Officials go the extra mile to save La. coast

Environmentalists say that offshore drilling has negative impacts on Louisiana’s coast – specifically within our state’s rapidly dying wetlands.

But officials within the oil and gas industry say these opinions simply don’t hold merit.

Industry leaders say that the industry does more than its fair share to help Louisiana.

Combining royalties with other mitigation programs, leaders believe they make up for the harmful things drilling does to our environment.

“We always aim to help our coastal areas however we can,” Briggs said. “We do a variety of things to make sure that everyone is fairly taken care of.”

The first – and most abundant – way that oil companies give back is through royalties.

Percentages of what is made through drilling is given back to programs that are designed to help rebuild the state’s coast.

In a multi-billion dollar industry, those totals are substantial.

“The coastal program gets a lot of revenue from the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production and revenues,” said Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association. “A lot of money goes into the coastal program through the industry.”

Briggs said he believes these efforts are “by-far” the most substantial remedies that the coastal areas receive from the oilfield to re-patch our area’s quickly fading wetlands.

“That’s the biggest thing,” Briggs said. “Those revenues that the coastal program receives from the offshore oil and gas production are really important and provide a substantial amount of help.”

In addition to royalties, Briggs said companies also take part in mitigation efforts to restore areas that may be affected by drilling.

The LOGA president said that if an area of land is damaged because of a spill or some other oilfield-related circumstance, companies remedy the problem by growing an equal amount of marsh elsewhere.

“If we drill a well in a coastal area and we do anything to damage any land in that area, we always turn around and we mitigate,” Briggs said. “We do that by creating new marsh or creating new environment for anything that may have been destroyed.

“There are many, many programs out there and many, many things that we work with in the Gulf of Mexico and the entire coastal area who have benefitted from the oil and gas industry’s activities.”

But even with time, effort and cold-hard cash being pumped into Louisiana’s coast, many within the public still have the negative perception that drilling does nothing but harm for the environment.

Briggs said he believes that opinion is rooted from a lack of understanding within the general public about things that are being done to help Louisiana.

“I don’t think the general public is aware of that,” Briggs said. “You and I aren’t aware of some of the different programs that might take place in the medical community in regards to new safety rules and things like that. We just don’t know about those things because they are not our business.