| RUN TO FAILURE BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster Abrahm Lustgarten New York: W. W. Norton & Company, March 2012 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-393-08162-6 | ||||
| ISBN 0-393-08162-1 | 384pp. | HC/BWI | $27.99 | |
| Page x: | "With a burst like a canon, pent-up pressure from the oil and gas exploded from the twenty-one-inch pipe..." |
| Spelling: S/B "cannon". |
| Page xv: | "(The company called for the protection of walruses, which don't live in the gulf.)" |
| Wrong/missing word, capitalization: S/B "plan" (or "company plan") and "Gulf". |
| Page 4: | "It was Browne who had whittled the spreadsheets and made sense of BP America's financial outlook." |
| Word choice: S/B... something other than "whittled". |
| Page 9: | "The idea was that diverse and completely unrelated streams of revenue would help balance out the volatility of oil, which at the time seemed likely to remain so." |
| Vague wording: S/B "volatile". |
| Pages 9-10: | "...and British Petroleum [...] led the way, buying everything from a pet food maker to coal companies in the hopes that they would act as a shield against anything the market—or the OPEC cartel— could inflict on them." |
| Number error: S/B "it". |
| Page 30: | "As they did, he says his vengeance faded and an overriding sense of public justice began to take over." |
| Missing comma, missing words: S/B "he says, his thirst for vengeance". |
| Page 41: | "The river appears so broad and shallow that it can seem like..." |
| What river? The North Slope contains eight or nine rivers, IIRC.1 |
| Page 60: | "At the time is was the Amoco merger that was under way—Browne hadn't yet gotten to ARCO—..." |
| Typo: S/B "it was". |
| Page 73: | "...where dozens of networks of pipelines met in a single large stream to be cleaned up and shipped south, pent-up pressure from the oil and gas exploded from the twenty-one-inch pipe..." |
| Missing words: S/B "met, funneling the oil into a single large stream to be cleaned up and shipped south". |
| Page 73: | "Each of these facilities were state-of-the-art in their heyday..." |
| Number errors: S/B "was" and "its". |
| Page 74: | "...and would one day assume corporate responsibilities far beyond the arctic north." |
| Capitalization: S/B "Arctic". |
| Page 115: | "BP, which earned $285 billion in 2004..." |
| Wording: I tend to interpret this as meaning profits. It is revenue. I would say "took in". |
| Page 163: | "In Alaska she had affected little change..." |
| Word choice: S/B "effected". |
| Pages 163-4: | "If a catastrophe has to occur to get others to belly up to the plate, it's regretful, but it may be necessary..." |
| Word choice: S/B "regrettable". (Since this comes from an e-mail, it may be correct as written but only lacking a "sic".) |
| Page 171: | "Future executives—Browne's Turtles, including Tony Hayward—would have to prove themselves in the gulf." |
| Capitalization: S/B "in the Gulf". |
| Page 179: | "Since 2001, Jeanne Pascal had pressed for the company to elevate its Health, Safety and Environment leadership so that worker's complaints would register..." |
| Apostrophe position: S/B "workers' complaints". |
| Page 181: | "It seemed he had misinterpreted the companies' priorities." |
| Arguably a number error: S/B "company's". |
| Page 235: | "...and Marty Anderson's allegations [...] was for a long time unaddressed." |
| Number error: S/B "were". |
| Page 267: | "The weak spots are invisible, but they can by anywhere." |
| Spelling: S/B "can be". |
| Page 270: | "...a nine-inch-wide main line [...] which runs many miles back to the Gathering Center 1." |
| Extra word: S/B "Gathering Center 1". |
| Page 272: | "His response to her was always, 'Screw you, I'll do what I want.'" |
| Wrong pronoun: S/B "me" since this is a quote from Jeanne Pascal. |
| Page 283: | "Missing design documents not only prove that equipment was assembled properly but are the instruction manuals workers rely on in emergencies." |
| Probably S/B "Design documents". My guess is that another sentence was supposed to describe the impact of their being missing. |
| Page 301: | "The gulf coast states, for example..." |
| Capitalization: S/B "Gulf Coast". |
| Page 301: | "The lessons of the gulf demonstrated..." |
| Capitalization: S/B "Gulf". |
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