Sunday, April 21, 2013

Oil Boys Get Payback--and Update

The Albuquerque Journal's investigative story on  the State's failure to conduct electrical inspections on oil and gas installations and drilling operations in the southeast part of New Mexico shouldn't really be surprising.  Those fossil fuel boys are just getting some payback from supporting Governor Martinez and her right wing causes.  And of course the government and regulation hating Governor and her ilk would never deign to hire more inspectors and grow government.

No matter that the public health, safety and welfare are directed into the waste bin.  Think about the fertilizer plant that went up in Texas this week.  They had not had an inspection since 1985 and more than a dozen people died because of it.  And a whole town was blown to smithereens. But, the industry says to Martinez,  "Trust Us", and then they write more checks for her favorite Super Pacs.

500 out of compliance oil well installations may be in existence right now down in the Permian Basin.  Well, maybe or maybe not.  We just don't know do we?  But one thing is for sure.  Every time an oil field worker goes near one they are risking their lives.

The big question now is whether the Journal editor, an oil and gas and Governor supporter, will switch his hat to journalism and followup on this story.  He could direct the able Coleen Heild to cross reference the oil companies getting off with compliance to the list of the Governor's and GOP's contributors.  If this had been Bill Richardson then that would be automatic.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I did mmanage to glance at the Journal today. Nice photos of tattoed ladies made the front page but tucked away at the lower right hand side was a Heild story of another state employee whistleblower (this time it was the construction industries division but the last few Heild stories have been against the department of health). What alarms me is that state employees feel compelled to go to the media to get any attention to the workplace issues they raised. Also alarming is the Journal does not place these stories on the news wires so they aren't picked up by larger media outlets and their copyright prohibits the news stations from using the stories without crediting the Journal. So, while Ms Heild is a good reporter, her stories are a ripple in the lagoon known as NM compliments of the Journal.