If Robert E. Murray accepts a Senate subcommittee?s invitation to testify next month about what went wrong at the Crandall Canyon Mine, he is likely to be questioned about, among other things, adopting a new and riskier mining plan when his company took over the operation last year. As recently as Wednesday night, Mr. Murray, chief executive of the Murray Energy Corporation, continued to insist that the collapse had been caused by a 3.9 magnitude earthquake. He shouted down two reporters who tried to remind him that coal veins already thinned by a risky form of deep mining may have buckled, setting off the collapse that sent seismograph needles spiking. However, it is not the first time that Mr. Murray has taken a position far afield of the experts.
See "Mine Owner Has History of Run-Ins on Work Issues", Susan Saulny and Carolyn Marshall, The New York Times, August 23, 2007