06 Mar 2012 09:49:23
"Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster," by ProPublica investigative reporter Abrahm Lustgarten, offers a detailed portrait of a corporate culture that seemed to value controlling costs above human life.
Lustgarten argues that the culture had been spreading like a cancer through the British oil company for years, culminating in the April 2010 tragedy that killed 11, seriously injured 16 and spewed crude oil into the Gulf for 87 days.
"The roots of the story . concern corporate responsibility, business ethics, and leadership and go back at least two decades, to a point at which BP executives sought to redefine the company and reposition it as one of the great corporations of our time," writes Lustgarten, who won a 2009 George Polk award for environmental reporting.
The book, to be published March 26, is timely: a federal judge has delayed until March 5 a trial to decide who should pay for the oil spill damage so BP can continue negotiating a settlement with Gulf fishermen, restaurant owners and other plaintiffs whose livelihoods the oil spill affected.
As a result, "Run to Failure" will either complement negative daily headlines of a trial expected to last almost a year or, perhaps, revive the tragedy just as BP executives thought they'd resolved it.
Lustgarten's research for this scathing expose first appeared on Propublica and PBS's series Frontline in 2010.
"Much of this book was written without the cooperation of BP and its executives," Lustgarten states. "The company repeatedly declined to offer its executives for interviews or to allow me or my colleagues tours of its facilities. In October 2010, after requesting -- and receiving -- dozens of pages of detailed questions in writing, BP provided a one-paragraph response. In a public statement, BP's new CEO, Robert Dudley, denied that BP has an enduring problem managing safety and warned that my forthcoming report, first published and aired in October 2010, would be unflattering."
On Wednesday, a BP spokesman had no comment, saying BP had not yet seen the book. But Dudley was right.
