Our Views: Continue exploration, exploitation of oil and gas resources offshore

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The Advocate | Staff Editorial | September 26, 2019

Louisiana and the Gulf Coast are a major reason for an economic disaster that did not happen.

Not too many years ago, the attack on Saudi Arabian refinery facilities might have been a cataclysm for the western world, with gasoline and energy prices generally skyrocketing. Bad as the attack was, the story of why the economic plunge did not happen had a lot to do with us.

In Louisiana, we have been a major contributor the national economy by producing oil and gas for more than a century. Oil and gas produced in federal waters, combined with the increased production onshore made possible by directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, have yielded big dividends for America’s energy security.

With those kinds of supply factors, an interruption in the Middle East simply does not have the worldwide economic impact that it once did. That’s not to say energy terrorism is a good thing, nor that large-scale disruption of oil in the Middle East would be a welcome development.

But the recent turmoil abroad underlines the advances of the energy industry in America and its nearby waters. Export of liquefied natural gas to international customers is another way that our role in the world economy has broadened in recent years.

Read the full Editorial here.