Elections and the policy that comes thereafter matter, as demonstrated by the antics of Democrats in Baton Rouge and Washington that until recently suffocated Louisiana’s fossil fuel industry and thereby contributed to a problem that may cost the state approaching $1 billion.

Recently, a report from New Orleans’ The Data Center highlighted how the state’s oil and gas industry has done not much more than tread water since the swoon in oil prices in 2014. It’s skeptical that the industry will grow disproportionately compared to other sectors in the future and argues for moving towards greater diversification of the state’s economy, based upon the industry’s recent underperformance.

But it was all by design, partly out of the animus of Democrats had when in power against fossil fuels, and partly because of their desire to grow government and redistribute wealth at the expense of economic growth. When prices began their protracted fall, Democrat Barack Obama was president, whose administration, backed by toadies in Congress, acted hostilely towards the fossil fuel industry, as opposed to their favored renewable energy.

There is some irony in all of this. First, the price plunge actually was a self-induced sign of success with the expansion of oil production. Second, Obama’s policies had little to do with that expansion, as policy in this area typically takes years to bear fruit. So, Louisiana was hit by a double-whammy: policies prior to Obama led the charge to greater production, but then that greater production drove down prices at the same time Obama policies started to come into effect that suppressed industry recovery.

Obama was followed by Republican Pres. Donald Trump, who didn’t begin to see the fruition of his much different and helpful policies to the industry until he was ousted by Democrat Pres. Joe Biden, who reversed course back toward Obama policies. Trump may be back in charge now, but the return to his policies won’t be felt in earnest for at least another couple of years.

But whatever help Louisiana’s oil and gas industry might have received from the first Trump term, and whatever degradation it suffered from the Democrats in office, was, respectively, dampened and compounded, by having eight years of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards in office not long after the price slide commenced. The negative impact of Edwards manifested not just in policy that specifically gave the industry short shrift, but in his general overall economic policies that stifled the entire Louisiana economy in favor of growing government.

Thus, properly understood, the state’s fossil fuel industries certainly took a hit from the 2014 slide in pricing – although in the long run that actually is a rollercoaster ride – which disrupts industry expansion, because the lower are prices, the less incentive there is to engage in exploration and recovery. Yet there have been plenty of peaks since then which should have stimulated industry growth. Where the report misses the mark is that policy hostile to the industry, at both the state and national levels, kicked in for most of this period, taking an industry already knocked down and putting a foot on its throat — only recently lifted by, first, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry taking office and then Trump’s return. The effects of this likely won’t significantly affect the industry for another year or two.

And this has had negative fiscal consequences, besides lackluster industry growth, that Louisiana is about to feel in one specific way. Some years ago, the state instituted policy to deal with orphaned oil and gas wells – those that essentially had been abandoned without properly sealing them, which invites leakage. The plan was for companies to pay up front into a fund at least a portion of the cost to plug a well, so this would act as a form of insurance when proper closure didn’t occur across the universe of wells.

A problem developed in part because the initial payments were too low, but mainly because of alleged malfeasance to which Edwards was indifferent through one of his cronies, Richard Ieyoub, a former attorney general. Essentially, a sweetheart deal resulted in too much taxpayer money going towards too little work being done, with the end result that the number of abandoned wells skyrocketed, leaving an estimated cost to taxpayers approaching $1 billion to close them.

Inefficient, and perhaps illegal, activities contributed to this growing potential liability. But, more importantly, the attitude towards the industry reflected in policy reduced its revenue possibilities, not only by discouraging continued operation of marginal wells but also by reducing incentives to properly seal them. A less-hostile attitude at both the state and national level probably would have seen fewer abandonments and, among those still abandoned, more of them adequately closed off.

Prices matter, but policy has more to do with industry health. And that’s why the industry has seen relatively less expansion and thereby has forgone tax revenues to the state, as well as incurred greater costs to deal with the consequences of that policy.