroleum giant, showed reckless disregard for its employees and the environment. On March 23, 2005 poor maintenance procedures at BP's 1,200-acre Texas City, Texas refinery, near Houston, led to an accident that killed 15 workers and injured more than 200. Steffy's account of this accident, in Chapter 5 of the book, highlights actions that were sharply criticized by investigative commissions and other oil companies.
In Chapter 10, "Not Enough," Steffy reveals that in the wake of the Texas City disaster, BP had paid $20 million in OSHA fines and had spent more than $1 billion improving the facility "yet workers were still dying with disturbing regularity inside the refinery's fence. A contractor, Ramon SiFuentes, would die in October 2008, after being crushed by a backhoe. Three years after the accident, the refinery remained the most lethal in the United States." He added that two workers died at BP's Cherry Point, Washington refinery.
How lethal was working for BP? Steffy writes that the nation's 146 other refineries had only nine fatalities combined during the same period, compared to the three of BP, not counting the 15 at Texas City.
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, Steffy 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.
The Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred 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. They were enabled, Steffy points out in Chapter 15, "A Fox in the Henhouse," by the regulators of offshore energy, the Energy Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS), "a troubled agency whose name and structure were permanently changed by the Horizon disaster."
The author shows how the MMS, "which approved BP's frantic well design alterations in the days before the rig blew up," was an agency whose very existence represented a potential conflict of interest between government and industry. Steffy details the sweetheart relationship of the MMS, whose inspectors lived and worked with the same oilfield workers whose work they oversaw. "Many of them grew up in areas such as southern Louisiana, whose economy depends on the offshore industry," Steffy writes, "and many had worked in the oilfields themselves before joining the government."
Both the Bush and Obama administrations share the blame with BP, Steffy asserts. The lax administration of safety regulations during the Bush administration contributed to the Texas City disaster and BP was a major contributor to Obama, both as a senator from Illinois and in his presidential campaign. According to Politico.com, "BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Donations come from a mix of employees and the company’s political action committees — $2.89 million flowed to campaigns from BP-related PACs and about $638,000 came from individuals. On top of that, the oil giant has spent millions each year on lobbying — including $15.9 million last year alone — as it has tried to influence energy policy. During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records."
Exhaustively researched and documented, and as I noted above, very well written, "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. Steffy's book, complete with notes and an index, puts all the pieces of the BP jigsaw puzzle together, offering a definitive account of BP's pursuit of outsized profits as the industrial world awakens to the grim realities of Peak Oil.
About the author
Loren C. Steffy is the business columnist for the Houston Chronicle. He has been recognized by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Houston Press Club, and other societies and organizations. In addition, his work has been cited in publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post Online, and Texas Monthly, and he's made numerous appearances on CNBC, FOX News, MSNBC, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and Court TV. He lives in The Woodlands, Texas, a suburb of Houston.
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BOOK REVIEW: "Drowning in Oil"
BP's Abysmal Safety Record Contributed to Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Massive Gulf Oil Spill
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
After reading Loren C. Steffy's "Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of Profit" (McGraw-Hill, 256 pages, $27.00) I had no doubt that the April 20, 2010 explosion and resulting oil spill -- the worst in the nation's history -- was no accident. The resulting inferno claimed 11 lives and, as Steffy demonstrates, was caused by the abysmal safety procedures -- and lack thereof -- of BP (British Petroleum), which leased the Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible drilling platform 40 miles off the Lousiana coast.
Steffy, an award-winning business reporter and columnist for the Houston Chronicle, delivers the best account I've seen of the disaster, which raged uncontained for two days, until the wreckage sank nearly a mile to the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. 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.
A meticulous reporter who obviously knows what he's doing, Steffy is also a great writer. Here's a sample from the book:
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.
* * *
Steffy shows that the Deepwater Horizon disaster wasn't the first time BP, the London-based petroleum giant, showed reckless disregard for its employees and the environment. On March 23, 2005 poor maintenance procedures at BP's 1,200-acre Texas City, Texas refinery, near Houston, led to an accident that killed 15 workers and injured more than 200. Steffy's account of this accident, in Chapter 5 of the book, highlights actions that were sharply criticized by investigative commissions and other oil companies.
In Chapter 10, "Not Enough," Steffy reveals that in the wake of the Texas City disaster, BP had paid $20 million in OSHA fines and had spent more than $1 billion improving the facility "yet workers were still dying with disturbing regularity inside the refinery's fence. A contractor, Ramon SiFuentes, would die in October 2008, after being crushed by a backhoe. Three years after the accident, the refinery remained the most lethal in the United States." He added that two workers died at BP's Cherry Point, Washington refinery.
How lethal was working for BP? Steffy writes that the nation's 146 other refineries had only nine fatalities combined during the same period, compared to the three of BP, not counting the 15 at Texas City.
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, Steffy 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.
The Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred 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. They were enabled, Steffy points out in Chapter 15, "A Fox in the Henhouse," by the regulators of offshore energy, the Energy Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS), "a troubled agency whose name and structure were permanently changed by the Horizon disaster."
The author shows how the MMS, "which approved BP's frantic well design alterations in the days before the rig blew up," was an agency whose very existence represented a potential conflict of interest between government and industry. Steffy details the sweetheart relationship of the MMS, whose inspectors lived and worked with the same oilfield workers whose work they oversaw. "Many of them grew up in areas such as southern Louisiana, whose economy depends on the offshore industry," Steffy writes, "and many had worked in the oilfields themselves before joining the government."
Both the Bush and Obama administrations share the blame with BP, Steffy asserts. The lax administration of safety regulations during the Bush administration contributed to the Texas City disaster and BP was a major contributor to Obama, both as a senator from Illinois and in his presidential campaign. According to Politico.com, "BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Donations come from a mix of employees and the company’s political action committees — $2.89 million flowed to campaigns from BP-related PACs and about $638,000 came from individuals. On top of that, the oil giant has spent millions each year on lobbying — including $15.9 million last year alone — as it has tried to influence energy policy. During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records."
Exhaustively researched and documented, and as I noted above, very well written, "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. Steffy's book, complete with notes and an index, puts all the pieces of the BP jigsaw puzzle together, offering a definitive account of BP's pursuit of outsized profits as the industrial world awakens to the grim realities of Peak Oil.
About the author
Loren C. Steffy is the business columnist for the Houston Chronicle. He has been recognized by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Houston Press Club, and other societies and organizations. In addition, his work has been cited in publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post Online, and Texas Monthly, and he's made numerous appearances on CNBC, FOX News, MSNBC, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and Court TV. He lives in The Woodlands, Texas, a suburb of Houston.
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