Minerals Service Had a Mandate to Produce Results

For decades, Washington and Louisiana were joined in the quest for red-jacket days, and the minerals agency was expected to provide them. Washington got oil and royalty fees; Louisiana got jobs; and the agency got frequent reminders of the need to keep both happy. Seldom do regulators work in a place so dependent on the industry they oversee. From the top of Louisiana’s tallest building (One Shell Square) to the bottom of its largest aquarium (with a sunken rig), oil saturated the state’s culture long before it covered its marshes. It is prized as a source of jobs and as a source of tax revenue. While Floridians stage protests to prevent drilling, Louisianians stage a Shrimp and Petroleum Festival to “prove that oil and water really do mix.” When Mr. Oynes’s wife, Rena, won a teaching award, it was sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute. Across South Louisiana, regulators have grown up hunting and fishing — and working on oil rigs — with the people they oversee...more