Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Monday February 21, 2011
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DISASTER ON THE HORIZON: High Stakes, High Risks, and the Story Behind the Deepwater Well Blowout
Bob Cavnar
Chelsea Green
ISBN 978-1603583169
230 pages
$14.95
Reviewed by Steven Mufson
Just six months after BP stopped its oil from flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, a gusher of books about the spill has begun to wash ashore. The first wave includes three very different approaches to the disaster that riveted the nation most of last summer.
How we interpret the spill is important. The 1969 spill off Santa Barbara soiled the shores and bird life and helped give rise to the modern environmental movement. Exxon's tanker accident in Valdez, Alaska, 20 years later became another symbol of reckless disregard for the environment. What makes the BP oil spill not just shocking but dispiriting is that it might have relatively little impact on ocean-drilling policy beyond a retooling of the regulatory bureaucracy and the imposition of a few additional technological safeguards and backups. The spill has had no effect on the world's appetite for oil, and drilling will continue because the best prospects are offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coasts of Africa and Brazil, in the Caspian Sea and in the Arctic.
The recent spill received massive coverage. At the Associated Press alone, more than 40 reporters and editors were thrown into the fray; teams of reporters were mobilized at papers like The Washington Post, New Orleans Times Picayune, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. But even though the books under review present little if anything new, readers seeking overviews between two neat covers might still find them useful.
"In Too Deep," by Bloomberg journalists Stanley Reed and Alison Fitzgerald, opens with a brief account of the blowout then moves on to BP's history, starting in Iran during the 1950s, when U.S. and British governments overthrew the democratically elected regime for fear that it would hurt foreign oil interests. The authors shift quickly into more recent BP history, describing the enormous and lasting impact of former chief executive John Browne. Browne not only engineered giant mergers with Arco and Amoco, he also helped lead BP into post-Soviet Russia, Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
An intellectual, an engineer and a politically savvy executive with passions for art and opera, Browne guided the company into deepwater exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. He is credited with recognizing that the size of the discoveries in deeper water were increasing, not leveling off. The book also profiles lower-level BP geologists who figured out where to find the likeliest prospects. A striking chart shows BP's average cost of adding a barrel of oil to its proven reserves were lower than any other major oil company's, and a tiny fraction of current prices.
Yet Browne was also a relentless cost-cutter, who squeezed money out of operations that actually should have invested more in maintenance and equipment. The authors blame BP culture for a focus on personal rather than process safety, for leaks in BP's Alaska pipeline, for an explosion at its Texas City refinery and for the gulf blowout.
In this narrative, Browne's successor, Tony Hayward, who resigned in the wake of the spill last year, was the unfortunate inheritor of the company Browne built. Chosen in part because he wasn't flashy -- the board was weary of Browne's celebrity -- Hayward lacked the skills to manage this environmental and public-relations disaster.
In "Blowout in the Gulf," William R. Freudenburg, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who died last year, and Robert Gramling, a sociology professor at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, concentrate on the regulatory framework that failed to prevent the accident. For example, they compare offshore-drilling regulation to airline regulation, and discuss whether regulation might be better handled by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
They examine clean-up techniques and the prolonged and futile efforts made in Valdez. A sign of how their perspective differs from that of Reed and Fitzgerald: the two reporters note that Hayward's parting pay package was not "huge" so that "there would be no reward for failure." Freudenburg and Gramling call Hayward's $17-million package a "golden parachute."
The authors make some solid points about the way the U.S. government has allowed big oil companies to march into public waters, about how the much-admired interstate highway system contributed to a fateful boom in U.S. oil consumption, and about the way Americans ravenously consume oil and gas today. "Despite our habit of referring to oil 'production,' the reality is that the twentieth century was an unprecedented exercise in oil 'destruction,'" they write. "The oil was actually produced during the time of the dinosaurs."
Bob Cavnar brings an insider's view to "Disaster on the Horizon," but not one the industry will like. Cavnar has spent three decades, first on a rig and later as chief executive, working for drilling companies in Texas, Louisiana and offshore areas. But he has a dim view of many industry practices, about which he has blogged for the Huffington Post.
Here, he focuses on the oil rig disaster itself and what caused it, reconstructing a readable narrative based on the extensive testimony given in hearings, newspaper accounts and his own experience. He makes a strong case that the spill was caused by human error. "An older engineer taught me, years ago, that wells actually talk to you," he writes. "In the hours leading up to the disaster, the Well from Hell was screaming at the crew that it was going to blow out, but nobody could understand the language it was speaking." And he notes that in deep water "bad situations can escalate very quickly into catastrophes."
Cavnar ends on a cynical note about whether government will respond constructively. The reorganization of the Minerals Management Service "created two new bureaucracies rather than fixing the one we had," he asserts. The moratorium on offshore drilling, he believes, was not long enough. And a policy to improve our energy security "is badly needed and long overdue."
Readers seeking another take on the Macondo well disaster might look at the well-written report to President Obama by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. Available free online (www.oilspillcommission.gov), it gives an account of the accident, the regulatory environment preceding the accident, and what might be done to prevent future incidents. Though the commission lacked the subpoena power held by congressional and other investigators, it still managed to elicit revealing testimony, especially about the stability of the cement job done by oil services contractor Halliburton.
But the commission steered away from placing blame entirely with one actor, writing: "As the Board that investigated the loss of the Columbia space shuttle noted, 'complex systems almost always fail in complex ways.' Though it is tempting to single out one crucial misstep or point the finger at one bad actor as the cause of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, any such explanation provides a dangerously incomplete picture of what happened -- encouraging the very kind of complacency that led to the accident in the first place."
Steven Mufson is The Washington Post's energy correspondent and a staff writer in its financial section. He can be reached at mufsons(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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SPOUSONOMICS: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes
Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson
Random House
ISBN 978-0385343947
332 pages
$26
Reviewed by Lisa Bonos
Comparing marriage to a business doesn't sound very romantic. But in "Spousonomics" journalists Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson make a convincing -- and creative -- case for how the dismal science can help reconcile marital disputes.
Applying economic research to anecdotes from couples around the country, Szuchman and Anderson draw on concepts such as the division of labor and game theory to help readers determine who should mow the lawn or how to persuade a homebody spouse to join you at the movies. Just as technology has made it easier for countries to be flexible in the global economy, the authors propose, so has the redefining of gender roles allowed spouses to become more adaptable partners.
"Spousonomics" takes a long view on economics, using Holland's tulip craze of the 1500s and the recent housing crisis to explain how relationships can generate their own bubbles, which may need recovery plans. A marriage may seem "too big to fail," but add some stresses (more kids, a more expensive house, a lost job) and that bubble of happiness might stretch to the bursting point.
The authors argue for economics as a domestic arbiter "because it doesn't discriminate between the sexes, between who's 'right' and who's 'wrong' ... doesn't talk down to you or attempt to psychoanalyze." And while the "Spousonomics" egalitarian view of marriage does avoid those pitfalls, some of the problems tackled by the authors appear small-bore. Of course, it's important to balance household and child-rearing duties, find more time for sex and maintain open communication. "Spousonomics" addresses marriage by thinking at the margins. Sometimes that's enough.
But how can economics help with larger problems, such as when one spouse suspects infidelity or the other gambles away the couple's nest egg?
Lisa Bonos can be reached at bonosl(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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