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The April 20, 2010, explosion on BP’s Macondo deepwater well shattered the political myth that for decades had protected the oil and gas industry here from serious scrutiny. The moratorium on deepwater drilling provided the industry an opportunity to try to pull that myth together again.

The Louisiana Oil & Gas Association seized that opportunity with gusto.

The Louisiana Oil and Gas Association’s anti-moratorium campaign was an economic fear campaign based on projections about the moratorium’s impact that were, in retrospect, so wildly wrong that one must question whether the estimates had any purpose other than serving as propaganda tools.

Whatever LOGA thought it won in 2010, it has since set out to squander. In 2011, LOGA defended a 17-year-old severance tax exemption on oil and gas extracted using fracking by using an economic study from one of its frequently hired economists. The Haynesville Trend had established itself as the most productive shale gas field in the country but revenue shortfalls were regularly forcing devastating cuts to education and health care.

Still, LOGA argued that collecting that tax threatened the life of the Haynesville field.

This year, LOGA is back with another study that says holding the industry accountable for the environmental damage their drilling practices have inflicte is too great a burden for industry to bear.

LOGA’s dishonest approach makes explicit an idea that, until a few years ago, few would have dared speak publicly — namely that the interests of the industry and the interests of the state are separate and distinct.

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