Nerditorial: KGMI's Patti Brooks bristles at criticism of oil industry

Ms Brooks recently posted an article on her KGMI blog in which she takes great umbrage at criticism of the oil industry’s track record on... um...

...safety.

No, really. She did.

And this isn’t one of those ironic comedic posts, like on The Onion. This is an earnest, Bush-Administration-era, “who the [bad word] do you think you are looking at?” expression of defiant indignation that anyone is even publicly discussing or calling into question the safety record of the fine upstanding models of responsible corporate citizenship who are today’s global oil industry.


An excerpt:

"Can someone tell about the all of the deaths last week because I seemed to have missed it. Having worked in the oil industry for many years, I know firsthand the amount of money and time spent and dedicated solely to safety. The progressive talking points and contiuation to beat up an industry with misstatements of their ‘facts’ is truly sickening!"

(*neck-crack*)

Where do I begin?

“Can someone tell about the all of the deaths last week because I seemed to have missed it.”

Has it been a whole week since someone died in an explosion on an oil platform?

Ms. Brooks appears to be correct. In the last seven days there have been no documented deaths attributed to explosions on oil platforms.

Wow. Lets all write the White House and recommend that British Petroleum be awarded a Medal of Freedom for their amazing almost-a-whole-month-since-their-crap-blew-up-and-killed-anyone track record.

“Having worked in the oil industry for many years, I know firsthand the amount of money and time spent and dedicated solely to safety.”

Damn my progressive eyes for observing that one of the executives that testified before the Senate about a dead battery in one of the control pods on Deepwater Horizon that was a direct contributing factor in the tragedy. (http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/deepwater_horizon_glitches_pri.html)

...And that this clearly preventable oversight was documented before Deepwater Horizon sank into the Gulf of Mexico.

...And that the dead battery was only one of a series of equipment problems that were documented on Deepwater Horizon before it blew the hell up. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/12/deepwater-gulf-oil-spill-hearing)

“The progressive talking points and contiuation to beat up an industry with misstatements of their ‘facts’ is truly sickening!”

If the explosion that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon oil platform is a talking point, then it is the first talking point that directly caused the the injury of 17 persons and the disappearance (and presumed death) of 11 persons. (http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/21/oil.rig.explosion/index.html)

If the oil spill that is the continuing, and still unresolved, legacy of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is a misstatement, then it is the first misstatement that can be seen from orbit. (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/oilspill/index.html)

Outside the oil industry, a week without a death isn’t considered a terribly long safety track record.

MTV’s Jackass has a better safety record that the oil industry does.

Maybe British Petroleum could hire Johnny Knoxville as a safety consultant.

And Ms Brooks might want to reconsider the timing of her righteous indignation over criticism of the oil industry.

British Petroleum has made a mess that it appears incapable of cleaning up.

And the mess is still getting worse.

There is still no idea who will successfully contain the oil currently entering the Gulf of Mexico, or how it could be contained.

We just know who can’t contain it.

British Petroleum. They can no more contain the oil spilling out of their wrecked oil rig than Ms. Brooks can contain her outrage at criticism of the oil industry.