After mining tragedy, no surrender by Massey CEO

(Fortune) -- Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, has a lot of explaining to do this week. His company owns the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, W.Va., site of the most fatal mining disaster in decades. Even though the cause of Monday's explosion, which claimed 25 lives, has yet to be determined, questions are already flying about the coal company's safety standards.

By chance, I met with Blankenship just days before the accident as he was passing through Washington. Massey's public relations firm suggested the meeting, and I was curious whether his personality would match his professional reputation.

Blankenship has long been unpopular with environmental groups who say the company's mountaintop mining methods are destroying the Appalachia region. Blankenship in turn has not hidden his disdain -- for them or for the climate legislation they stand for.

Yet, for a man who penned an op-ed last fall with the headline "No harm from cap-and-trade? You lie!" Blankenship is remarkably soft-spoken and delivers his critical bombs in a near-monotone.

Asked about the company's long list of enemies and critics, Blankenship said that Massey (MEE) gets flack, because it's "the largest and least politically correct." Its labor force is 97% non-unionized, which he says makes it a target of the labor left. (AFL-CIO has declaimed Massey's safety violations this week.)

Even though he's unpopular with labor and environmental constituencies among Democrats, Blankenship's political views aren't neatly aligned with either party. He's against cap-and-trade, but he also resents free trade, arguing that not enough attention is being paid to protecting the interests of U.S. companies.

In our conversation, Blankenship displayed a streak of stubbornness. He had harsh words for the various trade associations that represent Massey to Washington, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association. He accused them of being too focused on political maneuvering rather than defending their core principles. "Most of the time, they're too compromising," he said.

Likewise he's holding his ground on this mining accident, in spite of reports that the Mine Safety and Health Administration recently fined the company for violations related to ventilation that control methane. In today's Wall Street Journal, Massey denied that Upper Big Branch Mine had any safety problems. "The safety record in the past three months had been really, really good," he told the Journal.

Before we finished talking, I asked Blankenship how often he comes to Washington. He said he used to come only a few times a year but expects to be visiting the capital at least a dozen times in 2010 because of all the issues affecting Massey. That schedule might be something Blankenship revises. After all, mining accidents like this one are just the sort of thing that lawmakers love holding hearings on.