Drilling freeze has chilling impact

“Lafourche Parish: Feeding and Fueling America.”

That’s been the parish’s slogan for several years.

But the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil spill has forced countless gallons of oil ashore and brought an abrupt halt to the Tri-parishes’ commercial seafood and recreational fishing industries.

The prospect of Lafourche Parish feeding America in the near future is grim.

Compounding locals’ concerns, President Barack Obama ordered a six-month moratorium on existing Gulf of Mexico deep-water drilling, suspending work at 33 such rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Fueling America, officials fear, will likely get harder in the future, too.

As devastating as the physical effects of the oil spill are, parish officials know the long-term financial impact of losing the oil industry would be much worse.

“Mr. President, you were looking for someone’s butt to kick. You’re kicking ours,” Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph said Thursday at a press conference in Port Fourchon. “We’re very disappointed in the manner in which this is being handled. It makes us feel like lesser Americans. We should be on a pedestal for what we do for this country.”

With anti-moratorium sentiment at a peak, the Lafourche Parish Council last Tuesday approved a resolution asking Obama to consider immediately lifting the moratorium.

Likewise, the Terrebonne Parish Council unanimously OK’d a similarly worded resolution at its committee meetings the previous night.

Terrebonne Parish President Michel Claudet said at Thursday’s conference that 80 percent of the parish’s residents rely on the water for a living – “20 percent of my people are fishing and about 60 percent are oilfield related.”

“When one industry was down, the other one was there so [workers] could go from one to the other,” he continued. “Right now, we have an oilfield catastrophe that’s affecting our coast. There’s no question about that.”

Claudet reminded the Obama administration that the region has accounted for drilling about 50,000 or more wells without a major incident.

“It’s ridiculous that this was even considered – to kill our economy even worse than the oil,” Lafourche councilman Joe Fertitta said of the moratorium. “I can’t understand why the president of the United States would even consider an option like that.”

Tri-parish officials fear the moratorium will cause oil companies to relocate their operations to foreign countries.

“Once those rigs go overseas, they’re not coming back down,” said Lafourche councilman Lindel Toups. “If they go overseas, they’ve got to sign a five- or six-year contract, and we need to try to stop that right now.”

Although the resolution asks for an immediate end to the moratorium, it is in agreement with Obama’s wishes to conduct a thorough investigation of all deep-water drilling facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.

“It’s telling the president we need it done immediately, although we incorporate the safety factors with this resolution,” said Lafourche councilman Phillip Gouaux. “We’re not just money hungry, but we want this community to stay whole, and the safety factor as well because of the loss of the 11 lives. Safety is a high priority.”

But sentiment to immediately end the moratorium isn’t just a local consensus. The Louisiana House and Senate also unanimously passed resolutions last week requesting the immediate lifting of the moratorium.

“This is not a Democratic issue. This is not a Republican issue. It’s not a North Louisiana issue, not a South Louisiana issue,” said Gov. Bobby Jindal in Fourchon Thursday. “You’ve got legislators – Democrat, Republican, north Louisiana, south Louisiana all saying the same thing – let’s do this safely. Let’s do this right.”

The governor said eight of 15 experts who advised Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on how to improve the safety of offshore drilling signed a document saying they did not know about the moratorium beforehand and do not agree with its implementation.

“A blanket moratorium will have the indirect effect of harming thousands of workers and further impact state and local economies suffering from the spill,” stated the group in a press release.

Because of the potentially devastating effects on south Louisiana’s economy, the Gulf Economic Survival Team (GEST) has been formed in an effort to spread the message that the president’s moratorium will have a severely negative impact on Louisiana.

GEST is a grassroots effort led by Jindal, which includes many the coastal area chambers of commerce and business groups.

Jindal said Obama told him BP would pay the unemployment claims associated with the moratorium, but the governor is skeptical.

“BP has not committed to that though,” said Jindal. “But our people don’t want a claims check or an unemployment check; they want to get back to work. They want to have their jobs so they can count on a paycheck to feed their families.”

Gov. Bobby Jindal shakes the hand of C-Port employee Greg Watts at Thursday’s drilling moratorium conference in Port Fourchon. The Governor called for the lifting of President Barack Obama’s drilling moratorium in front of about 200 oil and gas workers. * Photo by MICHAEL DAVIS