Louisiana avoids California type hysteria over oil leak

NY Times:

In some parts of the country, the sight of oil drifting toward the Louisiana coast, oozing into the fragile marshlands and bringing large parts of the state’s economy to a halt, has prompted calls to stop offshore drilling indefinitely, if not altogether.

Here, in the middle of things, those calls are few. Here, in fact, the unfolding disaster is not even prompting a reconsideration of the 75th annual Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival.

“All systems are go,” said Lee Delaune, the festival’s director, sitting in his cluttered office in a historic house known as Cypress Manor. “We will honor the two industries as we always do,” Mr. Delaune said. “More so probably in grand style, because it’s our diamond jubilee.”

Louisiana is an oil state, though and through. A gushing leak off of its coast has not, apparently, changed that.

Though local and state politicians are railing against BP and what they consider lax industry regulation and enforcement, it is nearly impossible to find any of them calling for offshore drilling to cease, or even slow down. Louisiana’s senators — Mary L. Landrieu, a Democrat, and David Vitter, a Republican — have both scrambled to be the most prominent voice to argue that the country should not retreat from offshore drilling just because of the spill. Many of their constituents seem to agree.

“They’re angry, they’re frustrated, they’re feeling helpless, but they still understand that it is part of the culture and the fabric of the economy,” said Representative Charlie Melancon, whose district encompasses all of the areas where oil has come ashore. “It is what it is.”

...

But Garret Graves, the chairman of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said that these potential royalties were not a factor in the state’s approach to its natural resources. While officials have pushed for revenue sharing, he said, the oil industry will continue to play a big role here with or without such payments. “Our state has carried the torch for the country in terms of the oil and gas for years,” Mr. Graves said. “It’s part of the culture.”

In this he echoed a common refrain: as long as the country maintains its insatiable appetite for oil, Louisiana will be willing to bear many of the risks. The awareness of those risks does not seem to change the state’s vigorously pro-industry outlook, though it does reinforce a belief that Louisianans should be compensated for the downsides.

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Despite its pro-industry policies, Ms. Orr said, Louisiana has continued to be one of the poorest states in the country, raising serious questions as to whether the downsides are worth it.

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Louisiana has been poor because of the state's embedded corruption. One of the reasons that most of the oil companies have their headquarters in Houston instead of New Orleans is to avoid the extra costs of corruption.

Nevertheless, Louisiana has been much more mature about the spill than places like California which attempts to stop all offshore production of oil and gas. It is quickly becoming a poor state too, and it can't blame that on offshore oil.