Redefining Efficiency: Pollution Concerns, Regulatory Mechanisms, and Technological Change in the U.S. Petroleum Industry

Environmental History, Oct 2003 by Kehoe, Terence

Redefining Efficiency: Pollution Concerns, Regulatory Mechanisms, and Technological Change in the U.S. Petroleum Industry. By Hugh S. Gorman. Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 2001. xv 451 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $49.95, paper $39.95.

Until recently, environmental historians produced sophisticated, nuanced studies of government agencies, advocacy groups, and other institutions while paying relatively little attention to the internal and external dynamics that shaped the evolution of the industrial practices that had such a major impact on the environment. The work of scholars such as Christine Rosen, William Cronon, and Craig Colten has begun to change this situation, and in Redefining Efficiency Hugh Gorman makes an important contribution to our understanding of industrial pollution control by examining the environmental practices of an industry central to modern society. Concentrating on the areas of oil field production, the transport of oil through pipelines and tankers, and the refining of petroleum into gasoline and other products, Gorman traces the gradual shift in the United States petroleum industry from pollution-control practices based on a narrowly defined concept of efficiency to a model based on explicit, measurable environmental objectives and an acceptance of government regulations.

In the early part of the twentieth century, executives, engineers, and many political leaders believed that efforts to increase the efficiency of petroleum industry operations-and hence generate more profit-also would lessen pollution. To a great extent, this assumption was accurate. By the 19505, however, it was becoming clear that reliance on the profit motive and the environmental benefits of more efficient production had its limits. In many cases, the tremendous growth in scale of petroleum production overwhelmed whatever pollution reductions engineers had achieved through more efficient operations. Moreover, while certain steps could have been taken to achieve further reduction in pollution, these measures were not justified from an economic perspective. Thus, the development of a new pollution-control regime that featured extensive regulations, explicit standards and monitoring, and various enforcement mechanisms was necessary for the industry to make the kind of progress in pollution control that American society had come to expect. Petroleum industry leaders often fought these changes, but eventually most companies learned to integrate the new requirements into their planning and operations.

Redefining Efficiency is based on extensive research in a variety of primary sources, including some company records, and Gorman has a firm grasp of petroleum industry technology. To a certain extent, the emphasis on industry operations and technological change comes at the expense of any detailed analysis of the industry's involvement in the political struggles that sometimes accompanied these issues. Indeed, for an industry that often has generated strong passions, the book's narrative is remarkably passionless. The author also might have made more of an effort to integrate his story into the broader history of the American petroleum industry. Still, Gorman has done an excellent job on the topics that he has chosen to explore in detail, and in many respects Redefining Efficiency is a model industry study. Numerous and sometimes striking photographs complement the text nicely. This book would be a good choice for a graduate course in environmental history or the history of technology.

Terence Kehoe is a research associate with Morgan, Angel & Associates, a public policy consulting firm located in Washington, D.C. He is the author, with Charles Jacobson, of Environmental Decision Making and DDT Production at Montrose Chemical Corporation of California (Enterprise and Society, forthcoming).