Ehrhardt: Businesses, communities must cooperate

Louisiana communities and businesses need to work together to solve the problems facing the state, which include coastal protection and cultivating a positive business climate in the state, Louisiana Grow Coalition Executive Director Marc Ehrhardt said Wednesday.
Ehrhardt was the guest speaker at the St. Mary Parish Chamber of Commerce Business Luncheon at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City. The Grow Louisiana Coalition was formed in January and has accumulated 3,100 members, Ehrhardt said.
According to the coalition’s website, it is “working to ensure the state’s oil and gas industry remains a major part of our economic and cultural heritage for years to come.”
Though the industry has had ups and downs, right now, the oil and gas industry is doing well, he said. Still, now is the time to work to cultivate the industry, which is the coalition’s purpose, Ehrhardt said. Communities and industries in the state need to unite to find solutions to fix common problems including protecting the coast, creating favorable business climate, and solving tax and legal issues, Ehrhardt said.
Roughly 3,000 people are employed by the oil and gas industry in St. Mary Parish, he said. The industry provides the parish with about $7.5 million in ad valorem taxes directly paid to the parish, he said.
The average Louisiana worker earns about $40,000 to $45,000 each year compared to the average offshore oil and gas worker who can make more than $100,000 a year, he said.
“When you are looking at hundreds of thousands of jobs where you can make $75,000 and $100,000, on average, we absolutely need the industry,” Ehrhardt said. People should tell elected leaders that the state cannot take the oil and gas industry for granted, he said.
When the oil and gas industry and the people of the state work together, the state as a whole benefits, he said. “We’re traveling the state to spread that message,” Ehrhardt said.
The oil and gas industry has been one of the only industries to help protect the state’s coast through planting trees and creating artificial oyster reefs, Ehrhardt said. “In two years, we’re going to get up to $500 million a year in the state of Louisiana to protect our coast,” he said. “It’s because we fought to get greater percentages of monies that are produced through offshore oil exploration. Those monies have to be used to protect the coast and to restore the coast.”
Oil and gas companies employ people in all 64 parishes in Louisiana, Ehrhardt said. “Every day the industry cuts the equivalent of a check for $2.5 million to parish governments across the state,” Ehrhardt said. “That doesn’t count the billions of dollars that are being invested by the industry into the state treasury that allows the state to operate.”
That money allows the state to fund schools, health care programs, road and infrastructure improvements, he said.
New competition is emerging in the oil and gas industry, and companies are looking at new ways to extract fuels, he said. However, if Louisiana creates an adversarial business climate, then companies will look to move elsewhere, Ehrhardt said.
Ehrhardt used California as an example. Twenty-five years ago the five largest companies in California were energy companies, he said. Today, only one of those companies remains because the other businesses moved to Texas. The move was due to the negative business climate that California created, Ehrhardt said.
According to a study performed by economist Loren Scott, 300,000 people work in and alongside the oil and gas industry in Louisiana, which is nearly as many people in the U.S. Navy, Ehrhardt said.
That number does not include the support sector of shipbuilding, service companies, maritime companies, or engineering jobs, Ehrhardt said.
Ehrhardt referenced a comment Scott made by saying to find out what Louisiana would look like without the oil and gas industry, one should look at Mississippi as an example of a state where the oil and gas business does not have a strong presence, Ehrhardt said. Mississippi is trying to recruit oil and gas business because they do not have the infrastructure and tax money that the industry contributes to Louisiana, he said.
Oil and gas businesses represent 15 percent of the state budget in Louisiana, he said. “We want to talk about how you take that contribution and make it more and better,” Ehrhardt said.