(The Center Square) − Last week, lawmakers passed legislation to address “legacy lawsuits” against oil and gas companies over alleged environmental damage.
Those attempts on Sunday came in the form of amendments to a 200-page bill that was originally only meant as a restructuring of the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources.
Not every amendment on Senate Bill 244 survived, but those that did were enough to have Gov. Jeff Landry celebrating on X.
“Closing the book on legacy lawsuits means real progress and predictability for Louisiana’s energy future,” Landry wrote in his post, thanking Sen. Bob Hensgens, R-Abbeville, and Rep. Jacob Landry, R-Erath.
The surviving amendments will require currently pending lawsuits that seek to force oil and gas companies to pay for environmental damage to properties from their activities be adjudicated by September 2027. The Senate did not consider the bill on Monday.
When Rep. Bett Geymann, R-Lake Charles, was speaking on the bill on the House floor, he admitted that he hadn’t spoken with industry representatives, but understood that “they would prefer these lawsuits be over immediately.” Geymann didn’t know how right he was.
“Delaying the implementation of the SB244 amendment by 26 months only extends the opportunity for plaintiffs’ attorneys to exploit the current system,” Mike Phillips, Chevron’s lead trial attorney, told The Center Square. “This extended timeline incentivizes a last-minute rush of questionable legacy lawsuits…before the new reforms take effect on September 1, 2027.”
A previous bill by Landry would have made the deadline a year earlier.
The amendments that didn’t survive, authored by Landry himself, would have drastically changed a process known as indemnification, where one company promises to cover the costs if another company gets sued or faces damages because of something that goes wrong, like an accident or spill.
Landry’s amendments would have prohibited shifting the cost of cleanup to the new landowners, instead leaving it with the original owner. In April, a jury ruled Chevron to pay over $700 million in coastal damages that occurred prior to Chevron owning the land that was damaged.
“The amendments, written personally by Gov. Landry, would retroactively and prospectively prohibit indemnification in oil and gas transactions – a move that threatens to further fuel Louisiana’s lawsuit abuse crisis,” the American Tort Reform Association wrote.
Landry has played both sides of the fence when it comes to the lawsuits. The Landry administration joined Plaquemines parish as an appellant in the ruling against Chevron. In 2021, Landry, then the state’s attorney general, authorized a settlement for $100 million against Freeport-McMoRan.
Last week, Landry testified that the oil and gas industry was being “hypocritical”, referring to the oil and gas industry’s support of carbon capture and sequestration.
“You can’t say that litigation is so bad in this state that you will not conduct activity on one side of the equation and yet in the very next moment say, ‘Guess what? I need some help from you all to do the same types of activities on this side in the same litigation environment,'” Landry said. “That is the definition of hypocrisy.”
