The Pinto, introduced in 1971, was designed to compete with imported cars. Unfortunately, it featured a fatal design flaw: the gasoline tank was placed so that it could burst into flames in rear-end crashes, even at speeds as low as 20 to 30 mph. Ford estimated the move would cost $11 per car. But in the infamous “Pinto Memo,” Ford determined it would cost 60% less to pay death benefits from accidents than to recall and fix the 12 million cars. Additionally, Ford failed to learn from the public relations backlash it faced after the release of the memo, which revealed that the company prioritized profits over human life. BP did not learn anything from that lesson.
Following a rather harrowing recapitulation of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the author goes into a detailed explanation of why BP was in the mess that it was and its inability to drill safely. They were in a difficult position, as the British government had owned a large part of the company until Margaret Thatcher decided to sell 30% of BP's shares into the market. This decision coincided with the 1988 market crash, which greatly decreased the value of their stock. At that time, Americans did not have the foresight to purchase BP's shares and initiate operations, but the Kuwaiti government took advantage of the opportunity. Kuwait bought up 22% of BP's available stock. Then we had the Exxon Valdez accident. And even though that was an Exxon problem, apparently the skipper of the ship was drunk, which was a real problem. BP was not ready for a cleanup. The American public was not willing to drill in the Alaskan wilderness, and hopes of opening new oil fields were crushed when BP was running out of oil. John Browne’s rise to the chairmanship of BP probably saved the company, but in the process led to a diminution of emphasis on maintenance and safety and a change in the culture.
All the world's biggest private oil companies were denied access to the best reserves in the Middle East, Venezuela, and North Africa—at least 75 percent of the world's total oil supply. British Petroleum may have suffered the most, but the crisis forced the industry to rethink its survival strategies and sparked a competition for growth and diversification of income sources. One way was to find security in becoming a global corporate conglomerate, this being the prevailing thinking of the day. The idea was that multiple, unrelated revenue streams would offset the volatility of oil, which appeared likely at the time.
But at Alaska and every other aging British Petroleum property, managers faced a paradoxical task: Make more money on a per-barrel basis even as the number of barrels produced diminishes, daily operating expenses remain more or less constant, and the equipment needed to do it requires more maintenance and larger investments. The trends were working against each other. Browne's management acknowledged this paradox with a concession: management should not seek to produce more oil at lower cost in Alaska but should seek to maintain "lifting costs" or to produce the same amount of oil at the same cost . Browne was not shy about saying he wanted British Petroleum to be a global player in the oil industry. He had a better moral motive as well.
Browne wanted, singlehandedly, to change the public’s view of the oil business, to make British Petroleum the antithesis of Big Oil, to answer the industry’s critics. He was referring to Exxon’s environmental record at the time. “Now the industry was judged by its worst member,” he wrote, referring to the least reputable company in the sector. Then he began talking about things no oil executive had ever talked about. The oil industry should be thinking of environmental sustainability. Oil companies could and should do something about climate change. He denounced the old oil business as greedy and environmentally insensitive, attempting to distance himself from it, as if claiming moral superiority could protect him from public suspicion. And he’d often talk as if the problems were very separate from British Petroleum, and that his company wouldn’t do any of those things. He promised to take the message back to impact the culture in the operations of BP.
Browne expanded the company through multiple mergers, but as is common with such endeavors, a severe case of mergeritis ensued. This led to a need for widespread cost-cutting to pay down debt and maintain the stock price. According to Pratt, BP did not have the same strong engineering emphasis as Exxon. Instead, BP focused on vague goals like being "green" and maximizing profitability. The company's constant emphasis on saving money, along with bonuses for achieving those savings, made it difficult to sell the idea of operational rigor to its employees. BP was experiencing classic mergeritis in its efforts to increase revenue to pay off debt and reduce expenses. As a result, most of the maintenance budget was severely cut. Additionally, there was a significant disconnect between budget personnel and operational staff. Engineers were typically excluded from budget discussions, and their recommendations were often disregarded in attempts to keep the stock market satisfied and to present a more favorable image of the company than was warranted. Pressure was immense. An email from a manager made this clear: "I want to see what it will take in terms of actions and risks and mitigations to those risks to reduce your LE [lower estimate] by 1 million bucks by Wednesday morning," wrote Woollam's boss. Until cuts could be identified within the program itself, reductions would come from managers’ salaries.
The result was an almost complete reduction in maintenance. The Texas City refinery was the perfect example of the result: there was a terrible explosion there because of all the deferred maintenance in order to keep the bottom line looking reasonably healthy. [1]
In the meantime, they had to deal with possible debarment from the EPA (meaning they would not qualify for more government contracts) . The EPA's representative assumed, based on interviews with BP managers, that the problems at Prudhoe Bay were one-offs.
Following a string of serious environmental violations in Alaska, where BP had large oil reserves, which nearly derailed several major mergers, Browne had BP on a sound footing but still needed to gain access to more oil reserves. The Gulf of Mexico was the logical choice, with one of its new partners experienced with drilling there.
But little had changed in the Gulf by 2010. BP’s corporate culture prioritized short-term profit maximization over safety investments, driven by shareholder demands typical of publicly traded companies. Browne’s replacement, CEO Tony Hayward, cut maintenance budgets and eliminated management redundancies even while hazards were rising. Their spill response plan was a miserable failure, plagiarized from NOAA websites with unrelated animal safeguards (sea lions and walruses didn’t inhabit Gulf waters) and even identified a marine biologist who died five years earlier. That was part of a broader pattern in which BP did not communicate the notion that safety investments were part of a long-term strategy, but rivals such as ExxonMobil were better at communicating that message.
It was hard to balance hydrostatic pressure between the well and the surrounding geology in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling companies used heavy mud, a specific mix of substances, to maintain the balance. But the ground was so weak that too much weight could break rocks and make them fall. Despite being aware of these risks, BP chose to disregard industry best practices. For example, they used cheaper steel casing against advice, hired fewer centralizers than suggested, used only half of the recommended cement in a mixture that wasn't reliable, and didn't use a cement bond log to test the cement job. Multiple times, the Macondo well had lost circulation, which was already a problem. However, BP kept taking these cost-cutting steps that made the risk of a blowout higher. One of the crews hired to check the well's safety wouldn't stay on the platform when BP chose not to test. The result was the blast and the terrible oil spill.
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[1] Then another explosion happened in March 2026 after BP sold the refinery off. The 2026 Valero Port Arthur refinery explosion is notable for its dramatic visual impact and rapid containment with no loss of life. The March 2026 incident sent towering plumes of smoke and flames into the sky, caused structural vibrations felt for miles and led to a temporary shelter-in-place order for residents in western Port Arthur . Although the explosion was severe and the immediate disruption to the local community was considerable, authorities confirmed there had been no injuries and the fire was extinguished within 24 hours, allowing for the quick lifting of safety orders.
The 2005 BP Texas City refinery explosion was an epic failure of safety protocols with a horrific human toll. The blast was triggered by the ignition of a hydrocarbon vapor cloud in the isomerization unit. It killed 15 workers and injured more than 180 others, making it one of the deadliest industrial accidents in U.S. history. The 2005 disaster revealed deep organizational and technical neglect, resulting in massive fines, criminal charges, and a fundamental overhaul of BP’s safety culture that ultimately helped lead to the divestment of its North American refining assets.
The culture of impatience and intolerance for any disruption to corporate momentum appeared to be intensifying. Workers observed the behavior of their leaders, who, despite advocating for safety and environmental responsibility, were actually motivated by quotas, budgets, and quarterly results. According to the workers, these values began to reverberate throughout the organization. Technicians and mechanics, facing risks in the oil fields, became more inclined to protect their own interests and ensure steady paychecks rather than take the necessary precautions to thoroughly inspect potentially hazardous equipment that was often neglected.
[2] I have long been interested in the effects of mergers. A search on changes in oil refinery ownership shows that sudden changes in control, like when a refinery is privatized or bought out, can put safety systems under a lot of stress. During these changes, set maintenance schedules (called TAM cycles) are often thrown off, which can put equipment, instruments, and alarm systems at risk. Literature says that when new owners put short-term profits or streamlining operations ahead of long-term dependability, the "safety barriers" that protect workers can weaken. This makes it more likely that there will be unexpected shutdowns, equipment failures, and serious accidents. This fits with what was learned from the BP Texas City disaster in 2005, where changes in the way the company was run and efforts to cut costs were blamed for the terrible accident.
A study titled "Examining Organizational and Safety Culture Causes of the BP Texas City Refinery Explosion" (available via ResearchGate) details how the pressure to cut costs post-merger led to a breakdown in "human-factors engineering principles." It highlights that when maintenance is treated as a variable cost to be minimized rather than a safety imperative, the risk of catastrophic failure increases exponentially.
Additional Reading:
Andrew Hopkins is a sociologist in Australia specializing in the study of how organizational behavior and structure affect safety and regulations.
Hopkins, A. Failure to learn: The BP Texas city refinery disaster. Lightning Source, 2008.
Hopkins, A. Disastrous decisions: The human organisational causes of the Gulf of Mexico blowout. 2012.
Hopkins, A. Failure to learn the BP Texas city refinery disaster. 2015.
Hopkins, Andrew. "'Safety Case Regulation Post-Macondo' at Piper 25." YouTube. n.d. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg1ZRHH-RH4. [Macondo was the official name of the Deepwater Horizon installation.)
Hopkins, Andrew. "Working Paper 87." U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board | CSB. Accessed May 25, 2026. https://www.csb.gov/assets/1/7/workingpaper_87.pdf.
Kirwan, B., A. Hale, and A. Hopkins. Changing regulation: Controlling risks in society. Elsevier, 2002.
Videos:
"BP Texas City Explosion." YouTube. n.d. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti9YfdXqbjs.
