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By David Catanese
POLITICO

Just how wide has Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s support grown as he cruises to a second term?

Even some of the biggest Democratic trial lawyers are opening up their wallets for the 40-year-old Indian-American chief executive.

Just this week, Burton LeBlanc, the vice president of the American Association of Justice (formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America), hosted a $5,000-a-couple fundraiser at his Baton Rouge home for Jindal.

“Burton and I have been friends for a long time.  I asked him to do it,” Jindal campaign aide Tim Teepell said of the LeBlanc event.  “Bobby is working to win the support of every Louisianan.”

LeBlanc and his firm have doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats over the years, including to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama.

But the support is deeper than just one prominent attorney.

Earlier this year, the Metairie-based firm of Gauthier, Houghtaling and Williams threw a $1,000-per person cocktail party to benefit Jindal’s reelection.

And Forbes magazine recently pondered the “strange bedfellow” relationship between Jindal and Baron & Budd, the Dallas-based firm — also steeped in Democratic politics — that was tapped to handle the state’s litigation against BP.

As Forbes notes, partner Russell Budd held a fundraiser at his home for Obama and grew “famously close” with the Clinton administration.

Jindal’s trial lawyer ties won’t be a liability in the run-up to this November, but an open question is whether the money and relationships could be viewed as a liability on the national stage.

Having often been mentioned as a potential vice presidential contender, the generous support from such prominent Republican bogeymen might give pause to a potential GOP nominee like Rick Perry or Mitt Romney during the vetting process.

Then again, in Teepell’s words, Jindal’s team thinks “people will understand when you’re running for office you want the support of everyone.”

Original Article

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By Ted Griggs

The energy industry is getting active in a second potentially oil-rich shale formation in Louisiana, this one stretching across the northern part of the state, Department of Natural Resources Secretary Scott Angelle said Wednesday.

Angelle said in a news release that he is “bullish” on the future of energy production and its role in providing jobs and economic strength in Louisiana.

Houston-based Southwestern Energy Co. apparently feels the same way. The company recently announced it has invested $150 million in mineral leases for 460,000 acres in the Lower Smackover, also known as the “Brown Dense” formation. The name comes from the rock in the formation: dark-colored lime and mud stone.

Southwestern Energy is drilling its first Brown Dense well in Arkansas and has applied for a permit to drill one in Claiborne Parish near the Arkansas border. Southwestern says it will begin drilling that well by the end of the year.

Natural Resources Department spokeswoman Anna Dearmon said the agency doesn’t know of any reserve estimates for the amount of oil in the Lower Smackover.

The formation joins the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale that stretches across Louisiana’s midsection as the second shale formation believed to have potential for oil production. A third formation — the Haynesville Shale — is a major natural gas producer in northwest Louisiana.

The Lower Smackover, or Brown Dense formation, is 300 to 500 feet thick and lies some 8,000 to 10,000 feet below ground. It is at the base of the Smackover formation — which has long been a source for traditionally produced oil and natural gas in north Louisiana.

Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, said the Brown Dense is thought to stretch from east Texas through northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas, and possibly to Mississippi.

Although there’s some leasing and interest in the formation, there’s very little drilling activity so far, Briggs said.

Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy, which has leased 250,000 acres in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, has announced it has 40,000 acres under lease in the Brown Dense. Devon has a permit for a well in Morehouse Parish.

“The technology of hydraulic fracturing and being able to drill laterally is the game changer for the energy industry,” Briggs said. “That changes everything.”

For example, the industry had long known about the enormous natural gas reserves in the Haynesville Shale, Briggs said.

But a well drilled vertically into the formation might encounter a productive area of 200 feet at most, he said. By drilling horizontally, the productive area is expanded to 4,000 feet, and that is a huge difference.

In hydraulic fracturing, chemicals, water and sand are injected into the ground under enormous pressure, cracking the rock and propping it open. The oil or natural gas escapes through those openings.

Fracking technology is the reason that energy companies have targeted the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, which crosses Louisiana’s mid-section and is thought to contain 7 billion barrels of oil. More than 1 million acres in the Louisiana portion of the shale are under lease.

According to the Department of Natural Resources, a half-dozen wells in the Marine Shale are in the permitting process or already being drilled.

“The development of the Haynesville Shale natural gas play, the top-producing natural gas play in the nation, has helped give them that confidence,” Angelle said of the interest in the Tuscaloosa Marine and Lower Smackover shales.

Wilma Subra, an environmental chemist and a State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations board member, said one of the issues with fracking is that the process uses an estimated 5 million to 8 million gallons of water per well.

At first, energy companies in the Haynesville Shale were using ground water, but conservation advocates pushed the companies to switch to surface water — water from rivers and lakes, Subra said. But now surface water resources are falling, and that’s a real concern for people in the area, especially with the current drought.

According to the state Office of Conservation, companies drilling in the Lower Smackover, or Brown Dense, plan to use surface water and recycled water for their overall project needs.

However, Subra said the drought in north Louisiana and fracking operations in the Haynesville Shale are putting pressure on even the supplies of surface water.

Shreveport may have to begin drawing water from the Red River, she said. While the Office of Conservation regulates ground water, the state doesn’t have an agency that can say who can and cannot use surface water nor is there an agency that’s studying who should have first claim on that water, she said.

Original Article

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By Susan Buchanan

With a swipe of the pen, the Louisiana legislature took $26.6 million last month from a fund that converts old oil rigs into reefs where fish congregate. That move, which was intended to cover a budget gap, will cost the state as it tries to revive the coast, critics say. Money in the Artificial Reef Development Fund, paid by oil companies that enroll defunct rigs, protects fish and pays for ecological research.

Since the new fiscal year began on July 1, the operating budget of the reef fund — managed by the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries — has shrunk to $6 million.

Through the ARDF, started 25years ago, LDWF has built 66 offshore reefs from 269 oil platforms and related structures. Additionally, 29 inshore reefs were created from limestone, shells, bridge rubble and other material. Supporters of artificial reefs — including fishermen and environmentalists — don’t want the fund to be depleted.

Chris Macaluso, coastal outreach coordinator with nonprofit Louisiana Wildlife Federation in Baton Rouge, said the state has removed $45 million from the ARDF since 2009-10. “This could become a pattern, in which the fund is raided whenever there’s a budget shortfall,” he worries.

Referring to Bobby Jindal, Macaluso said, “It seems hypocritical for a governor, who claims to favor coastal habitat restoration, to remove money from a fund that’s dedicated to just that.”

As Louisiana’s wetlands continue to erode, artificial reefs provide needed habitat. “They give younger fish a place to seek refuge from larger fish,” Macaluso said. “No one can argue that there’s better Gulf fishing than off the Louisiana coast, and that’s partly because of these artificial reef structures.”

“Losing ARDF money means losing money that the fund is using to build not just offshore but also inshore reefs — like Independence Island near Grand Isle, and others that protect coastal marshes, lakes and bays,” he said. “That’s habitat for speckled trout, redfish and shellfish. The money’s badly needed coming off of last year’s oil spill and before that, four hurricanes — all of which damaged the coastline.”

He compared artificial reef development to farmers making cropland as productive as possible.

Macaluso said, “Members of the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission have formed a working group to examine the constitutionality of the legislature and the governor removing money from the ARDF.” The commission may take legal action if there’s substantial evidence of a constitutional violation, and attorneys who are fishermen and hunters might do the work pro bono.

The state’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Assistant Secretary Randy Pausina, based in New Orleans, said the Administration checked with the agency about its reef needs early this year. “We said we had enough for the program and agreed to release ARDF money this year for other uses by the state,” Pausina said. He added, “During state budget shortfalls, we’re all on the same team.”

Pausina continued, saying, “We have two or three unused oil and gas jackets a month coming into the ARDF program. We’re averaging 25 structures per year.” It takes six months to a year before old platforms are deployed as reef.

For oil companies, the average cost of decommissioning a Gulf platform outside the ARDF program is $3.8 million, Pausina said. Companies enrolling structures in the ARDF donate half of their realized savings to the fund. LDWF pays any costs associated with maintaining artificial reefs.

New entries in the program mean a steady stream of revenue, which in recent years has been running about $9 million annually and is slated to grow as old rigs are retired at a faster pace.

Commercial and recreational fishermen support the artificial reef program. At Super Strike Charters in Venice, La., Captain Damon Mcknight said his firm takes fishing parties out to artificial reefs, where “we catch a large variety of red snapper, amber-jack, cobia, grouper, mackerel and sharks. Those structures also provide essential habitat and food for pelagic species — such as tuna, wahoo, marlin and dolphin.” Pelagic fish range from small coastal foragers to large oceanic predators and live near the surface or in the water column of the ocean, but not in the sea’s bottom.

Mcknight said artificial reefs are home to many types of corals and fish, providing an entire underwater ecosystem. “Without them, the Gulf would be a different ecology,” he said.

Louisiana has nine artificial reef-planning areas, mainly using decommissioned rigs. Rigs in the Gulf provide habitat and structure for invertebrates and fish, according to the LDWF. Experience has shown that artificial reefs need to be placed at least 25 meters but not more than 400 meters apart in the Louisiana Gulf to provide optimum habitat, the agency said. Permits for artificial reefs are issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Universities provide biological monitoring to the ARDF and assist with reef design. Louisiana State University is completing a three-year offshore project, studying several of the program’s reefs, Pausina said.

Activities that the fund supports are referred to as the Louisiana Artificial Reef Program, or LARP. The program has contributed $1 million toward an LSU project evaluating the movement and feeding of fish in and among artificial reefs.

Dr. James Cowan, Jr., oceanography and coastal sciences professor at LSU, said, “LARP funds have an enormous impact on marine ecosystem research, including work on fish habitats and reef planning. LSU and other Louisiana universities have been involved in LARP research for years, and much of that work probably wouldn’t get done if the ARDF didn’t exist.”

Cowan said, “Scientific research on fisheries around structures as large as oil and gas platforms is challenging and expensive, especially when ships are used, and it’s also somewhat unique to only a few places in the world.”

He said near-shore areas that don’t have natural structures in the northern Gulf attract fish of commercial and recreational value after artificial reefs are built. Concentrations closer to shore provide fishing opportunities, and coastal communities benefit economically from fishing the rigs.

“Fish use these platforms as habitat in ways we still don’t fully understand,” Cowan said. “Some fish populations may increase because of platforms, but that’s not clear.”

While fisheries data has been gathered under the LARP for years, more is needed, Cowan said. “Some of the species using platforms in inshore and offshore waters are over-exploited or, in the worst cases — such as bluefin tuna and white marlin — are being considered for listing as threatened or endangered. Future research will determine which fish are made more vulnerable to fishing because of their attraction to large, unnatural structures in the marine environment.”

He said, “State and federal agencies are very aware of the need for baseline data, especially after the Macondo well accident,” referring to the BP spill. “It’s become evident that there isn’t enough pre-spill data on fish and fish habitats in many offshore environments, including Louisiana’s artificial reef planning areas, for comparisons and damage assessments.”

Cowan said the ARDF has been flexible in using its money to fund inshore projects, like the four-acre Independence Island artificial reef, constructed in June near Grand Isle, La.. Other recent projects — entirely or partly funded by the ARDF — include artificial reefs in Lake Pontchartrain and in Terrebonne Parish’s Lake Pelto.

He discussed the importance of fishing to the state, and said, “Most people don’t realize it, but about 75 percent of all seafood landed in the U.S. Gulf comes from Louisiana, providing jobs and revenue as well as recreation in Sportsman’s Paradise. In the U.S., Louisiana is second to Alaska in seafood production.”

Cowan weighed in on offshore drilling trends. “Oil fields in Louisiana state waters are expiring or drying up, and under federal law companies are required to remove unused platforms unless the state accepts them,” he said. “Drilling is moving further offshore.”

“Thousands of platforms in the Louisiana Gulf will be decommissioned over time, but not all of them will be accepted into the ARDF,” he said. “Some of the owners are smaller companies with limited resources.” Research helps companies and the reef program make informed decisions about defunct platforms.

As for the raid on artificial reef funds, Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association said, “The program is essential to our industry, and we have companies that are disappointed to see some of the money being used differently than intended. The flip side is that in a crisis, you have to take from your savings or other places to pay your bills.” And, he noted, “there were no news taxes on industry.”

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, or BOEMRE, all five U.S. Gulf Coast states, a number of European Union countries, and Japan and other Asian nations have rigs-to-reefs programs.

This article was published in “The Louisiana Weekly” in the Aug. 22, 2011 edition.

Original Article

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The downsizing of government and emergence of the private sector is the right adjustment necessary in a free democracy and capitalist society. It is the right prescription for the economic woes that beset this country.

We now, like it or not, live in a global economy whose effects ripple back and forth across the vast expanse of the globe. All disasters, wars, conflicts and political events have an effect, direct or indirect, on our economy and financial well-being.

As the leader of the free world, Washington must re-establish its role. The trade balance could be remedied almost overnight (a few years) by the conversion of natural gas as the primary source of energy for this country and the world. God has answered our prayer; we are no longer held captive at the mercy of tyrants for our energy needs. Start the conversion process for natural gas sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Louisiana has taken many initiatives and corrective actions under the leadership of Gov. Bobby Jindal. Consolidation and eliminations of boards, committees, hiring freezes, pay freezes for state employees and the tweaking goes on.

The unintended consequences are that many employees who are committed to providing essential services and have elected to make public service their career and vocation are in a Catch-22. Many state employees have been victimized by the necessity to reel in our expenses, but their cost of living and survivability can be impacted by events across the globe. These employees are also our sons, daughters, moms, dads and neighbors.

The elections this fall must address the state’s present and future needs. Parish, state and national candidates must posses the flexibility and demand to frame legislation that addresses the economic, energy and social needs now and into the future.

Finally, I am so proud to be one of 105 legislators who have boldly moved this state forward under Jindal’s leadership. The Northwest Louisiana delegates have established themselves as a viable force assisting the state in directing its interests and assets into the film, oil, natural gas and pharmaceutical industries, drinking water distribution centers, manufacturing, the medical field and education. We are nationally ranked as one of the top business-friendly states.

My congratulations go out to the mayors, city councils, commissioners, police jurors and law enforcement and firefighting agencies for their role in this process. We have a team that is effective. Our chambers of commerce are touting our economic attractiveness, for it is us — the corporations, small businesses, employees and citizens — that make all this happen.

Louisiana is moving in the right direction. Success is not an overnight event. But together and with God’s help, Louisiana is showing the way and recharting its role as an economic leader, not only in the South but in this great nation.

District 9 state Rep. Henry L. Burns lives in Haughton.

Original Article

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Published: Sunday, August 28, 2011, 7:11 AM

By Richard Thompson, The Times-Picayune The Times-Picayune

State environmental officials have scheduled a public hearing Tuesday in Baton Rouge to discuss a proposal to require oil and gas exploration and development companies to disclose the chemicals being used to extract natural gas from deep underground. The technique, called hydraulic fracturing, uses small explosives to create small cracks in underground geological formations thousands of feet below the ground.

A mixture of water, sand and chemicals is then pumped into the cracks to increase the flow of gas to the surface.

The proposal on the table would require operators to disclose the composition and volumes of those chemicals, either to the state or on a publicly accessible registry. State officials say the move is intended to boost transparency in the process, which has shaken public confidence in some parts of the country. Some environmentalists and scientists have voiced concerns about the potential of shallow drinking water aquifers becoming contaminated and the unknown effects of using millions of gallons of groundwater and surface water in the fracturing process.

“There’s been kind of a national controversy about what’s in the frack fluid, so it’s a disclosure rule,” Louisiana Commissioner of Conservation James Welsh, whose office regulates drilling, said in a recent interview.

State officials have spent six months pursuing the rule, Welsh said, while stressing that his office has not received reports of groundwater contamination problems in Louisiana from fracking operations.

After the hearing, conservation officials will review public comments and file a report with the state Legislature. Lawmakers could then review the rule and hold additional hearings, if deemed necessary. Welsh expects the process to wrap up by the fall.

The disclosure proposal, modeled after similar efforts in Texas and Arkansas, is “going to be, I think, fairly standard compared with other states,” Welsh said. “Nothing that I know of stands out as being different.”

The rule would apply to both new wells as well as those where a well has been drilled but fracking has yet to occur by the time the rule passes. It stipulates that operators disclose several aspects of the operation, including types and volumes of the fracking fluid; a list of additives used in the operation, such as acid or biocide; chemical ingredients contained in the fracking fluid; and concentrations of each chemical ingredient and the associated chemical families.

Under the proposed rule, in order to stake a claim that a specific chemical’s identity is a trade secret, operators will need to include a statement saying so.

Welsh compared it to the secret ingredients in Coca-Cola. “It’s easy to find out what’s in Coke, but you don’t know exactly how to mix the Coke,” he said. “That’s about what the situation is. Our rules require that we will know what chemicals are in the frack fluid.”

In 2010, there were 817 wells drilled in the Haynesville Shale formation in northwestern Louisiana, according to the state, which the federal government said this year has become the nation’s most productive gas field.

The disclosure proposal here and in other states comes as researchers representing the Environmental Protection Agency recently announced a three-year case study of the effects on drinking water of the hydraulic fracturing methods used for freeing natural gas from shale.

Conservation officials estimate completing the paperwork detailing the chemicals could cost companies an additional $1,200 per well. That’s compared with the $10 million average price tag to drill and complete a well in the Haynesville Shale, which also underlies parts of Arkansas and Texas.

Interest has also picked up this year in a 159,000-square-foot tract of land in central Louisiana, a geological formation that Louisiana State University researchers signaled more than a decade ago could produce 7 billion barrels of previously out-of-reach oil.

This year, several companies have announced acquisitions of oil and gas leaseholds in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale area, which stretches from Texas through the center of Louisiana and into southwest Mississippi. Devon Energy Corp. was one of those companies, announcing in May plans to drill a pair of horizontal wells in the area.

Chip Minty, a Devon spokesman, said last week that the company does not object to the state’s proposal, which he called “a responsible move for the commissioner to make.”

Devon, along with other oil and gas exploration and development companies, have already voluntarily met state reporting requirements by submitting chemical information through a website, FracFocus.com, a joint project between the Ground Water Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.

At least 37 companies have agreed to participate in the project, according to FracFocus, and the state legislature in Texas recently passed a law allowing operators to submit their chemical information to the site, a move that Welsh said Louisiana hopes to follow.

Chesapeake Energy, the Haynesville area’s biggest gas producer, in April signed on as one of the companies posting its chemical information to the website. Katie McCullin, a Chesapeake spokeswoman, said the Louisiana disclosure plan was “in line with our principals of environmental excellence.”

Likewise, David Dismukes, an associate director at LSU’s Center for Energy Studies, said the state’s proposal was “a good development,” which seems “entirely directed at increasing public confidence in the process.”

“It’s something that if you think about it, we didn’t have to do, but conservationists have gotten out in front of it,” he said.

Original Article