Nungesser, La. Pols 'Cozy' With Big Oil Before BP Spill

(June 18) -- Billy Nungesser may have emerged as the media star of the BP oil spill disaster, but the Plaquemines Parish president, like nearly every other Louisiana elected official, has been a friend to the oil and gas industry.

Though he is the most-well-known face of Gulf Coast residents angry that the busted well is still spewing oil nearly two months after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, the national media's go-to guy will potentially profit from the disaster. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that Nungesser, who has been touted as a possible lieutenant governor candidate, owns an interest in a marina being expanded by BP to support its cleanup efforts.

Nungesser's 2008 personal financial disclosure forms, the most recent available, show a trust that he will be able to draw on when he leaves public office. It includes not only the Myrtle Grove Marina but also large stakes in Ocean Chef Catering and Pelican Marine Supply. Both are providing food and supplies to BP cleanup crews.

E-mail and phone calls AOL News to Nungesser were not returned.

The national media got "rolled," said Benny Rousselle, Nungesser's predecessor as Plaquemines Parish president and a possible challenger in this fall's election.

Foster Campbell, a Louisiana public service commissioner who ran for governor in 2007 when Republican Bobby Jindal was elected, said Nungesser is part of a long line of elected officials who have been "super, super cozy" with the energy industry. Even though at least a third of the state's vanished wetlands can be chalked up to energy industry operations, including shipping canals dug through fragile marshes, there has been little pressure to get companies to shoulder the cost of restoring coastal areas.

"Ask Nungesser -- has he ever asked anybody to fix the coast?" Campbell said. "Now you're hollering now that you got all this religion?"

The Plaquemines official is hardly unique, though.

"We are controlled lock, stock and barrel by the oil and gas industry," said Mike Robichaux, a former state senator from coastal Louisiana.

"Politicians in Louisiana have been lapdogs to the major oil companies. It's hard to break them up. [Oil companies] provide the jobs," Campbell said. "There have been too many duck hunting trips, too many steaks, too many campaign contributions. ... They ought to put the Exxon flag on top of the Capitol because they own it."

When President Barack Obama called a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the gulf, Louisiana leaders -- led by Jindal -- complained the move would devastate the local economy.

"I don't think you can find a person in south Louisiana who doesn't oppose the moratorium. You're taking a livelihood away from thousands of businesses," said John Maginnis, editor of LaPolitics.com. "There's a feeling here that drilling can be done safely if you have regular inspections, which maybe we didn't have."

Louisiana has been known for its lax oversight of the oil and gas industry. State law specifies that energy construction must result in no net loss of wetlands, but an investigation by the Times-Picayune revealed that of more than 4,500 coastal permits requested to build new pipelines, oil wells or other energy projects between 2005 and 2009, state regulators approved every single one.

Even as the oil spewed out of the seafloor, the state Legislature this spring considered a bill to stymie university environmental-law clinics from suing companies that violate state or federal laws. It was eventually shelved amid the public outcry over the spill.

Len Bahr, a coastal adviser to five Louisiana governors whose blog has followed the "B.Pocalypse," says it is "appalling" that nearly every state official has opposed the drilling moratorium. But he is even more upset that "science is being left out of the picture" in finding a solution to the spill.

A Ph.D. ecologist, Bahr has skewered Jindal over the governor's insistence on building sand berms to stop the oil from reaching shore. In one post, he depicted Jindal and Nungesser as MacArthuresque figures storming the beach. "Like a little general, [Jindal] is charging around getting a lot of nationwide press but in truth he doesn't have a clue about coastal science," he said.

"It makes good political sense for him to get behind some heroic-looking effort, like emergency construction of berms and dunes to make him look effective and the president ineffective," Bahr said, but he called the $360 million effort little more than a windfall for politically connected dredging companies. "It will do more damage than good and squander sand needed for real restoration efforts."

Whether the berms will protect the coast or not remains to be seen. But the BP spill may be raising some second thoughts among Louisianans who traditionally put jobs first and put off for decades any real effort to right the man-made damage to their state's ecosystem.

"We've been very hypocritical. We've sold ourselves to a lot of people to get offshore revenues off a working coast," Rousselle said. "No doubt we have some responsibility for that. We've got sacrifices we've made for the jobs we have gotten. In hindsight, I think there should have been tighter regulations."