JOHN TURLEY

John Turley’s early resume includes Phillips Petroleum, Fluor Ocean Services, Tenneco Oil Company, and Marietta College (professor, petroleum engineering).  During the next twenty-five years with Marathon Oil Company, he held responsibilities as Gulf Coast drilling manager, U.K. operations manager, manager of worldwide drilling, and VP of engineering & technology.  His academics include petroleum engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, ocean engineering at the University of Miami, and executive education at Harvard Business School.

After early retirement from Marathon, John focused on writing mystery novels, though that second career changed the day after BP’s April 2010 blowout and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Twenty-nine months after the event that never should have happened, Turley completed his research and published THE SIMPLE TRUTH: BP’s Macondo Blowout. The fact driven novel and nonfiction Epilogue are about the drilling of the 3 1/2 mile deep well and the engineering, operating, and human causes of the catastrophe.  A simple message forms the foundation of John’s book and his professional speaking engagements, which he takes to audiences touched by the disaster, and to engineering students, and the media, and environmentalists, and to his oil-and-gas colleagues around the world:

“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.”