Run to Failure BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster

by Lustgarten, Abrahm

• ISBN13: 9780393081626
• ISBN10: 0393081621
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-03-26
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Two decades ago, British Petroleum, a venerable and storied corporation, was running out of oil reserves. Along came a new CEO of vision and vast ambition, John Browne, who pulled off one of the greatest corporate turnarounds in history. BP relentlessly fired employees and cut costs. It skipped safety procedures, pumped toxic chemicals back into the ground, and let equipment languish. For a while the strategy worked, making BP one of the most profitable corporations in the world. Then it all began to unravel, in felony convictions for environmental crimes and in one deadly accident after another. Employees and regulators warned that the problems, unfixed, were getting out of control, that another disaster'¬ ;bigger and deadlier'¬ ;was inevitable. Nobody was listening. Having reported on the energy industry for years, Abrahm Lustgarten uses interviews with key executives and exclusive access to internal documents and e-mails to weave a spellbinding narrative of careless greed.