oil and gas industry

Fifteen years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster off the Gulf Coast, the effects of the largest oil spill in U.S. history are still being felt.

A leak – significant, yet small by Louisiana standards – has highlighted concerns about the state’s response to such leaks under the Trump administration and Gov. Jeff Landry.

In a legal setback for fossil fuel advocates, a federal court has invalidated a large offshore oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico, ruling Thursday in favor of environmental groups that sued to block the lease after it was scheduled for auction in 2023.

The administration’s efforts to solve a so-called “energy emergency” might create an actual crisis.

Despite President Donald Trump’s calls to “drill, baby, drill,” many oil companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico will likely do what they’ve done for years: sit on hundreds of untapped oil leases across millions of acres.

A separate review finds issues with an industry-funded insurance group.

Over recent months, a state task force studying Louisiana’s growing carbon capture industry has heard from a variety of voices. On Thursday, industry leaders got their turn.

According to new research shared exclusively with Floodlight, in Louisiana’s majority Black communities in the area known as “Cancer Alley,” because of its high concentration of polluting industries, the majority of jobs go to white workers. Similar disparities occur in minority-dominant communities along Texas’ Gulf Coast, where the majority of workers are white.

Lake Charles residents say the Biden administration has given them an opportunity to remedy those needs as trillions of dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act funnel into disadvantaged communities like Lake Charles.But they also believe federal agencies need to ensure that money goes to the area’s most vulnerable residents, who say they haven’t seen the same level of local investments.

Thirty years ago, a report called out Louisiana’s petrochemical industry for building plants in areas with a large Black population. On Monday, a new update to the report found that little had changed, and new plants in the state’s chemical corridor are still disproportionately planned near Black communities, according to an analysis by a New Orleans-based environmental justice nonprofit.