KCOL's Weinman parroted IBD column's falsehood that Hurricane Katrina caused no oil spills

Summary: Mornings with Keith and Gail! co-host Keith Weinman of Fort Collins-based Fox News Radio 600 KCOL is the latest Colorado media figure to parrot the false claim that Hurricane Katrina didn't cause any oil spills, an assertion he read from an Investor's Business Daily op-ed piece. In fact, a report prepared for the Minerals Management Service found that damage related to Hurricane Katrina resulted in 70 spills from Outer Continental Shelf structures with a volume of approximately 5,552 barrels of petroleum.

Reading from a July 28 online Investor's Business Daily op-ed piece, Fox News Radio 600 KCOL's Mornings with Keith and Gail! co-host Keith Weinman on July 30 claimed falsely that "with new offshore drilling technology, even Hurricane Katrina's major wallop was unable to cause oil spills from any of the numerous drilling platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina went through." Again referring to Hurricane Katrina, Weinman later asserted, "We've had a major hurricane that decimated a U.S. city go right through the Gulf of Mexico and not spill a drop of oil." In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted, according to a 2007 report prepared for the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) by the international consulting firm Det Norske Veritas, Hurricane Katrina resulted in 70 spills from Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) structures with a total volume of approximately 5,552 barrels of petroleum, including 27 spills from platforms and rigs that resulted in the spilling of approximately 2,843 barrels of petroleum.

Later in the broadcast, Weinman and co-host Gail Fallen interviewed the editorial's author, M. David Stirling, introducing him as "vice president of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nationwide public-interest legal organization ... working in the courts to defend private property and environmental balance." However, Weinman and Fallen both failed to disclose that the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) has received funding from ExxonMobil Corp. According to the Greenpeace-affiliated watchdog group ExxonSecrets.org, the corporation gave PLF $135,000 from 1998 through 2006. In addition, ExxonMobil's 2007 corporate giving report shows that Exxon gave PLF $15,000 that year.

Numerous conservative media figures and Republican politicians have claimed recently that hurricanes Katrina and Rita did not result in any oil spills. Colorado Media Matters previously pointed out that during the June 30 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Caplis & Silverman Show, guest co-host and former Republican U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis falsely claimed that "through all the [Hurricane] Katrina disaster, not one episode" of an offshore oil spill occurred, and documented the Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction's use of the same falsehood in a July 14 editorial. Media Matters for America has pointed out (here, here, here, and here ) that those making the bogus claim in the media included U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, energy industry lobbyist and former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), The Radio Factor host Bill O'Reilly, and former GOP presidential candidate and Fox News contributor Mike Huckabee.

Contradicting the claims that Hurricane Katrina did not cause oil spills, the MMS report included the following chart of oil spill statistics for damage to OCS structures related to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita:

The table indicates that in addition to Katrina, which struck in August 2005, Hurricane Rita the following month caused 54 spills with a total volume of approximately 12,100 barrels of petroleum, including 25 spills from platforms and rigs that resulted in the spilling of more than 7,000 barrels of petroleum.

From the Investor's Business Daily op-ed by M. David Stirling, "Had Enough of Eco-Lobby's Energy Prices?" posted July 28 on IBDEditorials.com:

Besides ANWR, the U. S. Mineral Management Service has estimated as much as 19 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie under the Atlantic, Pacific and Florida Gulf coasts.

But since a 1981 congressional moratorium on drilling from three to 200 miles offshore and a 1990 reinforcement of the ban by the first President Bush, the environmentalist lobby has killed all efforts to reinstate such drilling. They point to old oil spills from off-shore oil drilling that killed birds and other marine wildlife.

But consider that with new off-shore drilling technology, even Hurricane Katrina's major wallop was unable to cause oil spills from any of the numerous drilling platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico.

From the July 30 broadcast of Fox News Radio 600 KCOL's Mornings with Keith and Gail!:

WEINMAN: OK, here's the op-ed piece that he [Stirling] has that you may have seen in the paper, in papers around the nation. Another major reason that oil and gas prices are off the chart, one that's not being talked about enough. The headline is "Have you had enough of the eco-lobby's energy prices?" [Reading] "For more than half a century, the increasingly powerful and wealthy environmentalist organizations have used laws like the Endangered Species Act to impose a harsh, uncompromising regime on the nation's economy, on families' pocketbooks, on every resident's quality of life.

Their frequently unfounded and typically exaggerated claims of countless species of plant and wildlife becoming extinct unless human endeavors are halted or curtailed underlies their ultimate goal of returning major portions of this country to an imagined pristine state. The sharp run-up in oil and gas prices is their 'perfect storm' for accomplishing that goal.

Seventeen billion barrels of recoverable oil lie under the one-and-a-half-million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR. Seventeen billion barrels of oil. Only about 2,000 acres would be required to recover that oil and the natural gas that lies there with it. But the environmentalist organizations began a 'no drilling in ANWR' PR campaign, claiming that wildlife species such as porcupine, caribou, arctic wolf, polar bear, and others were on the brink of oblivion and would be lost forever if that drilling occurred. As 19 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie under the Atlantic, Pacific, and Florida Gulf coasts, the same thing has happened.

But since a 1991 congressional moratorium, the environmentalist lobbyists killed off all efforts to reinstate such drilling. They point to oil spills from offshore oil drilling. But with new offshore drilling technology, even Hurricane Katrina's major wallop was unable to cause oil spills from any of the numerous drilling platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina went through."

FALLEN: And most of the significant oil spills -- yes, there have been accidents at platforms in which spills have taken place, and we're not going to try and dance around that -- but the significant oil spills, by and large, are because of transportation, not drilling.

WEINMAN: Now, listen to the news this morning --

FALLEN: Problems with transportation.

WEINMAN: -- which has a story this morning about this exact thing.

FALLEN: Mmm-hmm.

WEINMAN: They have, the fresh news this morning is that they have once again turned down opening up the offshore sites -- Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf -- and ANWR, and the specific reasoning is the threat of a spill and the subsequent harm to the industry and loss of jobs if there was a major spill. Now, again, Stirling points out that technology has changed. We've had a major hurricane that decimated a U.S. city go right through the Gulf of Mexico and not spill a drop of oil.

FALLEN: Yet, there is a certain liberal contingent of Congress that refuses to allow us to plunk down our drills alongside about 11 other countries off our own shores -- these 11 other countries sucking the oil right out from right under us, but that's OK.

[...]

WEINMAN: He is vice president of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nationwide public-interest legal organization working on the courts -- working in the courts to defend private property and environmental balance. The op-ed piece by David Stirling said, in part [reading] "For more than a half century, the increasingly powerful and wealthy environmental organizations have used laws like the Endangered Species Act to impose a harsh, uncompromising regime on the nation's economy, on families' pocketbooks, and on every resident's quality of life."

FALLEN: Save the pika.

—C.K. & C.H.