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- [00:00]
Zach Goldbaum
Wondry subscribers can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now. Join Wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. It's The Night of April 20, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon sits some 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. It's a huge floating oil rig form, 400ft long and 250ft wide with a 20 story oil derrick at the center. The whole operation balances on massive pontoons and connects to a wellhead nearly a mile down on the seafloor. And below that, a drill that's tunneled another 13,000ft into the earth. Searching for oil, the Damon Bankston, a smaller supply ship, bobs in the shadow of the Deepwater rig. It's there so the Deepwater can offload all of its drilling mud, a thick lubricant used in oil wells. It's a routine process, nothing that the Bankston's captain Alwyn Landry, has to worry about. Around 9:30 that night, he's on the bridge of his ship updating his daily log like he always does. But then all of a sudden, drilling mud starts pouring down from the sky like black rain. Landry's first thought is that they have a ruptured hose on their hands. But then he looks up at the deep water rig. He sees MU spewing out of the massive oil derrick. It looks like an erupting volcano. That is not good. Landry radios the deep water rig and they confirm that they're having trouble with the well. They tell Landry to move the Damon Bankston 500 meters away, but Landry can't do that just yet. There's still a hose connecting his ship to the rig. Suddenly there's a flash of green light and an explosion rips through through the Deepwater rig. Debris flies everywhere as the rig goes dark and Landry can't quite make out what's happening. Then there's a second explosion. Flames erupt on the Deepwater rig, leaping into the sky. Over his radio, Landry hears Deepwater's crew issue a mayday call. Landry's crew hustles to disconnect the hose and back up the Damon Bankston to a safe distance. They train a searchlight on the Deepwater rig and watch in horror as the flames grow and grow. Captain Landry sees people scrambling to the life rafts. He sees others start jumping off the decks, some as high as 150ft into the oily waters below. Landry hops into action, ordering the Bankston's recovery craft into the water. This standby cleanup operation has now become a rescue mission. Alwyn Landry doesn't know it yet, but these are the opening moments of what would become the worst environmental disaster in US History. But years earlier, alarm bells were already sounding and a conspiracy to silence them was in the works. From Wondry, I'm Zach Goldown, and this is Lawless Planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.
- [03:44]
Scott West
If you cut corners and don't get caught, great. If you do cut corners and get caught, then you pull out your checkbook and that just becomes a cost of doing business.
- [04:01]
Carrie
Why choose a sleep number? Smart bed?
- [04:03]
Scott West
Can I make my site softer?
- [04:04]
Carrie
Can I make my site firmer?
- [04:06]
Zach Goldbaum
Can we sleep cooler?
- [04:08]
Carrie
Sleep number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side your sleep number setting. Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. And now max out your savings. The more you buy, the more you save on beds, bases and more. Plus, get free home delivery on any smart bed with base limited time. Check it out at a sleep number store near you or@sleepnumber.com today.
- [04:32]
Friend of Carrie
Hey, Pod listeners. Have we got a fun new game for you.
- [04:35]
Carrie
It's called Quick, Quick, Quick. A game that has outrageous questions that will keep you playing and laughing for hours like this. Quick, quick, quick. List three gifts you'd never give a cowboy.
- [04:44]
Friend of Carrie
And you can say anything.
- [04:45]
Zach Goldbaum
There's no wrong answers, so go get it.
- [04:47]
Carrie
Quick, quick, quickly. Available now at Target.
- [04:58]
Zach Goldbaum
The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and sent 168 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, coating marine ecosystems, destroying coastal livelihoods, and forever altering the region's landscape. The disaster and its aftermath have become a defining moment in American history. Spawning books, documentaries, and. And even a movie with Mark Wahlberg. It's still burning, Mr. Jimmy.
- [05:30]
Scott West
We gotta go.
- [05:33]
Zach Goldbaum
But despite all of the coverage, there is one critical part of the story that is often overlooked. How it was allowed to happen in the first place. Because like most man made disasters, it was preventable, maybe even predictable. So for the next two weeks, we're going to tell the story of both the lead up to Deepwater and the disaster itself. And to understand how it occurred, we need to tell the story of the company that was operating Deepwater Horizon, bp, and their long history of prioritizing profits over safety. That story begins with one man who tried to hold them accountable.
- [06:18]
Scott West
I've Done a lot of interesting things in my life. I studied to be a priest. I came to the realization that being a professional Christian wasn't for me in the spiritual realm. I became acutely aware of how important the natural environment is to us and every living thing and non living thing on this planet.
- [06:41]
Zach Goldbaum
Scott West's career path sounds like the start of a bad joke. A priest, a customs agent, and a lawyer walk into a bar. But at various points in his life, he planned on being all three. Though he never became a priest or a lawyer, he did land a job with the U.S. customs Service as a criminal investigator. Then in 1989, he took a similar job at the Environmental Protection Agency. He was one of just 52 EPA criminal investigators in the country. If a corporation is illegally disposing of hazardous waste or breaking emissions laws, Scott is your guy.
- [07:17]
Scott West
I did a good job, got promoted, got transferred all around the country. And so in 2005, I was transferred to Seattle to run the Seattle area office.
- [07:31]
Zach Goldbaum
That's when he gets introduced to a former oil broker in Alaska named Chuck Hamill. Chuck's on a crusade against BP because they sold him bad oil with too much water in it and then refused to take responsibility for it. So now it's Chuck's personal mission to expose BP for their bad practices, to get the inside scoop on what else the company is doing. Chuck has befriended a lot of BP workers stationed at the Prudhoe Bay oil field on Alaska's North Slope. It's up in the northernmost part of the state, pretty much as remote as you can get, and there, far from prying eyes. Chuck says BP's oil operations have been running rampant.
- [08:13]
Scott West
He began to learn a lot about the problems on maintenance and corrosion and bad management, dangerous things. People were getting killed. Oil was getting all over the place.
- [08:26]
Zach Goldbaum
Chuck Hamill is a former aide for an Alaskan senator, and he still has friends in Congress. He had shared the issues he was hearing about and even got some hearings started. But BP wasn't just about to sit back and let him badmouth him.
- [08:40]
Scott West
BP ended up hiring a investigative firm to try to find dirt on Hamill. They followed him around, they went to his trash. They set up a sting operation at a hotel in Anchorage, trying to get him on camera with some hookers, and he never fell for it.
- [08:58]
Zach Goldbaum
So now, after Congress hasn't done enough to punish bp, Chuck starts sharing all the info he collected with Scott.
- [09:08]
Scott West
He scared me to death with what he was saying about the state of these pipelines and the conditions up there, that there was going to be a catastrophic release of oil. He wanted me to do something about it and I wanted to do something about it. But I told him, chuck, you know, you're giving me hearsay.
- [09:27]
Zach Goldbaum
Scott wants to talk directly to Chuck's sources to verify what they're saying. But Chuck's protective of them. He knows how retaliatory and vindictive BP can be, especially to employees who speak out about their concerns. And yet, something about Scott makes Chuck trust him. So he reaches out to his contacts to see if any of them are willing to talk to Scott directly. Scott waits impatiently to hear what Chuck's sources have to say. He knows that if they can't move quickly, the results could be disastrous. In fact, just a few months earlier, BP's practices had already led to tragedy. But not in Alaska. In Texas. It's early afternoon on March 23, 2005, in Texas City, Texas, about 40 miles outside of Houston. BP's refinery looms over the town, a thick scent of oil on the breeze. The plant is one of the largest in the country. It's also a dangerous place to work. Over the last three decades, 23 employees have died while on the clock. Today, workers move around the plant, going through their usual routines. What they don't know is that a piece of aging equipment called a blowdown drum is quietly failing. The drum is supposed to catch volatile gas and liquid when pressure spikes. But today it's not working. Gas is venting into the air, invisible and explosive. Around 1.20pm, two workers sit in a nearby diesel pickup truck with the engine idling. When the truck backfires, it ignites the surrounding vapor cloud and the plant erupts. The explosion shakes the town and windows shatter. Nearly a mile away, thick black smoke rises over the refinery. And across Texas City, 911 dispatchers are suddenly flooded with calls.
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Scott West
911.
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Zach Goldbaum
A plant just blew up. Oh, my God.
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Scott West
I was sitting at a red light.
- [11:35]
Zach Goldbaum
And it blew up and I felt it in my body and like ears.
- [11:38]
Scott West
I'm getting another report with Jacob's trailer.
- [11:40]
Zach Goldbaum
On fire with people in it. Fifteen people are killed in the explosion and another 180 suffer from burns, fractures and other traumatic injuries. 43,000 Texas City residents are ordered to stay indoors while authorities try to control the raging fire. As for BP's property, 50 large chemical storage tanks are damaged and a major portion of the refinery is shut down for more than two years. It's one of the worst industrial accidents in US history. The CEO of BP arrives on scene a few hours later. Now, when you Picture an oil man. You might be imagining a swaggering American in a cowboy hat, thick mustache, Southern drawl. John Brown is none of that. For one, he's British. He's also short, soft spoken and gives off more of an academic vibe. Oh, and he's officially Lord John Brown, Baron of Mattingly. I said we would take responsibility and.
- [12:44]
Scott West
Above all would work hard to make.
- [12:46]
Zach Goldbaum
Sure that such an accident never happened again. But guess what? Another accident does happen at the refinery. In fact, there are two more that same year. BP blames low level workers and fails to hold any executives accountable. But the reality is the plant is understaffed. Some of its equipment is 30 years out of date and alarms that should have sounded didn't. Eventually, BP ends up setting aside over $2 billion to settle some 4,000 claims from families, workers and residents. It's basically hush money, but it doesn't fix any systemic issues. In the immediate aftermath, the U.S. chemical Safety Board conducts an investigation. One official gives their view of the cause of the disaster.
- [13:37]
Scott West
The CSB concluded that it was the result of organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the company. We found that BP management had for many years overlooked warning signs of a.
- [13:48]
Zach Goldbaum
Possible catastrophic accident that goes all the way to the top. And the same people overseeing Texas are the ones in charge of Alaska. And eventually they'll be the ones signing off on decisions about deep sea oil drilling. While other investigators look into the causes of the Texas City tragedy, Scott west heads up to Alaska to talk to Chuck Hamill's first whistleblower. To this day, Scott won't reveal the man's name, but we know that he was an oil worker with a lot of experience and he shared what he had observed while working for BP on the North Slope.
- [14:26]
Scott West
He said that on these transit pipelines they're subject to corrosion. Most people think of external corrosion with rust or weather related, but internal corrosion is the big scary feature. And it's actually done by microbes that consume the steel. The oil that's coming out of the ground has a lot of sand and water and other particles and stuff in it. So the only way to properly maintain these lines is to remove that sludge. And they do that by running a device called a pig through the line.
- [14:57]
Zach Goldbaum
That pig he just mentioned, it stands for pipeline integrity gauge. It's a tool that can be sent inside of a pipeline. There are a bunch of different types. There are smart pigs with cameras and sensors that can inspect the pipeline. Then there are utility pigs which can actually clean the pipeline. But the problem with Pigs, at least for companies like bp, is that they're expensive. And when you're running a pig, you can't run anything else through the pipeline. So you're losing out on production time. So BP makes the call to stop using pigs on the North Slope entirely. The decision increases the risk of safety hazards and failures, but it saves them time and money.
- [15:41]
Scott West
Bp, we learned through our investigation, had a philosophy on the North Slope of operate to failure. They would just keep running their stuff till it failed and then shut it down.
- [15:52]
Zach Goldbaum
You'll be shocked to hear that a policy called operate to failure is a terrible idea. The whistleblower tells Scott that things are so bad that when the company hires new guys, they literally warn them not to have keys or tools dangling off their work belts because if they hit the side of a pipe they might put a hole in it. That's how fragile and poorly maintained everything is. It is all hanging on by a thread.
- [16:19]
Scott West
I have enough information to convince me that we've got a ticking time bomb, so I decided to get in front of it. Let's prevent this from happening.
- [16:31]
Zach Goldbaum
Scott goes back to his bosses at the epa. He tells them he's got information that indicates they're about to have a catastrophic failure on the North Slope. But the EPA informs him that they don't have any governance on those transit lines. That falls under the jurisdiction of the State of Alaska. And it's not clear whether the state is going to do anything about it because they depend so heavily on oil profits. The last thing they want is to piss off BP and lose their business entirely. Scott is at a loss. He fears something bad is about to happen. But as far as his bosses are concerned, all he can do at this point is wait and see. It's July 2005 and Hurricane Dennis is approaching the Gulf of Mexico. The sky darkens and the wind picks up as a deep sea drilling crew Prepares to evacuate BP's newest rig, Thunder Horse. Sorry, that was a bit much. But despite the ridiculous name, Thunder Horse is no joke. It's a massive billion dollar project. A 15 story high floating platform that can drill and maintain up to 20 wells at once, making it one of the most advanced deep water rigs ever built. BP may be slashing safety and operational budgets, but they're spending big on high tech equipment for deep sea exploration. Now BP's billion dollar rig is in Hurricane Dennis path, but BP execs are confident Thunderhorse can withstand the extreme weather. It is their latest top of the line design. The rig is designed to continue to Run unmanned. So out of an abundance of caution, it's completely evacuated. The morning after the storm, a helicopter pilot inspecting the rig for damage reports that it's listing to one side like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, dangerously close to capsizing. BP blames the storm, but it turns out the eye of Dennis missed Thunderhorse by 100 miles. Months later, a senior engineer told PBS's Frontline what really happened.
- [18:45]
Scott West
The storm is not really the cause of why that thing almost flipped. It's because the check valve was installed backwards. Okay. And all that was probably caused by being in a hurry and not dotting their I's and crossing their. Their T's.
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Zach Goldbaum
In this case, that's right, because of a backwards valve that was supposed to keep water out. During the hurricane, water began flooding in and employees were apparently too rushed to double check their work. So if you're keeping score, that's now one accident caused by old faulty equipment in Texas City, and now another caused by human error on a brand new rig in the Gulf. And soon, that combination of failing infrastructure and employee negligence will come together at BP's Alaska operations with disastrous results.
- [19:40]
Carrie
Okay, Carrie, you ready? Quick, quick, quick. List three gifts you'd never give.
- [19:44]
Friend of Carrie
A cowboy, lacy bobby socks, a diamond bracelet, and a gift certificate to Sephora.
- [19:51]
Carrie
Oh, my God, that's outrageous.
- [19:53]
Scott West
Carrie.
- [19:53]
Carrie
Oh, wait, we're recording a commercial right now. We gotta tell them why we're doing this.
- [19:57]
Friend of Carrie
Oh, yeah, sorry, pod listeners. Okay, so we're five besties who've been friends for 5 million years. And we love games, so of course we made our own.
- [20:05]
Carrie
It's called Quick, quick, quick. You just pick a card and have your partner give three answers to an outrageous question. It's fast, fun, fantastic, and a bunch of other funny adjectives.
- [20:14]
Friend of Carrie
Anyone can play. Your mom, your dad, your kitten, your kids, your Auntie Edna, and even your butcher.
- [20:19]
Carrie
And you know what's incredible? There are no wrong answers. Just open your brain and say what's in it. Just quickly.
- [20:25]
Friend of Carrie
And you're not going to believe this. Well, you might once you start playing. It's as much fun to watch as it is to play. Seriously.
- [20:33]
Carrie
So get up and go. Grab your copy now at Target and Amazon. Quick, quick, quick.
- [20:37]
Friend of Carrie
It's the fastest way to.
- [20:44]
Scott West
I continued my investigation, and In March of 6, I'm in my office in Seattle and my phone rings at my desk. And one of these gentlemen that I had talked to said, well, Mr. West, that pipe we told you about and where we told you it was going to rupture has. And there's oil everywhere.
- [21:05]
Zach Goldbaum
In March 2006, Scott west gets the news he's been dreading from one of his whistleblowers on Alaska's North Slope. There's an oil spill from a BP pipeline and it's bad. A worker had been driving along the road where the pipeline lay when he smelled chemicals. He looked out his window and saw nothing but pristine white snow. But he decided to check it out anyway, just to be safe.
- [21:32]
Scott West
He got out of his truck, walked towards the pipeline and then smushed into oil underneath the snow. He had an oily foot and that's how he knew that, you know, that there was a problem and the oil was coming out of the pipeline. It wasn't a very big hole, but it had been leaking for several days.
- [21:51]
Zach Goldbaum
Undetected, and now the surrounding ground was like an oil slushy. Scott sends one of his investigators up to Alaska so we can figure out what happened and what BP is doing about it. By the time the leak was discovered, it had created a pond of oil three acres wide and three feet deep, all coming from a three quarter inch hole in the pipeline. The only saving grace was that the pipeline ruptured during the dead of winter and everything was frozen around it.
- [22:24]
Scott West
There was a lot of snow on the ground, the lake was frozen solid. So the oil got into the lake, which gave us the Clean Water act connection we needed for the crime. And, but because it was frozen, it was isolated. Had it been summertime when this happened, all of that is just wet, boggy area and all this oil would have flown right into the Beaufort Sea.
- [22:46]
Zach Goldbaum
In the following weeks, they clean up over 200,000 gallons of oil. And once he's up there, Scott's investigator learns that pressure sensors at the various pumping stations had all recognized that there was a drop in pressure, which would have suggested that there had been a leak. But there had been so many malfunctions since the pipeline was built that crew members had just ignored the alarms.
- [23:10]
Scott West
It was clear to me that this was no accident, that this was the result of significant negligence. So I was treating it as a crime scene from day one.
- [23:21]
Zach Goldbaum
Scott believes he can prosecute BP under the Clean Water act, which prohibits the discharge of pollutants, including oil, into US waters without a permit. The real question is whether BP's actions amount to a misdemeanor or a felony. If all Scott can prove is gross negligence, it's a misdemeanor. But if he can show that BP knowingly violated the law, that the company understood the risks and moved forward Anyway, then it becomes a felony offense. At the very least, Scott is confident he has a misdemeanor. He's been speaking to whistleblowers and employees for over a year at this point. And everyone he's talked to who's worked in the North Slope says the same thing. The spill wasn't a surprise. It was inevitable. The system was falling apart and BP wasn't doing the maintenance to stop it. And if that was common knowledge on the ground, Scott has to believe it reached the executives in charge. To him, BP is an example of a serial environmental criminal. This wasn't the first disaster, and it wouldn't be the last. In 1995, they were caught dumping hazardous waste. In 2002, they falsified inspections of fuel tanks at a Los Angeles refinery. In 2005, the Texas City refinery explosion killed 15 workers. And that same year, the Thunderhorse nearly sank in the Gulf.
- [24:48]
Scott West
Now this, as our investigation was moving along, we felt pretty confident that we were going to be able to bring felony indictments against all the low level managers, senior managers, BP Alaska senior managers, BP USA and senior people in London.
- [25:06]
Zach Goldbaum
To Scott, the pattern is clear. BP takes shortcuts in people and ecosystem. Pay the price. That August, BP's CEO, Lord John Brown finally shows his face in Alaska. It's his first public appearance there since the March spill and he's on the ground to project confidence. He tells reporters that the company is doing everything they can to prevent another disaster. He's so confident that the cleanup has gone well that he invites the press to tour the site. Then he jets off to Venice for a vacation. But just after landing, he gets a call. There's been another leak. It's smaller than the one in March, but it exposes a bigger issue. It happened along a corroded stretch of pipe that hadn't been recently inspected at all. The timing is a PR disaster, but BP tries to tame the narrative. NPR reports on the stance of BP Alaska's president.
- [26:10]
Scott West
President Steve Marshall told state lawmakers last month his company believed its anti corrosion efforts were as strong as any program in the world.
- [26:18]
Zach Goldbaum
Still, BP shuts down half of their Alaska operations so they can inspect and possibly replace about 16 miles of pipeline. The decision infuriates lawmakers in Both Alaska and D.C. who now have to deal with the consequences of U.S. oil supplies falling and prices surging. The governor of Alaska says the shutdown is costing the state more than $3 million a day. So officials call BP executives to Washington to get to the bottom of what's going on.
- [26:51]
Scott West
It seems like plain common sense to me that a company extracting oil as a means of profit would want to routinely conduct thorough inspections of its pipelines to ensure safe transport of the product. Had BP exercised even basic periodic maintenance of its pipelines, they would not have had to order the shutdown of the country's number one domestic oil field.
- [27:18]
Zach Goldbaum
We're at a hearing at. Brace yourself for this name the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. It's a month after BP halted their Alaska operations and executives have been called to testify and to get publicly chastised by members of Congress. Lawmakers stare down at the two men sent to take the heat. The president of BP America and the head of BP's Alaska operations. Their boss, John Brown, is nowhere to be seen. Like most congressional hearings, it's part investigation, part political theater. But a major focus is BP's failure to inspect its Alaskan pipelines. The committee zeroes in on the SmartPig device, that high tech tool that travels inside the pipelines to detect corrosion and leaks. The committee brings in a representative from one of BP's competitors, a company that's been using smart pigs every three years. BP, on the other hand, hadn't used one on the leaking pipeline in 14. The hearing lasts six hours. And under relentless questioning, BP America's president admits that they've made some mistakes.
- [28:30]
Scott West
BP America's recent operating failures are unacceptable. They have fallen short of what you and the American people expect from bp, and they have fallen short of what we expect of ourselves.
- [28:43]
Zach Goldbaum
But admitting mistakes and paying for them are two very different things. And Scott west is still determined to make BP pay. Scott wants to get a sampling of the pipe that leaked in Alaska so the EPA can do their own metal analysis. So he subpoenas BP for the pipe. He personally flies up to a town called Deadhorse to supervise the BP workers cutting it out.
- [29:09]
Scott West
Flying into a place called Dead Horse doesn't give you a lot of confidence. And I had to rely on BP's hospitality. They put me up in one of their employee barracks and drove me around. And I, of course, was wary about what I ate and drank because some people liked me up there. But a lot didn't.
- [29:30]
Zach Goldbaum
It's a sunny day when he gets up there for the pipe cutting, but it's still numbingly cold. His breath hangs in the air as he pulls his jacket tighter and waits until the pipe sampling is in his hands. Then he takes it back to the offices for testing.
- [29:47]
Scott West
We found exactly what all the employees had told Us, we'd find, you know, very thin walls, thick layer of sludge, high concentrations of these colonies of bacteria that just confirmed everything that our witnesses had told us.
- [30:02]
Zach Goldbaum
Now Scott has proof that everything he's been hearing is true. He starts comparing notes from his investigation with his colleagues who are investigating BP in other places, like Texas, where the refinery exploded. And it turns out they're finding all of the same problems.
- [30:20]
Scott West
BP is operating in Alaska just like it is in Texas, with disregard for maintenance and disregard for welfare of employees. And we were seeing a pattern. This is what encouraged us to really begin investigating the possibility that we had felonious behavior all the way to the top.
- [30:39]
Zach Goldbaum
By 2007, a year after the spill, Scott feels like they're getting close to being able to definitively link the oil spill with BP's top executives.
- [30:49]
Scott West
Corporations don't make decisions. It's individuals within corporations that make decisions. And once some of these decision makers are facing jail time and not just writing a check, that brings accountability much more into focus.
- [31:11]
Zach Goldbaum
Scott's next step is to subpoena BP for official documents. He is surgical about the information he's seeking so as not to be inundated with superfluous paperwork.
- [31:21]
Scott West
And they returned 62 million pages, not.
- [31:26]
Zach Goldbaum
Exactly what he had hoped. But Scott is determined to get to the bottom of it, no matter what BP throws at him and no matter how long it takes. Then, in August 2007, he gets a call to come to anchorage, Alaska. The U.S. attorneys there want to discuss the status of the case. Scott gets on a plane ready to present all the evidence he's gathered so far. But the U.S. attorney has other plans. It's August 2007, and Scott west is sitting in a conference room in the U.S. attorney's office in Anchorage. There are FBI agents, DOJ officials, and state and local officers all around the table. And they're all looking at Scott as he gets hit with question after question about where he's at with his investigation.
- [32:23]
Scott West
I was really kind of surprised because the questioning started with me being asked, if we had to go to trial today, what could we prove? Well, if we had to go to trial today, we could prove a misdemeanor Clean Water act violation. And they said, well, we're going to settle the case for that. And I was like, what do you mean you're going to settle what happened? And they said, well, if that's all we can do, let's quit wasting money and. And move on.
- [32:52]
Zach Goldbaum
Scott can't believe what he's hearing. He argues that they've got a ton of things in motion. They're looking at felony charges for top officials, but they can't rush the process. These investigations generally take years, and he needs time to get through interviews and all 62 million pages of documents. His superiors wave him off. They say the decision has been made. They're going to let BP settle for a Clean Water act misdemeanor and pay a fine.
- [33:20]
Scott West
I said, well, give me six months, give me three months. And I kept being told, no, it's over, it's done.
- [33:25]
Zach Goldbaum
Scott wants to keep fighting, but finally he switches gears. He says an attorney in his office has already worked up the plausible fines. They provide a range of options from 58 million to 672 million. But his superiors, again, say no. They're thinking more like 20 to 35 million.
- [33:46]
Scott West
I was just. I was fit to be tied. I was very, very upset. If you cut corners and don't get caught, great. If you do cut corners and get caught, then you pull out your checkbook and that just becomes a cost of doing business.
- [34:04]
Zach Goldbaum
In October 2007, BP pleads guilty to violations of the Clean Air and Water Acts stemming from both the Texas City refinery explosion and the Alaskan pipeline leak. Oh, and there's also some fraud thrown in there. They're accused of conspiring to corner the market and manipulate the price of propane. But that's a whole other story. In addition to pleading guilty, they agree to pay $373 million in fines, 20 million of which will go toward damages for the Alaskan oil spill. But Scott still says it's much less than they should have gotten. If he'd been allowed to continue his investigation, he would have gone after individual BP executives, not just the corporation. A year later, still angry and disillusioned, Scott decides to retire.
- [34:52]
Scott West
When you're a federal agent and you're retirement eligible, it's known as the KMA Club. Kiss my ass. Because once you're retirement eligible, you can tell your bosses to kiss your ass and file your papers and you're safely out.
- [35:08]
Zach Goldbaum
And now that he's out, Scott can go public with his story. So he calls up the Wall Street Journal and tells them everything. The article makes some waves, but not enough. Scott ends up feeling the pain of leaving his government job and speaking out. He says he loses out on future jobs and feels like he's got a target on his back.
- [35:28]
Scott West
I certainly have felt some cost at having done the right thing, but it was still the right thing to do and I did it, and I'd do it again.
- [35:39]
Zach Goldbaum
Nearly a year after Scott leaves the EPA in September 2009, BP announces a record breaking achievement. One of their rigs has drilled to 35,000ft beneath the ocean floor. That's more than six miles deeper than anyone's gone before. The rig behind that feat, Deepwater Horizon. It's a massive semi submersible rig that's designed to be moved around and used for drilling incredibly deep exploratory wells. Once oil is found, a more permanent platform is typically brought in to handle long term extraction. Deepwater Horizon is owned by a company called Transocean, but BP is leasing it for their own use. At the end of January 2010, the deepwater rig moves to a new site, the Macondo Prospect, an undersea oil field about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana. That name they give it, it's borrowed from the fictional cursed town in the novel 100 Years of Solitude. Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't go naming dangerous oil drilling areas after anything remotely cursed. BP believes there's serious oil potential here, but it's a notoriously tricky drilling spot and they have to go far beneath the seafloor, which is risky. But this is bp. High risk, high reward seems to be their motto. Now, with Deepwater Horizon on site, the pressure's on to finish the job fast. The rig costs about a million dollars a day to operate. But on March 8, there's a new problem. Gas is leaking from the well. It takes about 30 minutes for anyone to notice, and when they do, engineers recommend plugging part of the well with cement and redirecting the drill. It sets the project back by days, then weeks. Redrilling is slow and expensive, and executives are not thrilled with the delays. Finally, in mid April, BP declares success. The well isn't as deep as they'd hoped, but they've reached a reservoir of oil that they believe holds 50 million barrels. Deepwater Horizon has done its job. In April 2010, crew members aboard Deepwater Horizon begin sealing the Macondo well with cement. After 11 grueling weeks and 18,000ft of drilling below the Gulf, they're ready to pack up and move on. The drill may have been successful, but it wasn't easy. They're six weeks behind schedule and nearly $60 million over budget. To them, this is the well from hell. Abandoning a successful well like this is routine in offshore drilling. The job of Deepwater Horizon was never to extract oil, just to find it. Once a well is complete, it's sealed off with cement, which is crucial. It holds everything in place until a more permanent production rig can set up shop. This particular cement job was designed by Jesse Gagliano, a technical advisor for Halliburton, BP's cementing contractor. He's monitoring the operation remotely from Houston, and he has concerns. His main issue is with these little things called centralizers. Basically, they stabilize the pipe that goes all the way down to the well. Gagliano recommends using 21 centralizers for this well, but BP opts for six. That's all they have on board, and they don't want to delay the operation waiting for more. Gagliano runs a simulation using just six centralizers. It doesn't look good. He writes up his report and sends it off. Later, during government testimony, he'll read aloud from this report.
- [39:33]
Scott West
Based on this analysis of the above outlined well conditions, this well is considered to have a severe gas flow problem.
- [39:39]
Zach Goldbaum
But true to form, BP ignores the warning. At 5:45am on April 20, a Halliburton engineer aboard Deepwater emails Gagliano that the cement job is complete and everything went well. Well, but it didn't, and within hours Deepwater Horizon will erupt. That's next week.
- [40:03]
Scott West
My wife and I are sitting on the couch watching the news and there's this oil rig burning in the Gulf and oil spewing everywhere and the word Deepwater Horizon is flashing around, but they're not attaching a company name to it. I look at my wife and I said, I'll bet you a hundred dollars that's a BP rig.
- [40:28]
Zach Goldbaum
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now by joining Wonder plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondry.com/survey for today's episode, we relied heavily on Fire on the Horizon the Untold Story of the Gulf Oil Disaster by John Conrad and Tom Schroeder Run to Failure BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster by Abraham Lustgarden and the New York Times Deepwater Horizons Final Hours by David Barstow, David Rode and Stephanie Saul Lawless Planet is produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum. This episode was written by Alex Burns. Our senior producer and senior story editor is Derek John. Senior producer for Wondry is Andy Herman. Our senior managing producer is Nick Ryan. Our managing producer is Sarah Kenny Corrigan. Our associate producer is Lexi Pirie. Music and sound design by Kenny Kuziak Dialogue edit by George Drabing Hicks. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frison Sync fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our legal counsel is Deb Droze. Executive producers are Marsha Louie and Jenny Lauer. Beckman for Wondry. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Wondering.