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2011 | Buch

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BP and the Macondo Spill

The Complete Story

verfasst von: Colin Read

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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The complete story of the devastating BP oil spill of 2010. The author puts forward an objective account of what happened, a documentation of the true costs, not the hyperbolic costs, and an explanation of the science and business of the spill and its remediation.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Timeline for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

1. Timeline for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Abstract

March 19 — Macondo Prospect lease purchased by a consortium of BP (65%), Anadarko Petroleum (25%), and Mitsui Oil Exploration (10%). This lease sale included 614 other prospect leases, of which 34.5% were at the depth of the Macondo Prospect or deeper.¹

Colin Read

Introduction

2. Introduction

Abstract

We drive to the gas station to purchase fuel for our automobile. Heating oil is delivered automatically to our home to keep us warm through the winter. We do not stop to think about the raw materials that go into the plastics that make so many of the goods we consume. Nor do we dwell on the amount of fuel used to cultivate our food or bring it to market. As a matter of fact, we think little about energy until we are shocked by the displacements and damage caused by a major energy industry calamity. Unfortunately, when such a calamity occurs, we then seek simple explanations, despite our complicity in our increasingly desperate demand for energy.

Colin Read

The Natural and Economic History of Oil

Frontmatter

3. A Brief Natural History of Oil

Abstract

Our fascination with oil is well-founded. Oil is now intertwined into our economy, our livelihood, and, increasingly, in our precarious energy future. The natural history of oil punctuates the earth’s natural history, dating back to an era not unlike our own — one of rising carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Colin Read

4. The Science and Refining of Oil

Abstract

Hydrocarbons literally fuel our economy. Oil is a major constituent of the class of energy labeled nonrenewables that also includes natural gas and coal. The other sources of energy are nuclear, which technically is also a nonrenewable, and renewable energy sources, ranging from wind and solar power, biomass, wave power, and hydroelectric. With the exception of nuclear energy, these energy sources derive their energy content from the sun, through differential heating of the atmosphere, the photons emitted from the Sun and impinging on solar panels, heating fluids, from the creation of weather, or from the absorption of light and carbon dioxide to create carbohydrates in plants.

Colin Read

5. Oil in Our Past and Present

Abstract

While the natural history of oil punctuates the earth’s natural history, its role as the primary energy source for humanity spans little more than a century.

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6. Demand for Oil in Our Future

Abstract

There is little doubt that oil demand will increase significantly as aspiring BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) join the club in the First Economic World. Mitigating this rise in demand will be the ability of the most developed nations to afford new and more efficient technologies. However, if hand-me-down technologies make their way from the First Economic World to newly industrializing nations, and as these nations demand the commodity that they could not at one time afford, oil demand will still increase significantly. We next look at these global economic development phenomena through shifts in worldwide population and wealth.

Colin Read

7. The Industry of Oil Extraction

Abstract

The intensive use of petroleum-based oil is a relatively recent economic phenomenon. While the term “oil” is derived from the Greek term “elaion,”, for olive oil, the term can be used for any material that is liquid at room temperature, will not mix with water, and is soluble by organic solvents. Oils are a combination of carbon and hydrogen, and can refer to either vegetable-based or petroleum-based oils. It is the search for petroleum that now induces us to go to lengths unimaginable just a few decades ago.

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The Uneasy Mix of Oil in Our Natural Environment

Frontmatter

8. The Dirty Dozen before the Deepwater Horizon

Abstract

The media described BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill as the largest spill in history. From April 20, 2010, the day the site first began leaking oil uncontrollably, the media regularly reported each time the leak was estimated to have surpassed other significant spill milestones.

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9. The Case of the Exxon Valdez

Abstract

Lastly, I explore a spill that was less than half the size of the smallest spill documented previously. However, despite its smaller size, it was, until the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, the most significant spill in the minds of the American public, and has created the backdrop and the tone for media coverage ever since.

Colin Read

10. A Brief History of Oil Rig Fires

Abstract

Gas and oil exploration and extraction is intrinsically dangerous. Electrical and diesel-fuel operated equipment must be used to power machines that move highly flammable liquids and gases. While extensive precautions are taken to minimize the risks, fires and explosions on rigs and in distribution and storage networks are actually relatively common. In fact, fires and explosions in the Gulf of Mexico region occur more than 128 times each year, on average (Table 10.1).

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11. Exploration, Drilling, and Extraction U.S. Environmental and Safety Records

Abstract

The oil exploration and drilling industry has long maintained a reputation of roughnecks, John Wayne-type rugged individuals swiftly executing dangerous procedures in search of a volatile and explosive liquid contained in pressurized pockets beneath the earth’s surface. When things, go wrong, as they occasionally do, a daring Red Adair-type individual sweeps in to explode the runaway well back into the earth.⁴⁸

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The Macondo Prospect and What Went Wrong

Frontmatter

12. The Macondo Prospect

Abstract

The Latin American novelist Gabriel José de la Concordia Garcia Márquezwon the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his novels and short stories that often depicted a fictional village in Colombia called Macondo. This village portrayed a sense of magic and solitude. The town’s association with magical realism in the novels led some in Latin America to refer to the evolution from solitude to wealth, and back to solitude, or to absurd news events, as belonging to Macondo.

Colin Read

13. What Went Wrong — A Congressional Perspective

Abstract

Like the fickle Macondo village of fictional fame that bounced between feast and famine, the Macondo Project would not easily give up its fortunes. With the reputation as a difficult well, only those drillers most confident could vie for an expected bounty worth perhaps $40 billion.

Colin Read

14. Lessons for BP from More Considered Reviews

Abstract

There is little doubt now that there was not one single engineering, equipment, or human failure that led to the Macondo disaster. The oil industry now well knows that complex systems create the possibility of complex failures. The Challenger space shuttle disaster has taught engineers that risk management must expand in proportion to the complexity of engineered systems. What is less understood, even today, is the role of management systems that can rival in sophistication the engineering systems designed to mitigate risk. After all, as BP’s own engineering analysis shows, even multiple engineering safeguards and sophisticated data acquisition may fail if humans cannot properly manage an enterprise growing in complexity.

Colin Read

15. The Principal—Agent Problem and Transocean

Abstract

Corporate responsibility lies in three realms — the economic, the ethical, and the legal. Much of the posturing between half a dozen entities, BP, Transocean, Halliburton, Cameron International, the regulatory agencies, and even first responders, are all based on fears of legal liability. However, there are greater principles invoked by the disaster and the responsibility of various interested parties who could have helped avoid it.

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16. The Management of Risk

Abstract

The principal-agent tension between the company man and the contractor may actually create a healthy dialog that biases decisions toward safety. However, decisions must inevitably be made that provide some balance between reward and risk.

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The Spectacle of the Spill

Frontmatter

17. For All the World to See

Abstract

Obviously, no oil company can afford the stigma and liability of a major oil spill or explosion. The industry would prefer to pump over 20 billion barrels of crude annually without spilling a drop of oil. Even though four million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico is but 1/4000th of one year’s production, or less than the share of a single drop in a one gallon bucket, such a spill is by no means the proverbial drop in a bucket.¹⁰²

Colin Read

18. Partners in the Problem

Abstract

BP was hardly alone in the Deepwater Horizon spill. Anadarko Petroleum and Mitsui Oil Exploration Company are 25% and 10% minority owners of the well, respectively. Transocean, the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor, even before it swallowed up the next largest competitor a few years earlier, owned and operated the platform that exploded, and most of the employees on the rig on April 20 worked for Transocean. Halliburton, the world’s second largest oil services firm, performed the cement job, and Cameron International had built a blowout preventer that had been since maintained and overhauled by yet other contractors.

Colin Read

19. Engineering a Solution

Abstract

The BP spill was not the first deepwater blowout in history. However, it produced the largest daily flow, had the greatest sense of immediacy, commanded the most resources in its solution, and was, by far, the most visible of any similar spill. As a consequence, it demanded the most of the engineers who would be responsible for stopping the flow.

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20. The Toll on the Environment

Abstract

With a final cap in place and the well killed, and with no new oil released into the Gulf, cleanup crews could begin to get ahead of the environmental calamity. Those crews cleaned up beaches, placed, and replaced booms offshore. They had also rinsed grasslands when intervention was more effective, and would induce less damage, than allowing nature to regenerate the marshes. Finally, they could see much more rapid progress.

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Politics, Courts, and Markets

Frontmatter

21. The Politics of Oil

Abstract

Oil is intrinsically political. No other resource commands the interest and passion of oil, the intrigue of wily oilmen, robed sheiks, kings and sultans, roughnecking cowboys, and stiff-suited executives. Jimmy Carter, the president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, won and then lost an election, in large part due to oil. And, the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) redressed global power balances in a seemingly irreversible way when it discarded the colonial model of oil exploitation, asserted its power to control a significant part of the world’s oil reserves, and moved the price of a barrel of oil from single digits to triple digits. Oil, and the cars and trucks that consume it, are typically the largest items in countries’ balance of trade. Now, many hourly newscasts quote the value of the Dow Jones Industrial stock market average and the price of oil. And, in the year of the Deepwater Horizon spill, China, the world’s next oil-thirsty nation, overtook the United States as the world’s largest market for automobiles and overtook Japan to became the world’s second largest economy.

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22. A Complicated Legal Quagmire

Abstract

The final word on the Deepwater Horizon spill will be spoken in court, or in a number of courts. The legal issues are intricate. Further complicating proceedings will be a desire for plaintiffs, from the Federal to state governments, commercial fishers and tourist operators, and the families of those lost at sea when the platform exploded and caught fire, to have their day in court at a venue of their choosing. Ideally, each plaintiff, or small group of plaintiffs, would like home court advantage. Alternately, BP and other plaintiffs will try to consolidate proceedings into larger classes, and adjudicate them in a courtroom in a city that appreciates Big Oil. Meanwhile, BP will make every effort to pull its partners into court with it, or will try to sue its partners on the side.

Colin Read

23. The Market Response

Abstract

In the heyday of rising oil prices, and just four years before the Deepwater Horizon spill, BP ranked fifth in the world in the value of non-state owned firms. With a market value of $233.2 billion, BP had been rising rapidly in both value and rank. It ranked second among oil firms, and followed only ExxonMobil, General Electric, Microsoft, and Citigroup, in that order.¹³⁹

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Where Do BP, Big Oil, and Energy-Starved Consumers Go from Here?

Frontmatter

24. Reform of Regulatory Oversight

Abstract

The Minerals Management Service, renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement shortly after the spill, is a collection of 1,700 employees that regulate those industries which extract oil and minerals from the nation’s outer continental shelf. It collects more than $13 billion per year from oil royalties. It has also been a lightning rod for controversy for years.

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25. What Do We Do with the World’s Insatiable Need for Energy

Abstract

Before we conclude, we must return to the root of the problem.

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26. Conclusion

Abstract

It is difficult to argue that there is such a thing as a prevalent cross-corporate culture that would lead a company such as BP to risk the lives of its workers. All will agree that mistakes were made. However, while companies may have pockets of operations that must become more diligent in its safety procedures, no corporation as large as BP can be so easily caricatured.

Colin Read

Backmatter

Titel: BP and the Macondo Spill
verfasst von: Colin Read
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN: 978-0-230-30508-3
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-33303-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305083