Flawed Analysis
“BP has a systemic problem with its culture that runs deep.”
There are unlikely to be any readers of this article unaware of the disaster surrounding BP in 2010 when their Gulf of Mexico based oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon lived up to its name in dramatic and tragic circumstances. Since then many people have pointed fingers and made accusations but the quote above, by Hersch Shefrin, comes from his book, Ending the Management Illusion
, based on an analysis of the behavioral flaws apparent in BP’s management, and written two years before the disaster at the Macondo Prospect.

Yet while Shefrin was able to identify the potential problems at BP ahead of the game not only did this not alert investors to the dangers of investing in BP it also failed to jolt oil sector analysts into any kind of action at all. And, frankly, if analysts can’t tell the difference between an oil major taking excessive safety risks and one that isn’t, what the hell’s the point of them?