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Blowout in the Gulf
Book

Blowout in the Gulf

The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America

William R. Freudenburg and Robert Gramling
MIT Press, 2010

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Scientific
  • Eye Opening
  • Overview

Recommendation

Authors William R. Freudenburg and Robert Gramling are college teachers, and if you have a chance to take their classes, enroll right away. Professors of environmental studies and sociology, respectively, they are very informative, and they base their conclusions on well-reported facts. Their book links US energy policy to oil politics, corporate performance, risk management, and the technological and geological problems that led to the US’s largest peacetime offshore oil spill. The professors cover the oil industry’s history and the energy debate in a single, tightly packed volume, including significant accidents, their causes and the paltry penalties companies – especially British Petroleum – paid. The book contends that oil companies wield too much power over prices, policy and the environment. getAbstract considers this vivid story about these tremendously powerful, hugely profitable companies to be essential reading.

Take-Aways

  • In April 2010, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 men and injuring 17.
  • The blast released 200 million gallons of oil – history’s largest peacetime offshore spill.
  • Human negligence, poor safety and misplaced cost cutting led to the disaster.

About the Authors

William R. Freudenburg is an environmental studies professor at the University of California. Robert Gramling is a sociology professor at the University of Louisiana.

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