Baton Rouge--The constant invasion of oil along Louisiana's coastline and marshes proves to be a relentless threat to the state's profitable seafood industry.
But business leaders who gathered in Baton Rouge on Friday for a summit of sorts organized by Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, known as LABI are even more fixated on what the moratorium the White House is fighting to put into place.
LSU Economist Jim Richardson, Ph.D.,told the gathering he believes any moratorium the Obama administration succeeds in implementing would be much longer than six months. He said the presidential commission created to investigate the April 20th explosion of the Deep Water Horizon platform and the subsequent oil leak has yet to begin its work so six months is not realistic. He said it could be at least 18 months.
"It's not gonna take six months, it's just impossible to do it, given the nature of what they say they're gonna be doing," Richardson said.
Bob Brown of the New Orleans Business Council, GNO Inc., and Move Forward Now had this reaction to the prospect of a moratorium running longer than a half year. "It raised my anxiety to a new level because it re-enforced the fears that I had."
Ken Wells, President of the Offshore Marine Service Association said though the first moratorium is not being enforced the industry is somewhat paralyzed. Wells said even shallow water operations are in limbo,
"The shallow water drills, the jackups, a third of the fleet's not working and as they finish up the projects the rest of them are looking at being out of work very soon and in our case they cut the vessels immediately, as soon as they possible could they got out of the contracts," he said.
And then there's concern that if there are large amounts of job losses in the oil patch that restaurants and other hospitality related businesses in New Orleans would begin to really suffer.
Jim Funk of the Louisiana Restaurant Association said, "You're looking at figures as high as 30,00 high paying jobs are gonna be lost as a result of this moratorium. That will hurt us all the way from Southeast Louisiana all the way over to Lake Charles and Cameron."
Brown added, "People who are in other places will simply say as much as they love New Orleans and as much as they remember fondly their last trip we're not going there this time."
And those involved in the oil and gas industry recoil at the thought of not only having a moratorium but one that is longer than six months.
Wells said the consequences would be beyond dire. "We
saw it in the 80s, they called the gulf of Mexico the dead sea because there was no drilling going on, it took this state 10 years to climb out of that hole."
