We’d just about given up on the idea that John Carmouche and his little cabal of pirates pillaging the oil and gas industry with lawsuits alleging that canals dredged in the South Louisiana marsh have destroyed Louisiana’s coastline (when it’s patently obvious to anyone with a brain that it was the leveeing of the Mississippi River all the way to its mouth, thus depriving the marshes of needed sediments from the annual spring floods, which is the true cause of the coastal loss).

When a jury in Plaquemines Parish delivered a fat verdict of $745 million against Chevron and a host of other oil companies on a ridiculous case which clearly didn’t comport with the law, we just figured we’d see a two-step process.

One, there would be a host of settlements in which oil companies would throw money at coastal parishes in order to ward off the possibility of another giant verdict like the one the Plaquemines Parish government received. And two, those oil companies would begin shutting down all of their operations in the state.

And this might still happen, but at least we have a data point which indicates there’s another possibility. Yesterday, the Lafourche Parish Council voted 6-1 not to pursue any litigation against oil companies for alleged damage to the parish’s coast.

The Grow Louisiana Coalition was pretty happy about that…

Today, Grow Louisiana Coalition Executive Director Marc Ehrhardt made the following statement after the Lafourche Parish Council voted 6-to-1 to reject the coastal lawsuits against the energy industry:

“Today, the Lafourche Parish Council has closed the door on the coastal lawsuits even in the face of unrelenting pressure from trial lawyers.

“Trial lawyers have asked Lafourche Parish Council Members multiple times to join these lawsuits and each time they have said no. With this vote, Lafourche sent a clear message: we stand with the 62,485 men and women of the Bayou Region who power our energy industry.

“Lafourche is a parish where industry and jobs are welcome. Where we can work proactively and voluntarily with local, state, and federal agencies and nonprofit conservation organizations to keep restoring and protecting our working coast and its communities. Here, we stand for American energy and its environment – together.”

So was the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association…

“Louisiana’s oil and gas industry is under attack – with constant coastal and legacy lawsuits. It’s time to stop incentivizing trial lawyers to pick industry’s pockets and start protecting the future of both our state and the 306,750 people working in and alongside the oil and natural gas industry here every day — because in Louisiana, they’re one and the same.

Tonight, by voting to oppose self-sacrificing coastal lawsuits, the Lafourche Parish Council is standing up for its people and our future, once again. LMOGA applauds council members for seeing these schemes for what they really are – attempts to gut oil and gas and divert billions of oil and natural gas dollars to lawyers instead of locals.

Unfortunately, the fight in Baton Rouge over legacy lawsuits seems to be unending. Just as the Lafourche Parish Council takes a stand for oil and natural gas, the legislature is having to fight these same trial lawyers, who are always looking to find new ways to sue the state’s No. 1 industry.

The bottom line is Louisiana prospers with jobs not judgments.

Of course, none of this is over, and it’s going to be problematic to re-start Louisiana’s offshore oil industry in anything like the volume it used to have until the lawsuit issue is resolved. Even despite the Trump administration’s stated desire to dot the western Gulf of America with oil platforms, without knowing that years down the road the industry won’t get ambushed by pirates in three-piece suits it’s going to be sluggish progress at best.

But at least we know there’s one local government Carmouche can’t seduce with promises of swag. And that’s an encouraging sign.