In Too Deep

February 14, 2011
Reed and Fitzgerald begin their first book with a riveting description of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion. Those employees who weren't killed by the explosion had to "jump the ten stories from the blazing rig to dark waters below." With our attention duly captured, the authors do little to hold it for the rest of the book. Facts are recounted ("Oil flowed for 87 days") and historical perspectives are provided (although it was BP CEO Tony Hayward who received the brunt of the public outcry, former CEO John Browne helped move the company from mid-sized to a kind of "Goldman Sachs" of the oil industry). The authors, both veteran reporters, certainly did their research, noting that BP's plans for managing a disaster on the Gulf Coast were incomplete and apparently copied from Arctic scenarios; documents include recovery plans for "walruses, seals and sea lions." They also unearth past disasters, such as BP's 2005 Texas City refinery explosion in which 15 died, and an oil leak in Alaska in March of 2006 that led the House Energy and Commerce Committee to determine that BP had inadequately maintained its pipeline network, a discovery that led the authors to determine that company incentives as far back as the 1990s helped create the Deepwater disaster. Unfortunately the narrative lacks the emotional color that made this story so compelling. What could have been fascinating is instead just gritty and bleak.