Drowning in Oil

Review by W.J. Rayment / Conservative Bookstore -- Drowning in Oil, by Loren C. Steffy is a devastating look at British Petroleum and its operations over the last decade that culminated in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. As the business columnist for the Houston Chronicle, Mr. Steffy has had the opportunity to study the oil industry up close.

Steffy shows British Petroleum to be a curious mixture: an anachronistic, bureaucratic dinosaur left over from the days when the company was largely controlled by the British government, and also as a hard charging energy company bent on maximizing profits at all costs. It is the combination of these two factors that created an atmosphere at BP that proved unsafe both for oil workers and the environment.

The book chronicles the company's history under three CEOs, Browne, Hayward, and Dudley. All three were long-time employees of the company. BP had a history of accidents at its oil facilities that outpaced every other major player in the industry. Before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon (the drilling ship/rig that sat over the ill-fated Maconda well), there had been problems at other facilities especially at a refinery based in Texas City. An explosion there killed 15 workers and injured nearly 200 more.

Steffy builds his case for BP's institutionalized disregard for safety in a convincing manner. In researching this book, he extensively examined testimony in court cases, emails, and a wealth of other documents. From these he pieces together, then fleshes out, what turns out to be an exciting narrative that reaches inside events of the past ten years. The analysis and narrative go hand-in-hand. It is enlightening to read passages that relate eyewitness accounts of exploding towers and platforms, as well as passages that dig deep to reveal the causes for lethal events that probably could have been avoided.

As a conservative reviewer, I feel constrained to point out that this is NOT a liberal attack on capitalism. It is a laying out of the facts of the case. The author levels his laser prose on U.S. government oversight bodies as well as British Petroleum. Even so, there is one aspect of the gulf oil spill that Steffy does not address, the offer of foreign countries to aid in the cleanup that was rejected by the administration. At the time, I was rather incensed by this. I would like to have gotten the full story behind it.

"Drowning in Oil", by Loren C. Steffy, can be read on several levels. First, it is an exciting story that becomes important history. Second, it is a cautionary tale about how industry giants should be managed. Steffy beats the drum hard for a corporate culture that emphasizes safety. This morality tale makes plain that ignoring safety concerns nearly destroyed BP (costing it huge sums as well as pushing down its stock valuation) even as it worked to maximize short term profits.

"Drowning in Oil" is a fascinating read, and puts the events of the recent past as well as their current repercussions in perspective. Must read.

Drowning in Oil? by Loren C. Steffy is available at Amazon.