Louisiana law blocks suing oil industry

WASHINGTON – Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal signed a bill Friday to quash a landmark lawsuit brought by a local flood protection agency that sought damages from the oil and gas industry to restore the state’s vanishing coastline.

Jindal signed the legislation – which prevents government bodies in Louisiana from pursuing such litigation – despite warnings from the state attorney general and nearly 100 legal experts. Critics of the law say it is so broad it could potentially imperil hundreds of other lawsuits against oil and gas companies, including litigation against BP for its role in the 2010 Gulf oil spill.

The bill was one of at least seven championed this year by the Jindal administration’s legislative allies to kill coastal-damage lawsuits brought by state agencies against the oil and gas industry, a pillar of Louisiana’s economy and a powerful force in its politics.

The state loses the equivalent of a football field of land every hour to the Gulf of Mexico, and has lost a quarter of its coastline since the 1930s.

A leading cause of the land loss is the system of canals that oil and gas companies have cut through fragile wetlands for decades, with the state’s approval, to haul equipment and install pipelines. Scientists say the dredging let saltwater flow in, killing vegetation that kept the land from eroding.

In July 2013, the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, an independent board that oversees flood protection for New Orleans, decided that oil and gas companies should pay their share and voted unanimously to sue all 97 companies operating in the state for unspecified damages. Suits by several parish governments followed over the last year.

The bill Jindal signed would retroactively halt the board’s lawsuit.