I will take what feels like bait and ask, who is setting fire to US energy and food facilities (if anyone). I acknowledge it could just be coincidence. On the energy side, here's a list I saw recently:

July 9, 2022- ONEOK natural gas plant explosion (Medford, OK)

July 7, 2022- Energy Transfer pipeline explosion (Wallis, TX)

Jun. 27, 2022- Petro Star refinery explosion, (VALDEZ, AK)

Jun. 8, 2022- LNG natural gas plant explosion (Freeport, TX)

Apr. 24, 2022- Valero refinery explosion (Meraux, LA)

Apr. 14, 2022- Haven Midstream gas plant explosion (Haven, KS)

Mar. 27, 2022- ExxonMobil oil refinery explosion (Billings, MO)

Feb. 21, 2022- Marathon Petroleum refinery explosion (GARYVILLE, LA)

Dec. 23, 2021- ExxonMobil plant explosion (Baytown, TX)

June 23, 2021- Calpine Natural Gas Generation Plant explosion (Corpus Christi, TX)

July 22, 2021- Northern Natural Gas explosion (Ellsworth County, KS)

Feb. 18, 2021- Natural Gas pipeline explosion (Ames, OK)

This is pretty meaningless without comparing rates of fires/explosions from prior years. And even if it's higher than before it could easily be attributed to newer or less experienced staff or understaffing due to covid etc...

I agree, 11 mishaps per year does not seem all that much compared to the total size of the oil&gas industry in the USA.

for reference, a quick duck duck going shows there are currently about 130 refineries, 210 pipelines, and countless wells and storage and transport facilities all over the country. i could not confirm a cause for any of the incidents posted by OP but it seems totally reasonable that there could be a dozen or so accidents within the first half of this year. it is unlikely that we have entered the cool zone unnoticed

Additionally, never attribute malice when poor maintenance that which is adequately explained by poor maintenance scheduling and safety protocols.

I'm going to speculate that the 2022 refinery incidents are coincidence.

US refineries are operating at or close to maximum capacity in response to high gasoline prices. You can't open a new one in any short amount of time, so the operators are trying to squeeze as much capacity as they can from that stone.

It's possible that the operating headroom that they believed they had is turning out to be insufficient for current, sustained production levels.

Also how about the highly coordinated 2013 attack on a substation in California.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

"Highly coordinated" seems more like a drunk drive-by

I would like to know how this compares to other years as well, but I agree - it's beginning to look very strange indeed. As far as I can tell, we have not heard a cause for any of these, just that they're under investigation. Surely someone at the top must be looking into this.

There is insufficient refinery capacity in the USA, so they’re running at very high utilization rates. Pushing these high temperature, high pressure upgrading units to the limit, so not surprising there are accidents. Also I’d say every year there are refinery unit fires and blow ups. (One of the sources of current refinery capacity limitation is that a refinery on the east coast irreparably blew up a couple years ago)

Not saying that Russians aren’t blowing up our infrastructure. But I am saying the baseline accident rate is definitely not zero.

Were there any of these in California, too?

Otherwise, I'd attribute it to lax oversight. All of those states are pretty lax towards their petroleum industry oversight.

Texas, in particular, has a history of spectacular explosions (not just in petroleum) because of regulatory failures.

It seems refineries here in SoCal tend to catch fire fairly often too.

> he was unceremoniously demoted for cause and his pay halved

This is the proposed motivation for the event, alternative to German sabotage. But what does it mean? It looks like key words are missing front the article.

Damstedt had an hernia for 30 years before the incident. There is no mention of any disciplinary action.