In Too Deep

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In 2005, fifteen workers were killed when BP's Texas City refinery exploded. In 2006, corroded pipes owned by BP led to an oil spill in Alaska. And then in 2010, eleven BP contract workers were killed in the Gulf of Mexico's Macondo well blowout. By the time it plugged the hole at the bottom of the Gulf, BP had become the biggest oil polluter in U.S. history, dwarfing the notorious Exxon Valdez, the oil tanker whose drunken captain ran his ship aground in Prince William Sound off Alaska. Some commentators¿perhaps BP apologists¿suggest this was bound to happen and BP was simply the unlucky company to which this disaster befell. But Stanley Reed, who has been covering the company for over ten years, and Alison Fitzgerald saw otherwise. In In Too Deep, Reed and investigative reporter Fitzgerald show that there is likely a reason that it was a BP well that blew out, and not one that belonged to Exxon or Shell¿and that the blame may lie in BP's culture of risk-taking and hard focus on financial results. That culture, they show, was created under former CEO John Browne, who reshaped the company during his twelve-year tenure and then was forced to resign in 2007. They reveal how Browne, while beloved by investors for his growth strategy that saw BP's stock rise, had built a company focused on acquisitions and cost cutting¿cultural assets in some areas that ended up being cultural poison in the area of deepwater drilling. The story of how the Gulf disaster happened, and of the behind-the-scenes management of the company, is a fascinating object lesson that we will be learning from for decades.In July 2010, BP successfully "killed" the company's damaged deepwater well. But the environmental fallout and public relations campaign to rebuild the brand are just beginning. In Too Deep details why BP suffered this disaster, why now, and what's next for the oil giant.

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Stanley Reed (Auteur) - Verschenen op 01/03/2011 bij John Wiley & Sons Inc.