RealClearPolitics: Trial Lawyers will ruin Louisiana's Energy Industry

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In an April verdict, a jury in Louisiana's 25th Judicial District ruled Chevron must pay the government of Plaquemines Parish $745 million in recompense for environmental damage relating to oil and natural gas activities conducted by Texaco before Chevron acquired it in 2001.

The Plaquemines case is the first in a flood of litigation that threatens to swamp the industry in a state critical to the national energy agenda. Since 2010, Louisiana’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry has boomed; energy now provides about 10 percent of jobs in the state and generates about 20 percent of its gross product. Louisiana ranks second only to Texas in energy exports by dollar value and it serves as the main launching pad for the LNG exports that are liberating American allies in Europe and Asia from dependence on hostile regimes.

Yet, beyond Plaquemines, more than 40 similar lawsuits are pending, filed by parishes seeking to hold oil and gas companies financially responsible for decades of coastal land loss. The verdict against Chevron sets a dangerous precedent that could extract billions from an industry essential to America's global economic strategy....

The Plaquemines case—supported by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry—was argued by one of the governor’s largest donors, serial plaintiff attorney John Carmouche. Rather than a populist uprising, the lawsuits represent the familiar pattern of politically connected insiders exploiting grievances, real or not.

Indeed, problems with the Plaquemines verdict go beyond the personnel involved in the lawsuit. The verdict divided the damages into $160 million for contaminating waters, $10 million for abandoning equipment, and $575 million for causing coastal erosion. Even if the contamination and equipment claims have merit, the whopping erosion claim lacks causal support.

Plaquemines Parish’s estuarial geography has, by its nature, always been in flux. Land in the far southeastern corner of the state lies at perilously low elevations and has always been at the mercy of the Mississippi River’s seasonal flows. In recent decades land loss has indeed become a real issue for the parish’s 25,000 residents and those across the state’s coastal reaches. Famously, Louisiana loses about a football-field’s worth of land every hour. But oil and gas activity is not the culprit.

The primary driver of coastal erosion has been Louisiana’s decision—supported by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—to channel the Mississippi River directly to the Gulf, rather than permit its usual variation. Historically, annual river floods deposited millions of tons of sediment in Plaquemines and other parishes that bolstered dry land. Channeling the river and building levees to prevent catastrophic flooding upstream in cities like New Orleans and Baton Rouge cut off that replenishment. This feat of geoengineering has succeeded in protecting millions of Louisianans from harm and securing billions of dollars in economic activity, but at the predictable cost of sacrificing Louisiana’s southeastern corner to gradual land loss....

Utilitarian river management decisions and natural vulnerability are what ail Plaquemines and other coastal parishes. Governor Landry and his trial lawyer allies are wringing dry the state’s standout sector on false environmental pretenses. The Plaquemines Parish verdict and the dozens of looming cases behind it jeopardize the American energy renaissance by levying spurious, retroactive penalties on the very companies driving national growth. Disguised as environmental justice, this opportunistic grab by political insiders undermines both Louisiana’s energy sector and genuine climate resilience.

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