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
關於作者：
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.
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