Since its difficulties with Huey Long, Big Oil has sought to develop warm relations with Louisiana governors—and vice versa, if they knew what was good for them. In order to advance nationally within the Republican Party, whose last national convention erupted into chants of “Drill, Baby, Drill,” contenders must at least be acceptable to the energy industry. To the broader electorate, however, Gov. Bobby Jindal, as an oil-state governor under consideration for the GOP vice presidential nomination, can’t afford to be seen as an industry toady. Early in his first term, the governor and the oil companies got along swimmingly, as an industry journal praised his administration’s “improved” permitting process. The state’s boom in exploration, from the Outer Continental Shelf to the Haynesville Shale, led to economic development that he could share credit for, despite the national recession. Then came BP. The massive oil spill that ravaged the Gulf, the coast and its economy offered Jindal a golden opportunity: to whip up on an oil company, with the state and the nation cheering him on. He also lashed out at the response of the Obama administration, through which he restored his GOP star quality, which he had damaged in his national speaking debut the year before. Yet, while singling out BP, the governor championed the industry as a whole by leading the protest of the exploration moratorium imposed by the president, thus supporting the GOP’s job-killer line of attack against President Barack Obama. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
