WASHINGTON -- An unapologetic Don Blankenship lambasted federal mine regulators, "environmental extremists" and his hosts, the news media, at the National Press Club on Thursday.

The lightning rod Massey Energy CEO also suggested that the April 5 explosion at the company's Upper Big Branch coal mine that killed 29 was the result of an unexpected burst of methane, and said that mine disasters are often unavoidable acts of God.

Mr. Blankenship has faced protests -- as he did again Thursday -- and criticism from every corner, including President Barack Obama, but has never been timid about speaking his mind.

"We're allowing a small group of people to dictate what we do in the field of energy, and many times the industry is falling in line to avoid the criticism and avoid the press and to avoid being called something other than 'green,' " he said.

"We need to not do that. We need and we are obligated to and we should be compelled to speak out. Because the knowledge and the vantage point that we have is such that we owe it to the people and we owe it to our workers and we owe it to the country."

Massey has engaged in an intense public relations spat with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration since the investigation into the explosion began.

Investigators are looking into whether methane detectors were disabled to keep production going -- which the Post-Gazette reported happening in another part of the mine two months before the blast -- and MSHA said that if there were high levels of methane pre-explosion, the continuous mining machine would have automatically shut down. The machines are the most common ignition source for an explosion.

Mr. Blankenship said one of the two methane monitors in the area of the explosion has been checked and had not been disabled -- or "bridged out."

"I personally am confident that bridging out methane monitors is not a practice at Massey," Mr. Blankenship said. "I would be equally confident that people on occasion do things they shouldn't do."

Speaking more broadly, he said preventing all mine disasters is a futile exercise.

"I'm a realist," he said. "Politicians will tell you we're going to do something so that this never happens again. You won't hear me say that because I believe the physics of natural law and God trump what man tries to do. Whether you get earthquakes underground, whether you get broken floors, whether you get gas inundations, whether you get roof falls oftentimes are unavoidable."

Yet to the extent that the explosion -- the deadliest mine disaster in 40 years -- could have been avoided, Mr. Blankenship pointed the finger squarely at MSHA. He criticized the agency for forcing Massey to change the ventilation plans at Upper Big Branch. The result, Mr. Blankenship claimed as he has in the past, was less air flowing along the longwall section of the mine.

Not to be outdone, MSHA also pre-empted Mr. Blankenship's press club appearance by leaking an internal memo to The Associated Press written by deputy assistant secretary Greg Wagner. Mr. Wagner wrote that Massey's "strategy is to deflect the blame to make the case that the company was acting within the legal standard of reasonableness, and was not culpable for the conditions at the mine when the explosion occurred."

The memo lays out in detail the shortcomings of Massey's ventilation plan, why it was insufficient and the company's repeated failures to operate within MSHA regulations.

Though safety talk moved to the forefront, Mr. Blankenship's ostensible topic at the press club was surface coal mining, a controversial practice that has become more stiffly regulated by the Obama administration's Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Blankenship decried the environmental movement for what he sees as an overzealous attack on strip mining, when the need for cheap, reliable energy is more important.

Mr. Blankenship noted that surface mining has been going on in West Virginia for about 80 years.

"And yet despite all that activity and despite all that mining and despite a great deal of it being done before the 1977 Surface Mine Act, the environmental extremists still consider that area to be a pristine environment that still needs their protection," he said. "It's amazing how protected it needs to be today."

He also said cracking down in the United States is not the answer when Third World countries are burning fossil fuels without reservation.

The CEO also took the opportunity to show his human side in contrast to a news media image that borders on villainous. Contrary to reports, he said, he does not live on top of a mountain in Mingo County, W.Va. -- that's a house Massey uses to entertain clients.

Mr. Blankenship said he lives in the home where he's raised his family, which he estimated to be worth about $250,000. He rides four-wheelers and picks wild berries with his family.

The tragedy in his mine, Mr. Blankenship said, took a personal toll on him.

But he said he didn't feel guilty about it.

"I think that the word guilty is not the right word," he said. "I feel that I don't want to experience that again. I feel sorry for the families. I feel concern for our current workers, and I feel motivated to try to figure out what happened and try to prevent it from ever happening again."

Inside, as Mr. Blankenship responded to his first audience question, a trio of young activists stood silently in front of him with banners reading: "Massey Coal: Not Clean, Safe or Forever."

"As you can see, there are people that have the opinion without the discomfort of thought," Mr. Blankenship said as the activists were escorted out.

Then he calmly moved onto his next target.

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