The attempt by Louisiana politicians to blame fossil fuel energy producers for coastal erosion and salty water discharge is a fundamentally corrupt money grab.
“Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly,” and politicians gotta politicianize. That depressing reality is illustrated well by the support of Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill for a recent jury verdict in Plaquemines Parish against Chevron to the tune of $744 million, finding that Texaco, subsequently acquired by Chevron, is responsible for the longstanding land erosion problem in Louisiana.
That Murrill is a Republican in a Republican state that produces large amounts of fossil fuels apparently did not affect Murrill’s political calculations. Louisiana is famous for being a “judicial hellhole,” and — let’s face it — juries are unlikely to view fossil energy companies as worthy of sympathy, notwithstanding the massive creation of national wealth and increases in human well-being that their investments and productive activities engender. One recent PwC analysis reports that the oil and gas industry generates, directly and indirectly, twenty-one percent of the state’s GDP, over thirteen percent of total employment, and almost seventeen percent of labor income. A separate analysis by University of Louisiana at Lafayette economist Dr. Stephen Barnes finds that the energy sector generates over twenty percent of state revenues.
The Louisiana Lawsuits
But back to Murrill. Beginning in 2013, several Louisiana parishes filed a total of forty-three lawsuits against the fossil energy producers, accusing them of causing the long-term land erosion problem in southern Louisiana. Then-Louisiana Attorney General (now Governor) Jeff Landry intervened and joined as a plaintiff against the fossil energy producers, then abdicated his prosecutorial authority to the plaintiff’s lawyers in a 2016 agreement. And now. Murrill has continued this office’s deeply dubious support for the plaintiffs.
How dubious is the argument that the fossil energy producers are responsible for the Louisiana land erosion problem? Let us quote the U.S. Geological Survey:
“USGS and other studies indicate that major shifts in the course of the Mississippi River have contributed significantly to the demise of the wetlands. The 300-kilometer-wide Mississippi River delta plain and its associated wetlands and barrier shorelines are the product of the continuous accumulation of sediments deposited by the river and its distributaries during the past 7,000 years. [As a result of] regular shifts in the river’s course … the deltas experienced erosion and degradation due to compaction of loose sediment, rise in relative sea level, and catastrophic storms.”
“Human activities during the past century have drastically affected the wetlands. Natural processes alone are not responsible for the degradation and loss of wetlands in the Mississippi River delta plain. The seasonal flooding that previously provided sediments critical to the healthy growth of wetlands has been virtually eliminated by the construction of massive levees that channel the river for nearly 2000 kilometers; sediment carried by the river is now discharged far from the coast, thereby depriving wetlands of vital sediment. In addition, throughout the wetlands, an extensive system of dredged canals and flood-control structures, constructed to facilitate hydrocarbon exploration and production as well as commercial and recreational boat traffic, has enabled salt water from the Gulf of Mexico to intrude brackish and freshwater wetlands. Moreover, forced drainage of the wetlands to accommodate development and agriculture also contributes to wetlands deterioration and loss.” (emphasis added)
The Truth Behind the Permits
Now, about those hydrocarbon activities. The lawsuits have failed to mention that to the extent that the canals have contributed to erosion of the delta, and to the extent that the canals facilitate hydrocarbon operations, among others, the erosion is the direct result of “permits issued by the state and federal agencies.”
And why were those permits originally issued? Some of the energy producers were serving as federal contractors in the 1940s, working at the direction of the federal government to produce crude oil from the Louisiana coastal zone to be refined into high-octane aviation gasoline for the war effort. That federal contractor relationship likely underscores why the US Supreme Court agreed in June to review whether one of these cases should proceed to federal court, a point with which Murrill disagrees. Among Murrill’s central arguments — this is not a joke — is that the energy producers now should be punished for doing what the federal government asked them to do and for which the feds and the state government issued permits.
Consequences for Louisiana
Murrill apparently has been surprised that the rest of the country is watching this perverse litigation game in Louisiana. Accordingly, she is not pleased with the resulting publicity about her ties to the plaintiff’s attorneys, nor with the resulting sharp criticism from many national Republicans about the adverse implications of her legal machinations for the larger Trump “energy dominance” agenda. It can surprise no one that she has attempted to change the subject, claiming, amusingly, that the litigation against the oil and gas producers is fully consistent with the Trump agenda because Texaco “discharged approximately 4 billion gallons of toxic waste into the marsh in Delacroix.” (emphasis in the original) As Steve Milloy reports:
“Recently, [Murrill] went as far as to claim that Chevron had illegally dumped four billion gallons of ‘toxic’ waste in Louisiana’s marsh — a talking point that appears to be taken straight from left-wing trial lawyers’ playbooks. In truth, the so-called toxic waste was in fact produced water, which comes with every oil and gas production. It’s primarily salty water that is separated from oil. It was legal to discharge produced water into saline water in Louisiana—Chevron even got a permit from Louisiana for the discharge. Every state and federal agency overseeing its operations approved of its discharge. It was not until the state conspired with contingency fee lawyers pushing the Left’s climate cultism did any agency allege that the discharge was unlawful.”
“Toxic waste” is a lawyer’s term largely devoid of analytic content in the absence of a factual description of the discharge and its effects. Produced water is not defined as “toxic waste” in the United States (or by any other nation). It is no more than the brackish, briny water trapped within the geologic formations that contain crude oil; it is brought to the surface during oil production.
In the original legal complaint [1] filed by Plaquemines Parish, there are numerous references to the disposal of “wastes,” “waste pits,” “pollution,” “toxic substances,” and similar verbiage, with a general assertion of “direct and significant impact on state coastal waters located in Plaquemines Parish.” Nowhere, however, in the complaint is there any quantification of such purported effects, and the complaint does not assert any adverse health or welfare impacts even qualitatively, let alone quantitatively. That the “plaintiffs demand trial by jury” demonstrates that this lawsuit is a money grab driven by an emotional appeal to a jury comprising nonspecialists.
As the old joke goes, attorneys who have neither the law nor the facts on their side are forced to pound the table. Murrill has proven herself a master table-pounder, delivering such time-tested leftist anti-capitalism tosh as, “Quite simply, Chevron chose profits over people and the law.”
For that we need Republicans? Her silly rhetoric does not change the law or the facts in the coastal erosion/produced water lawsuits. Like Landry before her, Murrill obviously has ambitions for higher office. It is just as obvious that she has no principles other than those ambitions and thus is perfectly willing to beclown herself with arguments that leftists heartily will endorse. This is in support of money grabs that are utterly indefensible, fundamentally corrupt, and in blatant violation of the economic well-being of almost all the people of Louisiana. Is she proud of herself? That the answer is likely to be an emphatic “yes” speaks volumes.
About the Author: Benjamin Zycher
Dr. Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on energy and environmental policy. He is a former senior economist at the RAND Corporation, a former adjunct professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at the California State University Channel Islands, and is a former senior economist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. He served as a senior staff economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, with responsibility for energy and environmental policy issues. Dr. Zycher has a doctorate in economics from UCLA, a Master in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Arts in political science from UCLA.
[1] Not available online. 25TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT FOR THE PARISH OF PLAQUEMINES, STATE OF LOUISIANA, DIVISION A, DOCKET NO. 60-996, THE PARISH OF PLAQUEMINES VERSUS ROZEL OPERATING COMPANY, CONOCOPHILLIPS COMPANY, THE LOUISIANA LAND AND EXPLORATION COMPANY LLC, CHEVRON U. A. SHOLDINGS INC., CHEVRON U. A. SINC., THE TEXAS COMPANY, APACHE OIL CORPORATION, ATLANTIC RICHFIELD COMPANY, AND LLOG EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION COMPANY, L. C.L FILED: NOV 8 – 2013.
Image: Shutterstock/Sharon Ball
