Disaster on the Horizon (eBook)

1. Unleashing the beast and paying the price

2. The well from hell: drilling the Deepwater

3. How blowout preventers don't work

4. Technology reaching beyond our ability to control it

5. A rogue from the start: influencing world politics, gambling with safety

6. How did we get here? A brief history of offshore drilling

7. Corporate shape-shifting and the BP-government merger

8. How not to save an ecosystem: dispersants, skimming, and booming

9. Top cap, top hat, top kill, capping stack: making it up as we go along

10. Going for the kill: firefighting and relief wells

11. The politics of offshore drilling

12. The aftermath: what do we do now?

lt;p>Publishers Weekly-

Cavnar, a veteran of the energy industry (including early work on oil rigs and pipeline construction), does a more-than-admirable job of clarifying deepwater drilling, specifically the corporate interests behind it and the mechanics and risks associated with it. Cavnar approach his subject like a muckraking reporter, pointing fingers and wringing hands and, though he doesn't spare BP, he argues that their hands were tied. Regarding their lowball estimates of oil spilled in the early days, Cavnar states that "liability is based on the amount of oil released into the environment"; though BP officials "probably had calculated the actual flow rate to within a few percent," releasing those figures would have meant owning up to a much greater liability. Especially chilling is Cavnar's assertion that other disasters will follow Deepwater Horizon, since 27% of domestic production comes from deepwater drilling and a 2009 study of subsea Blow Out Protectors showed a failure rate of 45%. Even if the US were to regulate or ban all offshore drilling, multinational companies would set up deepwater rigs near more lenient nations to sidestep the problem. Ultimately Cavnar issues a call to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels; only this, he suggest, will spare us ecological catastrophe.