“It’s bad enough that we have an oil spill to deal with and the fishermen can’t work. Now they’re going to take away the oil industry, and we’ll have nothing, ” said Chett Chiasson, executive director for the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which runs Port Fourchon, the launching point for 90 percent of the deepwater activities in the Gulf of Mexico.

By Rebecca Mowbray, The Times-Picayune

To coastal communities and marine-related industries across southern Louisiana, President Barack Obama’s announcement Thursday that work at 33 deepwater drilling operations would be suspended immediately was like sealing the region’s economic death from the ongoing oil plume gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

“It’s bad enough that we have an oil spill to deal with and the fishermen can’t work. Now they’re going to take away the oil industry, and we’ll have nothing, ” said Chett Chiasson, executive director for the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, which runs Port Fourchon, the launching point for 90 percent of the deepwater activities in the Gulf of Mexico.

If the rigs stop prospecting for oil, then catering companies stop cooking food for rig workers, boats stop bringing them supplies, mechanics stop servicing the supply boats and so on.

Chiasson predicts the hardest-hit communities will lose jobs that won’t easily be recovered.

“This industry should not have to suffer because of one company’s horrible mistake, ” Chiasson said. “This will cause people to lose their jobs. I have no doubt about it.”

The president and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s announcement late last week to halt all deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico “at the first safe stopping point” while the Interior Department figures out what regulatory changes are necessary for offshore oil prospecting seemed designed to reassure the nation that drilling would only proceed in a safe and environmentally sensitive manner.

But to those who work in the offshore industry and in the communities at the epicenter of the spiraling disaster from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and oil leak, it smacked of a lack of understanding of the role that the oil business plays in the Louisiana economy.

FULL STORY

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