Disastrous greed
In his book “Run To Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster,” Abrahm Lustgarten ’96 digs into the history of the company behind the disastrous 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill.
“The story, though, is not about what happened in the Gulf, but why it happened and who allowed it,” says Lustgarten, an Ithaca native and investigative reporter for ProPublica.
The narrative draws on leaked internal BP documents, court records and interviews to demonstrate how BP consistently placed profit and cost cutting ahead of safety and environmental protection.
“As a result, over two decades, more than 45 people have died, BP has faced three criminal convictions, but no individual BP employee or manager has yet been held accountable for their actions,” Lustgarten says.
The journal Nature says the book “… reads like a thriller, complete with whistle-blowers and double agents … . Lustgarten paints a picture of neglect, hollow proclamations about safety and environmental stewardship, and draconian cost-trimming going back two decades.”
— Susan Lang