The Well From Hell

"Laissez Les Bonnes Temps Roulez" Let the good times roll is a New Orleans expression that fits with the reputation of the Big Easy, and has been easily adopted by the Big Oil interests in the Gulf of Mexico and throughout the world. The Well From Hell brings to light the long-held tradition of big risk, big reward and big egoes held by BP and its counterparts. It's a culture that has led to a sordid safety and environmental record for that company, and culminated in the disaster of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on April 20, 2010. From BP's legendary earliest oil explorer, William D'Arcy, whose 1908 discovery of a gusher in Iran helped to cement Britain's place as a global energy broker, to its more recent leader, John Browne, who took the gamble that deep-sea oil drilling would ward off the 'end of oil' for a few more decades, drilling has increasingly become "a game of high-stakes Texas poker with colossal risks and astronomically high potential gains." The tragedy of the Deepwater Horizon spill claimed 11 lives of its crew. It may be decades before we know the full extent of the environmental damage it caused. Yet, with more than 4,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico alone and the future of our global economy and our environmental health at risk, Sargent leads us to question just how high we are willing to let the stakes go in the gamble for our global energy future.