Louisiana is an oil producing state, obviously. And as a result, it is where U. S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar came to announce the intended sale of mineral leases on some 18-million acres coming up in the Gulf of Mexico August 18.
“This is where the lights are green in terms of moving forward with production,” he said last week in New Orleans when he came to make the announcement. And this is where some 2,000 jobs could be created for some 40 years as a result of it. And that could almost double in peak years.
More Gulf lease sales in the future could even expand on those figures, especially if drilling can be expanded to the eastern Gulf off the coast of Florida which is forbidden now. It will take an act of Congress to do so, however.
Louisiana’s position in the center of the Gulf Coast puts it in a good position to be a service center to rigs throughout the Gulf. Mobile, however, is sniffing at the opportunity to get a share of it.
Of course, our President is not concentrating only on oil and gas production to solve our shortage of local energy production, which now is provided some two-thirds of the way with imported fuels. Barack Obama also wants to use solar farms, new nuclear plants and other sources of energy production in his future plans.
Our President certainly has not reversed his course in keeping faith in the aims of environmentalists who want to cut petroleum production to a minimum. But he realizes the present and near future of the well-being of the country depends upon plentiful local production and much of that must come from the Gulf of Mexico. At present, half of our imported oil products come from OPEC countries which could present a problem if political conditions worsened with those countries.
Other states where petroleum production is not allowed offshore reportedly want a larger part of the revenue derived from it than Louisiana now gets if it is allowed. And if it is allowed, our state should certainly receive more than it now gets plus an extra amount for the pittance it received in prior years when we were supplying the country with most of its offshore produced petroleum.
Yes, oil and gas production has been a major economic force for Louisiana but at the same time we have suffered in much destruction of wetlands along our coast and, as a result, a greater threat to our existence from possible surges from the Gulf during hurricanes. We have been deprived of much revenue we should have gotten from that source through the years.
It is time for the federal government to begin correcting it.
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