The author--J. A. (John) Turley--is a retired petroleum-engineering professor, drilling manager, and oil-and-gas executive. He wrote mysteries for ten years before BP's April 2010 Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, after which he fully committed his research and writing time to the real-world disaster.
Looking for answers to an often-repeated question--"What happened to that rig in the Gulf?"--he studied publicly available depositions, well data, and investigative reports; ignored finger-pointing, pontificating attorneys, and hearsay evidence; and assessed the cause of the disaster from engineering, operations, and management perspectives. Defining the cause of the blowout and applying results to future wells became: (1) the subject of his widely acclaimed book, THE SIMPLE TRUTH: BP's Macondo Blowout, and (2) the basis for his professional speaking platform, with seventy-five presentations in eleven countries and across the US to operating companies, professional societies, technical conferences, and petroleum engineering universities. He was named a Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Distinguished Lecturer for 2015-2016, through which he made his last 30 presentations to SPE sections on a global basis. The book is written as narrative-nonfiction, with surrogate characters representing the 11 men who died as well as those who survived.
Turley's presentations consistently garner audience interest in his research findings and recommendations. That said, taking away the audience; translating inflected dialog into ink, paper, and pixels; and preserving and further disseminating the message, became the driving force in putting together his follow-on book FROM THE PODIUM: The Cause of BP's Macondo Blowout.
Throughout the nonfiction book (no people, no dialog, just facts), he focuses strictly on the data-driven engineering and operating cause of the disaster, as if from a podium in front of an academic and professional audience. His presentations--and FROM THE PODIUM--share a common goal: To assess the physical cause of the disaster and apply lessons learned to future wells. To this end, the book is a physical compilation of his slides, text, diagrams, conclusions, and recommendations, as well as key Q&A topics queried by faculty, students, environmentalists, and other technical experts from throughout the oil-and-gas industry.
The author's mantra--nested into his books--has been and remains: Only if we understand and care about the cause of BP's Macondo blowout will we know why it should not have happened and why it should never happen again.
