Anyone who worked with BP in the past two decades will tell you waking up April 21, 2010 and hearing the news of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout was not a surprise. An intricate turn of events in the BP corporate shell was inevitably leading up to an unprecedented environmental disaster. 
In Search of Profits
Like most environmental disaster stories in history, we must unveil the ominous series of events that had to amass in order to allow such a disaster to occur; the story of Deepwater Horizon is incomplete without an understanding of the “logical” processes that lead to the spill.
The causes of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill did not begin in the weeks prior to the accident, rather this mindset in BP began two decades ago.
It all started when BP’s oil reserves began declining. From 1960 to 1989 the oil reserve fell from seventy billion barrels to five billion barrels of oil. That’s almost a 93 percent decrease in total oil reserves in only 29 years. The prospects of BP did not seem promising and John Browne, a new face within the company, stepped up to take on the challenge of repairing the company.
“The danger arises when you think oil prices are going to get you out of a fix.”
-John Browne
This time, for the oil industry, was crucial. The oil supply was predicted to run out and oil companies needed to get more creative with their oil reserves. Browne lead BP to a risk loving culture by dropping all of the oil refineries that were making a small, consistent profit to free up resources for exploration of new sites, sites that were never thought of as being possible to excavate. To re-calibrate the company, Browne fired 1,700 people, restructured management companies, and sold all low-profit ventures. Globally, by 1992 BP was planning on eliminating 11,500 jobs.
“We face rising taxes, higher running costs and more onerous regulations worldwide. We are also aware that we must be leaders in responsible environmental protection and that there are lessons to be learned about promoting the health and safety of our workforce. All these factors are driving up costs and putting margins under severe pressure.”
-John Browne
The Cost of Safety
Alaska -
To cut costs, BP got rid of overhead costs in Alaska by putting the management on the site responsible for controlling profits and general site management. In light of this, oil well sites took liberties with their safety protocols. On Rig 15 in Alaska, the managers began cutting costs, so instead of shipping toxic sludge to specialized disposal sites, they began injecting it back into their wells.
Millions of gallons of waste were pumped under the site over the course of two years. A criminal investigation took place that lead to negotiations between BP and the federal government; BP was never prosecuted.
In pursuit of even larger budget cuts, BP cut the Corrosion, Inspection and Chemicals (CIC) department budget. CIC is one of the most important departments because it monitors the pipelines in Alaska which were, at the time, BP’s largest assets.Their budget was cut from $3 million in 1985 to $950,000 in 1997.Records show that by 1997, a large portion of the pipeline’s walls have eroded in access of 50%, so the remaining walls were less than half of their built thickness.
BP supervisors explicitly told employees servicing and maintaining these pipes to skew the data by checking at points on the line that were least susceptible to corrosion.
Texas -
In Texas, BP was operating an oil refinery that they acquired after their merger with Amoco. The cut costs, BP stopped buying new safety shoes for employees, eliminated safety calendars, fired inspectors and maintenance workers and stopped rewarding safety performance. Feverishly cutting budgets, BP eliminated televisions and cable channels from employee lounges to save $20,000, in the same year that BP earned $285 billion.
In total, they cut costs equal to the amount of money BP earns every seventeen seconds.
But this was still not enough to pull the refineries weight, $30 million still had to be carved out of the budget and $140 million was to materialize in profits. Due to aging and unmaintained equipment, in 2004, a furnace rupture sparked a fire causing $30 million in damages.There was, in fact, at least one fire a week in this facility and a fatality every sixteen weeks while maintenance checks were routinely omitted.
“The prevailing culture at the Texas City refinery was to accept cost reductions without challenge and not to raise concerns when operational integrity was compromised.”
– Vice President of group refining 2002
Workers died from rusty hand railings; one man leaned over a railing that collapsed under his weight and he fell to his death. Later that year, the plant completely blew up, killing 15 people and injuring 170 more.
“We have never seen a site where the notion of ‘I could die today’ was so real for so many hourly people.”
-Telos Group survey
An investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found that the explosion was a direct result of BP’s cost-cutting tendencies and BP was fined $87 million (the largest fine ever given by the OSHA).
“It seems like it all comes down to money. We tell them we need it. They tell us they don’t have the money. As soon as it blows up or someone gets hurt there’s all sorts of money.”
– an employee at the Texas refinery
The Starburst
After a few international oil scandals about human rights issues and environmental responsibility in the field, John Brown decided to revamp BP into an environmentally conscious company.
“They say the industry damages environments and communities and that it generates pollution and waste. They say those involved in the industry are secretive, arrogant, and driven solely by profit.”
– John Browne
In 1999 Browne partook in rebranding BP to “Beyond Petroleum” resulting in one of the most successful green campaigns in history. BP invested in solar energy, created programs to cut BP’s carbon dioxide emissions, and funded research into climate change.
“I believe that we’ve now come to an important moment in our consideration of the environment; the moment when we need to go beyond analysis to seek solutions and to take action. It is a moment for change and for a rethinking of corporate responsibility.”
– John Browne
Even with all of this publicity that BP was showing at face value, BP managers were receiving bonuses for successfully lobbying governments to exempt counties with BP refineries from caps on various pollution emissions. In Texas, Susan Moore received a $1,000 bonus for saving BP $150 million in emission control costs through such measures.
Deepwater Horizon
BP began looking into the Gulf of Mexico’s potential oil reserves as early as 1987 – the entire exploration budget, $50 million, was spent on the Gulf of Mexico exploration. Following a few large oil findings in the Gulf, BP rose to being the largest oil producer in the United States by the end of the 1980’s.
“As we enter the last two weeks of 2007, we are experiencing an unprecedented frequency of serious incidents in our operations. We are extremely fortunate that one or more of our co-workers has not been seriously injured or killed.”
– Richard Morrison, BP’s Vice President of Gulf of Mexico production
Establishing the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Macondo Prospect cost $1 million per day. The rig was leased from Transocean for $500,000 and the additional employees and supplies for $500,000 per day. The drilling went longer than expected and BP began operating on a reckless, fast-paced schedule, often by-passing safety checks and regulations. Before the blowout, records show that the blowout preventer was leaking fluids, the fluids that were critical to close the pinchers of the preventer.
There were other problems that were found on the rig: a dead battery, hydraulic system leaks, the blowout preventer was a test pipe, not a piece of equipment meant for actual use, and the fact the all of the systems to close off the well from a blowout weren’t functional.
The Culture of Profit
“Mounting evidence clearly demonstrates that this tragedy was preventable and the direct result of BP’s reckless decisions and actions.”
– James Hackett, chairman of Anadarko Petroleum
“It is a very significant finding that BP does not effectively investigate incidents throughout the corporation.”
-Daniel Horowitz, spokesperson for the James A. Baker III commission group
“BP has a long and sordid history of cutting costs and pushing the limits in search of higher profits.”
– Representative Edward Markey, (D-Massachusetts) 
“[I]n virtually every instance where BP had a decision to make about the Macondo well, it chose the option that presented the lowest costs or saved the most time. There appeared to be a pattern deeply ingrained in BP’s corporate culture where the costs and benefits of each action were weighed in isolation, without considering the bigger picture.”
–Magner (2011)
The events leading up to the Deepwater Horizon disaster did not begin shortly before the spill, on the contrary, the thought process leading up to this disaster began decades ago. As an international corporation, BP was reshaped to cut costs at any cost. The loss of life, flora, and fauna throughout the years of BP’s profit culture infinitely outweigh the costs BP now faces. Given BP’s blatant, continuous disregard for safety issues, nobody profited from BP’s profit culture, instead we now have a dark stain blotched our history.
References
Achenbach, J. (2011). A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher. Simon & Schuster: New York, New York.
Cavnar, B. (2010). Disaster on the Horizon: High Stakes, High Risks, and the Story Behind the Deepwater Well Blowout. Chelsea Green Publishing Company: White River Junction, Vermont.
Freudenburg, W. R., and Gramling, R. (2011). Blowout in the Gulf: The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America. The MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Gessner, D. (2011). The Tarball Chronicles: A Journey Beyond the Oiled Pelican and Into the Heart of the Gulf Oil Spill. Milkweed: Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Konrad, J., and Shroder, T. (2011). Fire on the Horizon: The Untold Story of the Gulf Oil Disaster. HarperCollins Publishers: New York, New York.
Lustgarten, A. (2012). Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc: New York, New York.
Lehner, P., and Deans, B. (2010). In Deep Water: The Anatomy of a Disaster, the Fate of the Gulf, and How to End Our Oil Addiction. Bookmobile: New York, New York.
Magner, M. (2011). Poisoned Legacy: The Human Cost of BP’s Rise to Power. St. Martin’s Press: New York, New York.
Reed, S., and Fitzgerald, A. (2011). In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race That Took it Down. Bloomberg News: Hoboken, New Jersey.
Safina, C. (2011). A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout. Crown Publishers: New York, New York.
Overview