Louisiana is known as THE oil and gas state of our country. 50% of the gasoline and diesel fuel that drives the engines of our country flows out of Louisiana. North Louisiana is the home to the most productive natural gas field in the country, the Haynesville Shale. But most importantly, around 30% of the nation’s crude oil is produced off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.

This week, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which regulates offshore drilling, held a lease sale on Wednesday in New Orleans for the Central Gulf Of Mexico region. This was the first lease sale for the Central region since the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident. The BOEM said they received 593 bids submitted by 48 companies on 454 federally owned oil and natural gas drilling tracts, bringing in a grand total of $1.3 billion. While 48 companies submitted bids, it is interesting to note that in 2010, 77 companies were apart of the bidding process. This 38% decline in companies bidding is clearly due to the uncertainty that companies feel from the federal government and their unfavorable energy policies.

The economic impact of this lease sale for Louisiana is massive, as a significant amount of these dollars will make their way back into the Louisiana economy. While the oil and gas industry is the engine that drives the Louisiana economy, the ripple effect from a lease sale like this one reaches far and wide beyond the acreage of the Gulf of Mexico. This lease sale will create thousands of jobs for rig workers, those working on offshore vessels, helicopter companies, all the way inland to the hotels, restaurants, and shopping centers.

This lease sale or any other positive oil and gas development will always be met by environmental groups that want to stop drilling in general. This week, four national environment groups filed suit in Washington DC in protest of the lease sale. This is to be expected from these types of organizations.

Whether it is a new shale development in Ohio or a lease sale in the Gulf, the main goal of these environmental groups is to shut down drilling. These particular groups filed suits in 2011 challenging the first lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon spill. Not only did their filings not stop the bidding process, but the December 2011 lease sale saw high bids of $338 million.

The success of this lease sale is yet another example of how the oil and gas industry truly serves as the backbone of the United States economy. When other industries are unloading employees, the oil and gas industry is adding thousands of news jobs thanks to the shale oil and gas boom and the vast amount of resources off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil and gas industry must continue to produce consumer-ready resources, create thousands of jobs for our workforce, and remain committed to the safety of our communities and the preservation of our environment to which we have been entrusted.