It's three in the morning, there's an explosion on a tanker offshore, it's visible to those on shore at 3:30am. reporters have assembled and they're starting to ask questions and make calls. What do you do? It's still 330 in the morning. But what you can't do is saying a call back during normal business hours or the advice of counsel. We can't talk to you right now.

That spills guilt in the eyes of the media, and hence the rest of the world. You've got to come up with a message and you've got to do it quickly. Now, sometimes right at the beginning of a crisis for people in the oil and gas industry, you don't really know what happened. Just there's a fire there's an explosion, there is a spill. And you don't know why. And you don't want to mislead people.

Meanwhile, you may I have a lawyer saying, well, don't say anything because that could cause legal troubles. You have to say Something sometimes the only thing you can say is we can confirm at 3am. Today a fire took place on this tanker, we immediately called all local, state and federal authorities. We have called out our chief engineer to begin an investigation, we will let you know, regularly with updates every half an hour as more information comes in. That's much better than saying no comment, or call us tomorrow or show up at 9am or our lawyers won't let us talk to us. I didn't really say much.

But I did say enough. I presented the basic facts. I said what we're doing, we are alerting all the other state local federal officials. I'm telling you what we're doing internally, we've launched an investigation. At that point, you may be premature. We even talk about investigation.

If there's a fire still going on. You're saying we're spending every ounce of our energy putting the fire out. We have deployed our firefighting units. always talk about what you are doing that's specific. That's real. That's proactive.

What you don't want to do is come out and say, Well, at the walker oil and gas company safety is our number one priority. I know that's an important internal message to you. That safety's number one, safety is important. Obviously, everyone in the oil and gas industry spends a lot of time energy and money focusing on safety. But at the exact moment when there's a fire going on, and reporters can see a fire and there's perhaps, injuries missing people, even deaths. It just sounds hollow.

It sounds fake. It's not believable. To hear some corporate spokesperson saying, you know, we have Walker oil and gas. I think safety is our number one priority. Well, it's obviously not your number one priority of safety were your number one priority. You wouldn't be involved with dangerous chemicals, oil and gas, we would all be walking in flip flops somewhere and not using any energy.

So I don't mean to make light of this, but I have to tell you, in my experience of working with oil and gas executives all over the world, that's a common problem. Right when a crisis breaks to try to push this message on to reporters that safety is our number one concern. That's too generic a message. It sounds like something from a marketing document from 10 years ago. It doesn't sound like you're being honest. Talking about this explosion, this fire this crisis that happened 30 minutes ago.

So when you're coming up with a message, you've got to be very, very focused. Here's what happened. Here's what we're doing about it, to make sure the problem is stopping whether it's attempting to solve the leak. Whether it's sending out firefighters to put the fire out whether it's sending out people to find missing employees, tell people exactly what you know, that you're doing, alert them to other authorities, you've noticed you've notified and let people know that you're on top of the situation, that you're being proactive, that you're aware of the problems that you're doing everything you can. Now notice what I didn't say I didn't say reassure people by telling them the problem is going to be completely solved now, or that leak is going to be plugged by tomorrow, because we've all seen what happens to oil and gas companies that make predictions if you predict a problem will be solved.

And you're wrong. You're not just wrong in the eyes of the media and the public. You're a liar. You're an obfuscator. You're a scammer of some sort. So during a crisis is a time to just stick to the facts.

Here's exactly what we know. Here is a exactly what we're doing no more. Yeah, but TJ is the reason for this. I don't know. yet. But tomorrow, will this plug Bailey?

I don't know. All I can tell you is and then stick to the facts which you have done, what you will do. One of your best friends during the crisis is the phrase I don't know. Many of us are afraid to sound ignorant or lacking in knowledge. But I challenge you go back and look at the BP crisis. Look at Exxon Valdez.

Look at all the major crises that have caused black guys on the reputation of oil and gas industries, and I defy you to point to a single case where a company really ruined its reputation by having an executive say, I don't know about that what I do know is and then focusing on the specific things that are being done, right. They're saying, I don't know, there's no shame. Saying you do know something and putting it out there and being wrong. That's where the real damage is. That's where the problem is. That's where you get yourself into trouble.

So you've got to be able to quickly figure out what your message is. And it's hard to do with three in the morning when there's panic and you're half asleep, and you're in shock and there's 10 phone calls coming in every two seconds. That's why you need to plan in advance you know, if there's some fire explosion bleak that You're not going to know everything instantly. But you can know that you're going to notify all these relevant authorities. You can know what the basic safety procedures are. As far as sending out firefighters or sending out other cleanup crews or rescue crews.

You certainly do know who your spokesperson should be. It should be your CEO or whoever is the highest ranking official at that particular location until your CEO can get there. This is not the time to delegate things to PR spokespersons, nothing against PR spokespersons. You need someone who really has authority to deliver that message. Your message has to be clear has to be focused. And your message needs to be positive in the sense of telling people what you can do and can say.

I don't mean positive in the sense of well, it's not really a big problem. It's all going to be cleared up by tomorrow. Don't do that if this is not the time for optimism with your messaging, this is the time to stick to facts. But it's also not the time to literally answer every single question. I can't answer that. Our lawyers won't let us talk about that.

Mr. Walker, how's this going to affect your stock price? I can't comment on that. Never say I can't comment. Focus on what you can say. always talk about what you want to talk about. That's what you need in your message.

So before you return that reporters first phone call. Before you hold that press conference, you need to quickly and I mean quickly. Like within an hour, you've got to be able to make a statement for the whole world to see. And I think you should videotape it, put it on your own website, put it on YouTube, make it available to the world you need a statement. It only needs to be a minute or so. Law, state the facts as they happen as you know them only as you know them No, no guessing.

No conjecture, no theorizing, just state the facts as you know them. And then state the facts of what you have done. And then state the facts of what you are going to do based on what you know so far, and that you're going to give people regular updates, do that. And that will get you to the next news cycle. Now, you may need to give updates once an hour, perhaps more often, your message is going to change the data crisis. The message you deliver an hour after a crisis has erupted is quite often very different from what it will be a day later or two weeks later or two months later, the facts change.

The issues change. Therefore the messages have to change but the process of how you create a message. And how you deliver a message is remarkably consistent and that's what we're going to focus on now.