Judge tosses huge lawsuit against oil companies in Louisiana

AP/Fuel Fix:

A lawsuit filed in 2013 by a Louisiana flood board that sought damages — potentially in the billions of dollars — from scores of oil, gas and pipeline companies over erosion of the state’s fragile coast was thrown out Friday evening by a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Nanette Jolivette Brown dismissed the suit in a complex 49-page ruling.

The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East had claimed in the lawsuit that coastal drilling and dredging activities contributed to the loss of coastal wetlands that form a natural hurricane protection buffer for New Orleans.

The lawsuit caused a political furor in Louisiana. The suit’s backers said it was necessary to hold energy companies accountable for decades of damage and that it was one of the state’s few hopes for funding coastal protection and restoration efforts with an estimated price tag of at least $50 billion over the coming decades.

Gov. Bobby Jindal and oil industry leaders condemned it as an attack on a vital industry and said it undermined the state’s efforts to protect and restore the coast. The Legislature passed a bill to kill the lawsuit although a state judge later declared that law unconstitutional, a ruling that was under appeal.

“We are gratified by this court’s ruling to dismiss this ill-conceived, unwise and divisive litigation, which we have contended all along was nothing more than an attempt to subvert the existing legal and regulatory processes,” Greg Beuerman, spokesman for Shell, Chevron and BP, said in an email. Those three were among more than 90 companies, some big, some small, named in the lawsuit. At least one small defendant settled and others were removed for various reasons. Brown said there were 88 defendants at the time of her ruling.
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This looked more like a search for deep pockets to pay for the damages caused by the levy system built by the government.  Louisiana has a dilemma.  They can protect against the seasonal flooding from the Mississippi River by channelling the  flood water with the levies but they have to live with the erosion resulting from the lack of silt build up that he flood waters would bring.  I don't think driling for oil and gas had much to do with that erosion.  Apparently the court agreed.