American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2018 - 34

Louisiana Industry Unscathed
After Four Legislative Sessions

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34 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

BATON ROUGE, LA.-Extraordinary
session? Not so much.
Press accounts note that Louisiana
has seen seven special sessions since
Governor John Bel Edwards assumed
office in 2016. Fortunately, reports
Louisiana Oil & Gas Association President
Gifford Briggs, even if the state's special
sessions have become commonplace,
lawmakers have avoided the temptation
to treat the state's oil and gas producers
as a budgetary panacea.
He credits that forbearance in part to
the state's policymakers being savvy
enough to recognize the industry still is
regaining strength after a prolonged commodity price slump. "The governor and
the legislature all seem to understand the
industry's challenges, so we have not
seen them directly create any new ones
in the form of high taxation or harmful
policies," Briggs praises.
That held true for a third extraordinary
session, which concluded June 24, in
which he reports lawmakers extended
until 2025 a 4.0 percent sales tax that
was due to expire June 30, and added an
additional 0.45 percent sales tax. HB 10
is expected to raise $500 million to fill a
void in Louisiana's $29 billion fiscal year
2019 budget, Briggs says.
Although Louisiana's businesses will
shoulder some of that burden, Briggs acknowledges, they will share it with many
other Louisianans. "To a degree, expanding
the sales tax is going to mean some
shared sacrifice in the business community," he allows.
Nevertheless, he adds, any year of
legislative proceedings in which the industry emerges largely unscathed is a
good one. Moreover, he says, LOGA
was able to pass some positive bills in
2018, including stiffer penalties for
tampering with pipeline infrastructure
and the end to restrictions on nighttime
brine injection.
Protecting Infrastructure
HB 727, which became Act 692 after
Edwards signed it in late May, is a
response to opposition against projects
such as the Keystone XL and Dakota
Access pipelines, Briggs says, noting that
Louisiana's Bayou Bridge Pipeline also
has attracted activist attention.
"We worked with a coalition to support
language that basically supports peoples'
right to protest and exercise free speech,
but not in a manner that damages property,"

he characterizes. "Some people have tampered with or chained themselves to
equipment, pipe or other things at construction sites. It is very dangerous not
only for employees, but also for the protesters. It is not right for them to purposely
damage equipment so it cannot be used,
and it can be very dangerous."
HB 727's opponents characterized it
as an effort to squelch First Amendment
rights, but Briggs contends the legislation
explicitly upholds those rights. "All it
did was define pipelines and liquefied
natural gas facilities as critical infrastructure within an existing statute," he describes. "There are stiffer penalties for
tampering with that."
Briggs says the bill sailed through
both legislative chambers. "There was
support from across party lines, different
delegations and different geographies,"
he relates. "Generally, people in Louisiana
respect other peoples' right to peaceably
organize and protest, but do not support
purposely causing trouble that can be
dangerous, which is why the governor
signed the bill."
LOGA reached out to Edwards' administration on another bill to expand
the hours Louisiana's commercial saltwater disposal facilities were allowed to
accept deliveries. According to Briggs,
state law had prohibited injections between
the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., which
was creating challenges for operators in
plays such as the Haynesville Shale and
Austin Chalk.
Now that lawmakers have ended the
limitation, he says, the sight of trucks
lining up outside injection facilities each
morning may be a thing of the past.
"There was a lot of conversation with
the governor's office upfront so we were
on the same page," he recounts. "We
worked with the administration to remove
the prohibition and allow facilities to receive wastes 24 hours a day. There was
maybe one vote against it throughout the
entire process. Sometimes it is the little
things that improve the industry's regulatory environment."
Wants And Needs
According to Briggs, it was a pleasant
surprise that the oil and gas industry generally was left out of this year's special
session calls, many of which related to the
budgetary implications of some temporary
tax measures' impending expiration.
"The extent to which everyone seems

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American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2018

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