Run to Failure

BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster

By: Abrahm Lustgarten

Narrated by: Mark Moseley

It was Big Oil's nightmare moment, and the dominoes began falling years before the well was drilled.

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 bought one company after another and then relentlessly fired employees and cut costs. It skipped safety procedures, pumped toxic chemicals back into the ground, and let equipment languish, even while Browne claimed a new era of environmentally sustainable business as his own. 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 BP’s problems, unfixed, were spinning out of control, that another disaster - bigger and deadlier - was inevitable. Nobody was listening.

Having reported on business and the energy industry for nearly a decade, Abrahm Lustgarten uses interviews with key executives, former government investigators, and whistle-blowers along with his exclusive access to BP’s internal documents and emails to weave a spellbinding investigative narrative of hubris and greed well before the gulf oil spill.

©2012 Abraham Lustgarten (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Great Book

I didn’t realize all the behind the scenes and the length of time this went on.

Enough To Make You Sick

A comprehensive examination of the corporate culture that led to the deaths at the Texas City Plant as well as the explosion on the the Deepwater Horizon. The title reflects the BP policy to use every piece of equipment both mechanical or human until it broke down. Some of the men on both the Texas City platform and on the Deepwater Horizon had been putting in hours of overtime for weeks without any days off prior to both accidents. That safety inspection reports that were forged by the company led to breakdowns in the equipment that led to both disasters. This is an in depth look at a corporate culture that cut corners on a regular basis until small problems became large problems that led to breakdowns that eventually became disasters that caused a number of avoidable deaths. Recommended.

Great!

From start to finish I was hooked! Excellent book that was read perfectly. I will listen to it again and again!

This is the type of horror tales I listen to

Sadly this title is not available in my native language or I would be giving away this book to everyone I know, I like to make people face the facts that is usually people's greed and carelessness and not bad luck or lack of understanding that causes "accidents"

Incredible, eye-opening

I work in heavy industry, and have recommended this book to all of my employees. Safety can never be passed up for production or budgetary reasons, and this book provides a plethora of reasons why. Incredible and important book.