Fred Reinecke, the editor of the Bayou Business Review, mentioned that this issue was going to be devoted to the 50^th anniversary of the offshore oil industry, which got its start fight off Terrebonne Parish. I grew up in South Louisiana in the 60s and offshore oil rigs just were—some of my friends’ fathers were gone a week or two at a time, at work in the Gulf waters. I never realized that the offshore oil industry had only just gotten started a few years before I was born. I began to think about what the industry has meant to this area.

It has not all been a bed of roses. The pipeline canals have not helped our loss of land to the Gulf. A few oil spills have hurt the our marine environment. Louisiana has contributed to Supreme Court history and the development of the law of the land by a recent lawsuit concerning same-sex sexual harassment, a real embarrassment for the industry and the state. The industry has also made it tough for some families by arranging for fathers to be out of the house for a week or two at a time.

The nature of the offshore part of the oil and gas industry has created problems within the area. At the same time, there have been tremendous opportunities created. The most obvious is what I tell my class is "the first mover advantage." Being first to tackle offshore drilling gave experience to firms in this area that gave them definite advantages when offshore wells were going up all over the world. Our oil service companies and our workers developed expertise that became highly sought all over the world.

One method that some economic historians have used to assess the importance of some technology is called the "counterfactual method." I just call it the " s’pose"-it-never-happened method. This involves examining what things would have been like without the technological advance.

If there were no offshore oil and gas industry, Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes would probably rely on farming and fishing. We would abound with the same opportunities some of our North Louisiana parishes.

For comparison, I examined two contiguous parishes in North Louisiana with combined populations about the same as Terrebonne and Lafourche had in 1940, Natchitoches and DeSoto (the parish where I spent my first five years on this earth). In 1940 the combined populations of Terrebonne and Lafourche was about 74,500, while the combined populations of Natchitoches and DeSoto was 72,800. But by 1990, the two North Louisiana parishes had shrunk to about 62,000 while the two South Louisiana parishes had grown to 182,842.

Now I know what you’re thinking. It really isn’t fair to compare North and South Louisiana. If given the choice of no job in North Louisiana or no job in South Louisiana, I know I would still move away from North Louisiana (our family never regretted making that move in 1960).

If you look at two contiguous South Louisiana parishes, such as Acadia Parish and Evangeline Parish, with a combined population in 1940 of about 76,750. By 1990, the two parishes had gotten up to 89,156, less than half of the populations for Terrebonne and Lafourche. And that’s with an interstate that runs through Acadia Parish (of course, we need to remember that interstate highways also make it easier for people to escape). The first oil found in Louisiana was in Acadia Parish in Evangeline, Louisiana, near Jennings.

My source for the population figures is the Louisiana Almanac, 1997. The cover photo was fitting--an offshore rig.

All in all, people have moved into Terrebonne and Lafourche much more so than many other parts of the state. This has happened because people see greater value and greater opportunity living here than in North Louisiana or in the Acadia and Evangeline Parishes. The offshore oil industry seems to be responsible for about 90,000 living in the area, and with that, higher property values.

Loren Scott at LSU has called the oil and gas industry "the engine that drives the Louisiana economy." If that is the engine, offshore oil and gas exploration and production is at least the fuel injection system.