Can we talk about our relationship to the oil industry? It’s not our savior | Opinion

Louisiana and its politicians have long embraced some unhealthy myths: Corruption in our politics isn’t so bad. Teachers are the real problem with our schools. Poor people are lazy. Climate change is a hoax. Oil is crucial to our economy because it employs so many workers and funds our government.

Few myths have damaged us more than the last one. Our blind allegiance to oil and gas has led to lax or poorly enforced environmental laws. The worst actors in the industry have contributed to the disappearance of our wetlands and poisoned our water.

And our eagerness to subsidize this industry has cost us billions in tax revenue. A 2015 report by the Legislative Auditor found that one exemption from one state tax — the severance tax on horizontal drilling — resulted in the loss of $1.1 billion from 2010 to 2014. Last year, the 27 state tax exemptions Louisiana grants to oil and gas interests amounted to $195 million. In 2012, during the height of the oil boom, the state let slip away $527 million in oil revenue; the following year, $462 million.

Since 2013, Louisiana has absolved one natural gas company, Cameron LNG, of more than $3 billion in property taxes. Since 2010, the state has awarded Cheniere Energy and its subsidiaries more than $3 billion in local and state tax subsidies. And in 2016, Louisiana gave Venture Global LNG $1.86 billion in property tax exemptions.

Total permanent jobs promised by those companies in return for the tax exemptions: about 1,400 (an average of $5.5 million in state and local subsidies per job). Industry officials claim without these generous tax breaks, they cannot afford to do business here.

That might be a stronger argument if energy exploration and refining weren’t already among the most profitable enterprises on Earth. Five of the 12 largest corporations in the world (by revenue) are oil companies, despite the slump in oil prices.

But these corporations provide plenty of good jobs for Louisiana workers, right? “The Louisiana oil and gas industry is one of the leading employers in the state,” the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association claims. The most recent employment numbers on its website — 64,000 — are from 2013, when oil was around $90 a barrel. The American Petroleum Institute (API), meanwhile, claims 291,00 Louisiana workers were employed in the industry in 2015.

The August 2017 report on industry employment from the Louisiana Workforce Development Commission, however, pegs the number working in or supporting oil and gas at about 40,000 or 2 percent of Louisiana’s total workforce. It’s likely the API’s 2015 numbers were wildly inflated. Even Louisiana oil industry lobbyists acknowledge a sharp jobs downturn caused by slumping oil prices.

Nationally, the API claims the oil and gas industry employed more than 10.3 million direct and indirect workers in the U.S. in 2015. Meanwhile, the BLS, which does not count indirect jobs, estimates the industry’s current national job number is 178,000.

Counting indirect jobs from a specific industry is an inexact science, so let’s consider only the API’s claim of 2.9 million “direct impact” jobs in 2015. According to the API study, almost a million of those jobs were at gas stations, where employees also sold cigarettes, beer and slushies.

The myth of oil as a once-and-future major employer and massive contributor to the economy is dangerous not only because it absolves the industry from paying its fair share in taxes; the myth also has strengthened the industry’s case as it lobbies to avoid or evade environmental regulations in Washington and the states.

The jobs narrative has led to another harmful myth: We can have oil industry jobs or a clean environment, but we cannot have both. Well, look no further than California, where the nation’s toughest environmental regulations exist in harmony with a vibrant oil and gas industry. (To their credit, Gov. John Bel Edwards and six coastal parish governments are suing to hold oil companies accountable for how they damaged portions of our coast.)

Pitting jobs against a clean environment is also how industry supporters crush regulations to address climate change. That jobs-versus-environment argument ignores that oil and gas companies are automating tasks that once required warm bodies.

The real issue is not jobs so much as how states like Louisiana suffer when the oil and gas industry doesn’t pay its fair share in taxes. As the oil companies automate, their profit margins will increase. And their lobbyists continue persuading legislators in places like Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C., to increase or maintain billions in “drilling incentives.”

For decades, Louisiana has acted like providing corporate welfare to the oil industry is our patriotic duty. We’ve behaved like a feckless colony and allowed oil companies to swoop in, scoop up our oil and gas and pay us little in return. The industry buys the fealty of our politicians who have persuaded us that it’s our salvation.

It’s not. And if Louisiana wishes to enter the 21st Century, it’s time to wake up, smell the crude and quit behaving like a third-world petro state.

Robert Mann, an author and former U.S. Senate and gubernatorial staffer, holds the Manship Chair in Journalism at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. Read more from him at his blog, Something Like the Truth. Follow him on Twitter @RTMannJr or email him at bob.mann@outlook.com.