Blowout preventer investigations (4-5 cases)

Tom's Louisiana BOP case (three failures in sequence, $100M loss, settled at 50 cents on the dollar) introduced as the under-the-radar precursor to the Deepwater Horizon BOP failure. Used to illustrate the "good old boys" culture of the oil industry and the role of contract-law enforcement when no fatalities occur.

The BP oil spill — they're all over that. But there have been plenty of BOPs — blowout preventers — that have failed. They fail all the time. I had three fail in Louisiana about a year and a half before the one in the Gulf, something I looked at. I looked into the design by the manufacturer, and it all came up empirically. In the oil industry, you have to start as a roughneck. I don't care if you've got a college degree, you've got to start as a roughneck if you're going to rise to top management. That's the culture in the oil industry. There's an attitude of good old boys — we're going to do it the way we've always done it. Not a lot of good science behind it.