BP and the Macondo spill: the complete story

Most of us drive to the gas station to purchase fuel for our cars.

Heating oil is delivered to our homes to keep us warm throughout the winter.

We do not stop to think about the raw materials that make up so many of the goods we consume.

Nor do we ponderthe fuel used to grow and harvest our food or to bring almost all that we buy to market.

In fact, we think little about energy until we are shocked by the displacements and damage caused by a major energy industry calamity.

Unfortunately, when such acalamity occurs, we seek simple explanations, despite our complicity in our increasingly desperate demand for energy.

An event such as the Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout and spill in the Gulf of Mexico should give us a cause to pause and try to make sense of such an environmental tragedy.

However, if we merely brush off such a tragedy as the result of the carelessness of foreign "Big Oil," we miss an opportunity to truly understand an exceedingly complex energy environment. And, by blaming a single entity, we avoid broader culpability in an industry that may need reform, a governmental regulatory body that failed to protect the public, and a set of technologies that have lulled us into energy complacency.

In this book, Colin Read uncovers precisely what occurred during this most complex saga.

While the various factors thatcontributed to an oil-damaged gulf and a financially ravaged BP are explored and analyzed, the author looks deeper to betterunderstand our increasing energy dependency and assesses the impact this will have on future generations.