The great Gulf offshore drilling jobs hoax continues

Politicians in the Gulf Coast are still attacking President Obama's slow-down on offshore drilling, even as more evidence comes in that the post-BP spill measure has had modest effect on the coast's oil economy.

A month after BP's oil disaster, Obama's Interior Department announced a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling as BP and federal investigators took stock of what went wrong.

The backlash from the oil industry and Gulf politicians was fast and furious: Edison Chouest Offshore, an energy company led by one of the most generous contributors to Louisiana politicians, warned of "mass layoffs" and sponsored rallies protesting the ban. A New Orleans federal judge, with his own close ties to the oil industry, used similar fears of big job losses in shooting down the moratorium.

Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal declared that Obama was causing "thousands of Louisianians" to lose their jobs. Jindal's new book keeps pounding on the theme, even arguing the moratorium revealed that the "human element" was "invisible" to Obama's team.

Even Democratic Sen. Mary Landreiu got in on the act, refusing to allow Obama's nominee for the Office and Management and Budget to go through until the moratorium was lifted.

But there was a problem: As Facing South and others have documented, the forecasts of massive job losses and economic doom never materialized. An August survey by the New Orleans Times-Picayune found that, despite threats of a massive exodus of rigs, only two of 33 affected deepwater operations had left the Gulf.

The claims of huge job losses proved false as well. As Facing South reported in September, even as the Louisiana Workforce Commission echoed Gov. Jindal's dire warnings (under pressure?) of the moratorium's economic impact, it was releasing rosy jobs numbers with headlines like "Louisiana Labor Force Hits Record for July." A December 2010 report proudly announced Louisiana employment was at its highest since April 2009.

The latest figures? As the Commission announced on January 25, 2011:

Unemployment rates for the state and all metro areas improved in December as the state gained jobs over the year for the seventh straight month.

But what about the rigs? The Times-Picayune reported last week that there are now more rigs in the Gulf of Mexico than before the BP spill.

While a backlog of drilling permits in Washington continues to feed oil industry angst, new data shows that more rigs are in the Gulf of Mexico than before the BP oil spill, indicating that operators might have more confidence in the future than they are letting on.

It makes sense: Most of the rig operators have invested billions of dollars and signed multi-year contracts to operate in the Gulf, investments they're unlikely to walk away from over a short-term moratorium.

Energy industry analyst Tom Marsh points to other evidence that the Gulf operators are unlikely to exit the area quickly:

Another indicator that they will not just bail out of here: Several of the companies have bonded together to form the new spill-response groups. Clearly they're not going to make that effort if they intend to leave.

That doesn't mean the BP spill and the resulting policy changes aren't sparking debate about the Gulf Coast's dependence on oil jobs; as Facing South found in our interviews across the coast, the disaster has inspired many community leaders to search for newer, greener alternatives.

Many Gulf communities are ready and willing to tackle these hard questions, but they won't get much help from politicians using scare tactics and false information to score points.