Within hours of the news on March 23, 2005, that 15 workers had been killed by an explosion at BP's refinery in Texas City, Texas, John Browne, BP's ambitious chief executive, dashed across the Atlantic from London on his private jet. A spot check had already blamed human error for the explosion. Ever since the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in March 1989, the industry knew, Big Oil's enemies were always ready to pounce on any environmental calamity. The corporation's fate, Mr. Browne told BP executives, depended on avoiding the manner adopted 16 years earlier by Lawrence Rawl, Exxon's chairman....