OCS Study 

MMS 95-0032 

Coastal Marine Institute 

Outer Continental Shelf Issues: 

Central Gulf of Mexico 

00 

0 

0 

0 

Uff of exico 

IA~'N~Nw 

U DeWrtment of the Interior Co=e~Agreernent 

:S 

als a Co One Institute min~r nagement Service 

AMGuIf of Mexico OCS Region 110 Louisiana State University 
OCS Study 

MMS 95-0032 

Coastal Marine Institute 

Outer Continental Shelf Issues : 

Central Gulf of Mexico 

Author 

Robert Gramling 

Sarah Brabant 

Craig J . Forsyth 

C. Eddie Palmer 

August 1995 

Prepared under MMS Contract 

14-35-0001-30660-19902 

by 

Coastal Marine Institute 

Louisiana State University 

Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803 

Published by 

U.S. Department of the Interior Cooperative Agreement 

Minerals Management Service Coastal Marine Institute 

Gulf of Mexico OCS Region Louisiana State University 
DISCLAIMER 

This report was prepared under contract between the Minerals 

Management Service (MMS), the Louisiana Universities Marine 

Consortium (LUMCON) and the University of Southwestern Louisiana . 

This report has been technically reviewed by the MMS and approved 

for publication . Approval does not signify that the contents 

necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Service, nor 

does the mention of trade names or commercial products constitute 

endorsement or recommendations for use . It is, however, exempt 

from review and compliance with MMS editorial standards . 

REPORT AVAILABILITY 

Extra copies of the report may be obtained from the Public 

Information Unit (Mail Stop 5034) at the following address : 

U .S . Department of the Interior 

Minerals Management Service 

Gulf of Mexico OCS Region 

Attention : Public Information Unit (MS 5034) 

1201 Elmwood Park Boulevard 

New Orleans, Louisiana 70123-2394 

Telephone Number : 1-800-200-GULF 

(504)736-2519 

CITATION 

Gramling, R ., S . Brabant, C . J . Forsyth, and C . E . Palmer . 1995 . 

Outer Continental Shelf Issues : Central Gulf of Mexico . OCS 

Study/MMS 95-0032 . U .S . Department of the Interior, 

Minerals Management Service, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region, New 

Orleans, LA . 74 pp . 

iii 
ABSTRACT 

This report summarizes the research effort and findings of 

an investigation of the issues associated with Outer Continental 

Shelf (OCS) oil and gas activities in the Central Gulf of Mexico . 

Stakeholders assessed for the delineation of the issues 

associated with OCS oil and gas activities ranged across the 

offshore oil and gas industry ; the offshore support sector ; other 

direct and indirect coastal users ; stakeholders that benefited 

from economic growth in general ; concerned citizen groups ; and 

public and governmental organizations . Both positive and 

negative economic and environmental issues emerged across the 

three states (Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama) surveyed . 

While jobs and economic spinoffs emerged as issues in all regions 

they were more frequently mentioned in Louisiana . Negative 

economic impacts also came out as issues across the three states, 

but were more closely associated with the coastal tourism region 

of Alabama . There were marked differences in the issues 

associated with regulating OCS activities with Louisiana 

respondents maintaining that the activity was too heavily 

regulated and Mississippi and Alabama respondents maintaining 

that careful regulation was necessary . There were also marked 

differences in the extent to which aesthetic considerations 

emerged as issues . In Louisiana aesthetic considerations did not 

emerge as an issue, while in Mississippi and Alabama they did . 

v 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I : INTRODUCTION 

CHAPTER II : HISTORY OF OFFSHORE DEVELOPMENT 3 

EARLY DEVELOPMENT 3 

MOVEMENT OFFSHORE 

FEDERAL OWNERSHIP 5 

OFFSHORE TECHNOLOGY 

ONSHORE SUPPORT g 

OPPOSITION TO OFFSHORE DEVELOPMENT 9 

CHAPTER III : METHODOLOGY 15 

FRAMEWORK 15 

DEFINING STAKEHOLDERS 15 

REVIEW OF EXISTING INFORMATION ON KEY STAKEHOLDER 

GROUPS 16 

THE SELECTION OF SAMPLE COMMUNITIES 17 

DATA COLLECTION 19 

METHODOLOGICAL NOTE 21 

CHAPTER IV : DATA ANALYSIS 23 

DELINEATION OF THE ISSUES 23 

DATA ANALYSIS 23 

IDENTIFICATION OF ISSUES 2'7 

Positive Economic Impacts 30 

Negative Economic Impacts 33 

Positive Environmental Impacts 38 

Negative Environmental Impacts 40 

Aesthetics 42 

Social Impacts 44 

Policy 48 

Navigation 50 

Other Issues 51 

DISTRIBUTION OF MAJOR ISSUES 51 

CHAPTER V : CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 55 

THE ISSUES 55 

Economic Implications 55 

Environmental Implications 57 

Aesthetic Implications 58 

Social Implications 58 

Policy Implications 59 

THE STAKEHOLDERS 60 

Direct Benefactors 61 

Coastal Tourism 61 

Environmental Concerns 61 

Single Issue Groups 62 

SUMMARY 62 

REFERENCES 65 

APPENDIX A 69 

APPENDIX B 71 

vii 
LIST OF FIGURES 

FIGURE l : MAJOR ISSUES ACROSS THE REGION 54 

LIST OF TABLES 

TABLE l : OUTLINE OF ISSUES 24 

TABLE 2 : FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION OF ISSUES ACROSS REGIONS 28 

TABLE 3 : PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF ISSUES ACROSS EACH REGION 29 

TABLE 4 : PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION MAIN ISSUES 53 

ix 
CHAPTER I : INTRODUCTION 

Although the first overwater drilling for oil occurred from 

piers into the Pacific at Summerland, California, the coastal 

wetlands of Louisiana were where the technology and support for 

offshore exploration for oil and gas evolved . Movement into the 

marsh began in the late 1920s, and by the late 1930s much of the 

coastal and nearshore waters of Louisiana, and to a lesser extent 

Texas, were being explored . Production began in the coastal 

wetlands in the early 1930s and in the protected waters of 

coastal estuaries by the middle of the decade . Following the 

introduction of the drilling barge by the Texas Company (later 

Texaco), marine drilling technology advanced quickly . By the mid 

1940s virtually all inland coastal waters and most of what would 

be later defined as State Waters (up to 3 miles offshore) were 

being actively explored and production was underway at one site a 

mile offshore from Cameron Parish . The first attempt on the 

Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), the lands "out" beyond State 

Waters occurred in 1946, and soon the unprotected waters of the 

Gulf of Mexico were open to exploration and production . 

Today the northern Gulf of Mexico is easily the most 

developed offshore area in the world . There are approximately 

3,800 production platforms on the federal waters of the Outer 

Continental Shelf, with over 18,000 development wells in place 

linked to these platforms .' Production platforms are in place 

in water depths of over 1,700 feet, and over 100 miles offshore . 

Very little of the Outer Continental Shelf oil, and none of the 

gas, is tankered ashore, which means that virtually the entire 

offshore production system is connected to onshore facilities via 

a network of thousands of miles of subsurface pipelines . In 

addition, because offshore development evolved in the Gulf, 

almost all of the fabrication of offshore facilities is done 

locally . This is in marked contrast to some of the new offshore 

regions of the world .' The end result of this massive 

1 In contrast, as of 1988, on the Pacific Outer Continental 

Shelf there was a total of 21 production platforms and 669 

development wells . There is no other production on the remainder 

of the U .S . Outer Continental Shelf (could et al . 1991) . 

Because offshore platforms must be constructed onshore and 

then moved offshore, they are inherently mobile and can 

theoretically be constructed in virtually any coastal region of the 

world and moved to any other . For example, of the 21 production 

platforms in place on the Pacific OCS in 1988, nine were 

constructed in Japan, two in Malaysia, and one in Korea . Even more 

remote, Mobil considered constructing the platform for the 

development of the Hibernia field (off the coast of Newfoundland) 

in Taiwan . Political considerations, not technical considerations, 

were probably more important in the final decision to construct the 

platform locally . 
development, and of its evolution over almost 50 years, has been 

to significantly alter the physical, social, economic, and 

cultural environments of the coastal Gulf of Mexico, particularly 

in Louisiana . As opposition to offshore development arose in 

many coastal regions of the United States following the Santa 

Barbara oil spill in 1969, a series of events led to the need to 

assess the issues associated with offshore development in the 

Gulf of Mexico . Chapter II of this report provides a background 

description of offshore development in the Gulf, and of the 

events leading to this report . Subsequent chapters provide a 

description of the methods used in this issue analysis, an 

outline of the issues as well as differences across locales, and 

the implications of the research findings . 

2 
CHAPTER I2 : HISTORY OF OFFSHORE DEVELOPMENT 

EARLY DEVELOPMENT 

The first over-water drilling for oil occurred in 1897 at 

Summerland, California, from a wooden pier into the Pacific 

Ocean . The success brought quick emulation, and by 1902 a 

photograph of the Summerland development "at its peak" shows over 

forty derricks on piers over the Pacific (Lankford 1971 :1367) . 

Although technically the drilling was over water, little 

modification of existing land based technology was required 

because of the direct land connection . In 1901 the world's first 

major oil reservoir, Spindletop, was tapped near Beaumont, Texas . 

These two seemingly unrelated events were to have far reaching 

consequences . Spindletop focused the major effort for the 

production of oil in the eastern United States, where it had 

originated, and into Texas and the Gulf coast . Technological 

adaptation to the marine environment continued over a decade 

later in 1908 with the development of the Caddo Lake field in 

northwestern Louisiana, and with the development of the Maracaibo 

field (Venezuela) in 1924, one of the largest in the Western 

Hemisphere, ultimately producing approximately 4 .6 billion 

barrels of oil (Lankford 1971) . Spindletop proved to be a salt 

dome, and as non-destructive exploratory techniques evolved in 

the 1920s, numerous salt domes were located by geophysical 

exploration along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast . Access, 

however, was a problem since, as Lankford (1971 :1377) noted, 

"these inviting prospects were often situated in very uninviting 

terrain--marshes, swamps, and the shallow open waters of bays and 

lakes ." 

The technological breakthrough that facilitated exploration 

in the shallow coastal waters and marsh came in 1933 with The 

Texas Company's (later Texaco) introduction of the submersible 

drilling barge . The barge could be towed to the drilling site 

and sunk ; while resting on the bottom, the barge provided a 

stable base for drilling . Once drilling was complete, the barge 

could be raised and moved to a new location . The Giliasso (as 

the first barge was named, after the holder of the patent) was 

built in Pennsylvania, and brought down the Ohio and Mississippi 

Rivers, to Lake Pelto, Louisiana, where on a state lease on 

November 17th, 1933 the Lake Pelto No . 10 was spudded (started) . 

The barge was a success ; a new era in marine drilling had begun 

(Williams 1934) . 

The movement into increasingly isolated locations in the 

coastal marshes and estuaries led to the institutionalization of 

two additional innovations necessary for the movement offshore, 

one technical and one social . The isolated location of wells 

along the Gulf Coast led to the emergence of extensive pipeline 

networks and to adaptation to the marine environment . The first 

real marine application came with a 25 mile stretch of pipeline 

3 
crossing Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans, in 1941 . The 

logistics of positioning and assembling a continuous pipeline led 

to the early technology associated with "lay-barges ,3 that work 

the Gulf today (Sterrett 1941), and the eventual proliferation of 

the massive pipeline network in the northern Gulf . 

During this same period the necessity for construction and 

drilling crews to work at isolated locations, where it was 

impractical to commute daily, led increasingly to the use of 

living quarters located near the work location, and the division 

of work into concentrated working periods (e .g ., a week at work 

and a week off) . In addition, because the equipment associated 

with work in these environments was expensive, the ventures were 

capital intensive and needed to return investment as quickly as 

possible . These factors led to 24 hour a day operations and the 

concentrated work scheduling now common offshore (Gramling 1989) . 

This usually involves four complete crews, two crews for each 

seven day (or 14, 21, etc .) work session that alternate 12 hours 

on and 12 hours off . By 1941, Nicholson (1941 :30) was describing 

the luxury of the newest and largest of the remote living 

quarters supplied by Gulf Oil near the mouth of the Mississippi, 

created from a converted river steamer, as providing "excellent 

food and sanitation" as well as "[f]ountains supplied with 

running ice water" and rooms with "reversible window fans ." By 

the mid-1940s, the larger of these living quarters had come to be 

described as "modern floating hotel[s]" (Oil Weekly Staff 

1946 :44) . 

MOVEMENT OFFSHORE 

In 1938 a joint effort by Superior and Gulf brought in seven 

producing wells in the Creole field from a platform a mile 

offshore from Cameron Parish Louisiana in nine feet of water 

(Logan and Smith 1948) . This was the first attempt in the open 

Gulf, and it used a system very similar to that practiced in Lake 

Maracaibo, in that the support for drilling (crews, etc .) was 

primarily from the nearby shore . By the mid-1940s a number of 

proposals to extend the concept of the drilling barge to open 

Gulf use began to appear in the trade journals (see Shrewsbury 

1945 ; Tucker 1946a ; 1946b) . The published proposals envisioned 

self-contained, reusable drilling devices illustrative of modern 

submersible drilling barges (Tucker 1946a), drill ships (Tucker 

1946b), or even guyed' production platforms (Shrewsbury 1945), 

the latter not being used until the late 1980s . In spite of 

these visionary proposals, the first attempt on what was later to 

be defined as the Outer Continental Shelf, and which moved the 

entire drilling support system offshore, relied on more 

Pipeline laying barges 

These are floating platforms attached to the bottom by 

cables . 

4 
traditional technology . In 1946 the Magnolia Petroleum Company 

constructed a platform in the open Gulf on a tract leased from 

the state of Louisiana . The site was south of Morgan City, 

Louisiana, five miles from the nearest land . Drilling crews were 

rotated back and forth from one of the "floating hotels" anchored 

behind Eugene Island, ten miles away . 

Although the attempt was an economic failure (a dry hole), 

technologically it was a success' in that it demonstrated that 

exploration in the open Gulf was feasible, and the subsequent two 

decades that followed Magnolia's first attempt saw the emergence 

of a full-blown offshore technology capable of working in 500 

feet of water and over 60 miles offshore . 

FEDERAL OWNERSHIP 

The potential for offshore development led to claims by both 

the states and the Federal Government for offshore lands . The 

conflicting claims were settled ultimately by the U .S . Supreme 

Court between 1947 and 1950 in what are known as the Tidelands 

Cases . This series of decisions established the legal rights of 

the Federal Government over all of the U .S . offshore lands . In 

the wake of the Supreme Court decisions, the tidelands 

controversy became a major issue in the 1952 Presidential 

election, with Eisenhower supporting the "state's rights" 

position . In 1953, at the urging of the newly elected Eisenhower 

administration, Congress passed the Submerged Lands Act, which 

assigned to the states the title to the offshore lands that were 

within three miles of the shoreline .s 

The second piece of relevant legislation that passed in 

1953, actually an extension of the first, was the Outer 

Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) of 1953 (43 U .S .C . § 1331 et 

seq .) . This act authorized the Secretary of Interior to lease 

the offshore lands beyond the three mile limit, the "Outer 

Continental Shelf" (OCS), for mineral exploitation (oil, gas, 

salt, and sulphur) through competitive bidding, and to administer 

the leases . The Act served as the major legislation guiding 

policy for federal offshore leasing between 1953 and 1978 . 

Federal leasing on the OCS began off Louisiana in 1954 . 

Two 

west coast 

states had 

miles), as 

Union . 

current exceptions to this act involve Texas and the 

of Florida, where the Supreme Court later ruled that the 

held title to three marine leagues (approximately 10 .4 

sovereign nations, before they were admitted to the 

5 
OFFSHORE TECHNOLOGY 

Following Magnolia Petroleum Company's lead, and using the 

same type of technology, Kerr-McGee brought in the first 

producing well on the OCS in 1947, 12 miles off the Louisiana 

coast at an 18 foot depth . This sparked additional interest 

offshore, and by the middle of 1948, in addition to offshore 

production by Kerr-McGee and from the Creole field offshore from 

Cameron, Louisiana, 13 additional locations were in various 

stages of development off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas . Two 

additional dry holes had been abandoned, and plans were under way 

for drilling in an additional 14 locations (Logan and Smith 

1948) . 

The basic problem faced at this point was that the cost of 

each offshore attempt was expensive, and was all "sunk cost ." 

Thus all was lost in the event of a dry hole . Mobile drilling 

barges which had reached considerable size by this time could not 

be used offshore because wave action rendered them unstable 

during storms . Platforms derived their strength both from the 

fact that their pilings were driven deeply into the bottom of the 

sea, and also because waves could pass through the pilings 

exerting only a fraction of their strength on the structure . 

A breakthrough came in 1949 when John Hayward designed an 

offshore drilling barge . The barge was a 160 by 54 foot 

compartmentalized barge similar to those used in protected 

waters . But the drilling platform, machinery, and crew quarters 

were mounted on a platform 20 feet above the deck of the barge, 

supported by a lattice work of braced columns or posts (causing 

vessels of this type to become known as "posted barges") . In 

practice, the barge was brought to the location and flooded . 

Resting on the bottom, the barge provided a stable base for the 

drilling platform . Because wave action could pass through the 

columns, as with pilings on an offshore platform, the barge was 

not moved off of its location during storms . All of the previous 

technological innovations (mobility, transparency to wave action, 

offshore scheduling of work, and the inclusion of living 

quarters) came together for the first time in the Bretton Rig 20, 

to produce the first self contained, reusable, offshore drilling 

machine . Submersible rigs dominated offshore exploratory 

drilling for the decade following their introduction, although 

three alternatives to submersibles (jack-up rigs, drill ships and 

barges, and semi-submersible rigs) emerged in the 1950s and early 

1960s . 

By 1966, a little over a decade after the federal offshore 

leasing program commenced, there were an estimated 150 mobile 

drilling rigs in operation, most of them in the Gulf (Howe 1966a ; 

1966b ; 1966c) . Submersible rigs ceased to be built by the late 

1950s . Although jack-ups, drillships and semi-submersibles 

continued to evolve, the basic designs for off shore drilling 

rigs were in place by the mid 1960s, and most of the continental 

shelf in the Gulf, at least out to 500 foot depths (Offshore 

Staff 1966), was open for exploration . 

6 
All of the types of mobile drilling rigs described above are 

used during the exploratory phase of development . Once oil or 

gas is found by exploratory drilling and the extent of the field 

delineated by more drilling, a production platform must be put in 

place . The production platform provides a stable base from which 

to drill production wells and on which to mount the necessary 

equipment to control production from the wells . Early 

production platforms were built in place (i .e ., piles were driven 

into the sea bottom and a deck was constructed on top of them) . 

These platforms also provided mooring for barges to take the 

crude oil to onshore processing facilities . Both the on site 

construction of platforms and the transportation of oil by barge 

began to change by the mid 1950s . 

Production offshore in the Gulf underwent a transformation 

similar to that for exploration in the decade following the first 

federal lease sale . The most fundamental change came because it 

was not practical to build production platforms in place in 

deeper water . Because the pilings could not be effectively 

braced below the water line after they were driven, sufficient 

stability to support the weights and vibration involved in 

offshore drilling could only be accomplished in relatively 

shallow water . This meant that the entire production platform 

had to be fabricated on land and set in place offshore . By 1955, 

one year after the first federal lease sale and six years after 

the first submersible drilling barge, the first fabrication yard 

intended primarily for the construction of offshore platforms, 

the McDermott facility, opened east of Morgan City, Louisiana, on 

Bayou Boeuf . 

The technology for the production and installation of these 

platforms developed quickly . McDermott installed platforms in 

100 feet of water late that same year and in 200 feet of water by 

1959 (Clark 1963) . Platforms are designed for a specific 

location and offshore field and are ordered after exploratory 

drilling and the characteristics of the field are known . The 

"steel jacket" production platform is the norm in the Gulf . 

Early platforms were simply rectangular structures consisting of 

a series of parallel upright columns supporting a deck and 

connected by a latticework of smaller pipes . As production moved 

further offshore, the basic design of the jacket (that portion 

that extends from the sea floor to above the water line) came to 

resemble a slender truncated pyramid constructed of a latticework 

of upright columns and braces with the base being wider than the 

top of the structure to provide increased stability . The size 

and configuration of the jacket is based on the depth of the 

water, bottom support condition, and the number of wells and 

processing equipment required . Whatever the size, the jacket and 

the deck (the portion of the platform above the water line, with 

all the production equipment, living quarters, etc .) are 

constructed separately . After the jacket is barged offshore and 

secured in place, the deck is brought out and installed . While 

the description implies a simple operation, steel jacketed 

platforms have been installed in up to 1,350 feet of water . This 

7 
platform (called "Bullwinkle") is 1,615 feet tall6 and 400 feet 

across at the base . 

ONSHORE SUPPORT 

There are a number of factors that shaped the development of 

the infrastructure supporting offshore development in the Gulf . 

Because the system for offshore oil and gas production evolved in 

the Gulf of Mexico, there was no engineering precedent, and the 

equipment and structures used for offshore exploration and 

development had to be locally constructed (often from the ground 

up) to meet local needs . Moreover, because of the rapidity with 

which the industry . moved offshore during the 1950s and early 

1960s, design and engineering were in a constant state of flux . 

The result of these factors was that, unlike areas of the world 

where offshore production came later and where because of past 

experience comprehensive planning was at least possible, if not 

always successful (Manners 1982), the onshore support system in 

the northern Gulf emerged with little overall planning to guide 

development or address mitigation . 

A second factor shaping the support infrastructure was the 

nature of the physical environment itself . The deltaic plain of 

Louisiana from which most of the offshore activity was supported 

is a gift of the Mississippi River as it has wandered across 

southern Louisiana during a number of deltaic lobe-building 

cycles . The nature of the terrain restricted settlement and 

industrialization to the many scattered natural levees of current 

or previous waterways . While at times high ground was at a 

premium, access to the Gulf certainly was not . Anywhere one of 

these strips of high land met an existing waterway was a 

potential construction or support site, and these sites sprung up 

like mushrooms as offshore development moved ahead . The result 

was that the emerging support, transportation and fabrication 

sectors were scattered across first southern Louisiana and later 

Texas . Fabrication yards ranged from the 1,000+ acre sites near 

Morgan City to operations the size of half an acre without 

running water or electricity . Staging areas similarly ranged 

across the Louisiana/Texas coast, and concentrations quickly 

materialized at Venice, Bayou Lafourche, Morgan City/Berwick, 

Intracoastal City, and Cameron (Louisiana), and Orange and Port 

Arthur (Texas) . Wherever road or rail met waterways, local docks 

and staging areas appeared . 

Some of these areas, like Morgan City/Berwick and the towns 

along Bayou Lafourche, were fishing communities before the turn 

of the century . The towns grew rapidly, often with little 

comprehensive planning . Existing settlement patterns were 

altered, transportation networks were extended, and community 

services were quickly overwhelmed . Morgan City became a textbook 

By contrast, the World Trade Center and Empire State 

Building are 1,353 feet tall and 1,250 feet tall, respectively . 

8 
example of rapid community expansion (Stallings et al . 1977 ; 

Gramling 1980 ; Gramling and Brabant 1986) with housing shortages, 

inadequate utility networks and social services, and an economy 

almost totally tied to offshore support (Gramling and Freudenburg 

1990) . 

Other areas like Venice and Intracoastal City had little in 

the way of indigenous populations in the 1950s, and as a result 

became commercial settlements with abundant staging areas and 

company offices but little in the way of a permanent population . 

Lafayette, centrally located and able to offer more amenities, 

became a corporate headquarters city for the offshore industry 

during this period (Gramling 1983) . 

By the late 1950s an average of 90 platforms a year were 

being placed offshore in ever-deeper water . This meant that not 

only were 90 platforms fabricated each year, and that 90 

platforms had to be moved offshore and supplied while production 

drilling was proceeding, but also that each year an additional 90 

platforms were added to the growing base of offshore facilities 

that had to be serviced and maintained . The exploratory drilling 

phase (through the development drilling and completion phases of 

offshore activity) are the most labor and resource intensive 

component of offshore activity . There is a need for labor, 

drilling mud, casing and drill pipe, fresh water for drilling, 

food and potable water for human consumption, fuel, and a variety 

of specialty tools and equipment . It is also during this period 

that platform construction will take place and pipeline to 

connect the platform to the existing network will be laid . 

Through an analysis of telephone directories, Davis and 

Place (1983) identified over 3,500 businesses in coastal 

Louisiana alone which were directly serving the petroleum 

industry by the early 1970s . This was up from approximately 

1,200 businesses in the mid-1950s, a growth rate of over 100 

businesses a year . These firms were located on over 28,000 acres 

of land given over to industrial and commercial uses scattered 

throughout the coastal zone of the state . If all of this marine 

activity and the associated support and managerial activity had 

been concentrated into one port, it would have been by far the 

busiest commercial port in the world from the late 1950s through 

the mid 1980s . 

OPPOSITION TO OFFSHORE DEVELOPMENT 

All of the production on the Outer Continental Shelf between 

1947 and 1963 was in the central and western Gulf . In 1959 there 

were lease sales off the Florida Keys, and in 1963 and 1964 there 

were sales in the Pacific, off central California and the 

Washington-Oregon coasts . Exploration in these areas failed to 

find commercially valuable quantities of oil, and the leases 

expired (could et al . 1991) . It was not until 1966 that the 

first lease sale was held off southern California, a one block 

drainage sale . The following year when the promising area 

offshore from Santa Barbara was offered for a wider lease sale, 

9 
local opposition to the lease sale emerged . Eventually the sale 

did go forth in 1968, but a year later in 1969 a well being 

drilled on Union Oil's Platform A blew out around the casing 

below the sea floor . The strata below Platform A continued to 

leak throughout much of 1969, although the worst was over by midMarch . Estimates of the total spill range from one to three 

million gallons . As a result of the Santa Barbara oil spill, 

lease sales were suspended in the Pacific, and proposed sales in 

the Atlantic and off Alaska were postponed . Sales and 

development in the central and western Gulf off Louisiana and 

Texas, however, continued . Following the spill, no leases were 

held outside of the central and western Gulf for another five 

years, until the 1973/74 OPEC embargo led to calls for further 

leasing . 

The end result of these factors was that the model for OCS 

development evolved almost entirely in the central and western 

Gulf of Mexico . In a systematic comparison of the factors that 

have led to the acceptance of offshore activity in Louisiana and 

its rejection in California, Freudenburg and Gramling (1993 ; 

1994) note a variety of socioenvironmental factors that led to 

the respective positions . Included in these are a number of 

historical, social, and economic factors . In addition, they note 

a number of biophysical factors that have influenced the 

respective positions such as the awe-inspiring Pacific coast and 

the less impressive Gulf ; the accessibility of the California 

coast and the lack of access in Louisiana ; the broad continental 

shelf in the Gulf, which minimizes user conflicts as opposed to 

the narrow one in California, which maximizes such conflicts ; and 

the numerous waterways and harbors in Louisiana, as opposed to 

the comparative scarcity of navigable waterways and harbors in 

California . Thus, the development of OCS activities in the Gulf, 

in a social, economic, and physical environment where there was 

little consideration to any potential negative effects of that 

development meant that many of the issues that would later emerge 

with respect to the federal OCS program were not addressed, nor 

even considered . In the Gulf, the Department of Interior and the 

industry had been developing a close working relationship over 

two decades, coming in the process to share a perspective that 

remained virtually unchallenged until the mid-1970s . 

The 1973/74 oil embargo again brought the question of all 

offshore development to the table, as then President Nixon 

proposed Project Independence as a solution to reliance on 

foreign oil . The developmental tripod on which Project 

Independence rested consisted of nuclear energy, the TransAlaskan 

Pipeline' and increased development offshore . The Department of 

The pipeline had been on hold due to challenges to the 

Environmental Impact Statement and opposition from a variety of 

environmental groups . Congress circumvented the newly enacted 

National Environmental Policy Act in order to allow the pipeline to 

go forth in 1973 . 

10 
Interior was instructed to approximately triple the acreage 

offered for leasing and to move into frontier (previously 

unleased) areas . 

Proposed sales off the east and west coasts, and off Alaska 

and Florida, led to a series of legal and political actions taken 

by a number of coastal states in an attempt to limit or halt 

offshore development (see Wilson 1982 : Kaplan 1982) . In 1978 

Congress amended the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act in order 

to allow more input from the states . In 1980 the Reagan 

administration moved into the White House and James Watt became 

Secretary of Interior . Secretary Watt continued the movement 

into frontier areas and also expanded the Outer Continental Shelf 

leasing strategy by offering larger areas for lease during each 

sale . These decisions resulted in a number of tracts being sold 

in the eastern Gulf of Mexico off Florida in spite of opposition 

by the State of Florida . Secretary Watt also combined the 

various functions of the federal offshore leasing program into 

one new agency within Interior, creating the Minerals Management 

Service . In 1982 Congress inserted prohibitions into the 

Department of Interior's appropriation, forbidding the 

expenditure of funds for leasing activities for portions of the 

east and west coast Outer Continental Shelf (Farrow 1990) . In 

effect, this back-door process circumvented the decision-making 

process within Interior and increasingly shut down the Outer 

Continental Shelf outside of the western and central Gulf of 

Mexico to leasing, as the Congressional moratoria became annual 

events . The moratoria gradually increased in geographic scope, 

until most of the east and west coasts were closed to offshore 

leasing . 

The issue of development in frontier areas, particularly 

when opposed by the contiguous state(s), came to a head in 1988 

as George Bush became president . There had been only two Outer 

Continental Shelf sales outside of the Gulf of Mexico in the past 

five years (in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off Alaska), and 

Congress showed no inclination to relinquish its control over the 

leasing process . The controversy at that time centered on three 

proposed sales in California and Florida . In Florida the sale of 

leases off southwest Florida had been temporarily halted when 

Governor Bob Martinez first sued and then settled with James 

Watt's successor, Secretary of Interior Donald Hodel . A 

compromise allowed a portion of the proposed sale in the eastern 

Gulf to go forth but postponed sales of leases off southwest 

Florida . The second half of that sale (116) was again coming up . 

As noted before, Florida, under a succession of Governors, had 

opposed development in this area, and this time was no different . 

The state was continuing to fight exploratory drilling on tracts 

that had been leased under previous sales, and a number of state 

and local organizations (particularly in south Florida) had 

focused their efforts on stopping the sale . 

One of the first actions of President George Bush, early in 

1989, was to announce that he was postponing the second half of 

lease sale 116 off Florida and the two sales off California . The 

11 
question of whether the sales should go forth was submitted to a 

cabinet-level Presidential task force, and the National Academy 

of Sciences was asked to evaluate the adequacy of the available 

information concerning the potential impacts of the sales . 

By late 1989 the National Research Council (the working arm 

of the National Academy of Sciences) released a report which 

argued that the available information for informed decision 

making was inadequate for all three sales (National Research 

Council 1989) . In addition, the report noted that while most of 

the offshore development was in the Gulf of Mexico, most of the 

funding to assess the effects of offshore development was being 

spent elsewhere . In January of the following year the task force 

presented its findings to the President . While the report 

offered a number of options, none of them included going ahead as 

planned .' Several weeks later, in a statement released on June 

26, 1990, President Bush canceled the three sales and imposed a 

Presidential moratorium on lease sales in these three areas and 

on much of the east and west coasts of the U .S . until the year 

2000 . There were no lease sales outside of the Gulf of Mexico 

during President Bush's tenure in office . 

The 1989 National Research Council report and subsequent 

ongoing analyses of Minerals Management Service's overall 

research program (National Research Council 1992 ; 1993) indicated 

that a particular weakness in the program was an inadequate 

assessment of the effects of offshore development in the Gulf 

on the human environment . Responding to this critique the 

Minerals Management Service sponsored a workshop in New Orleans 

in the fall of 1992 . From the beginning, the workshop was 

planned in conjunction with scientists from the Minerals 

Management Service . The workshop drew on the expertise of some 

of the best known social scientists in the country, indeed world, 

in the area of social and economic impacts of natural resource 

development and coastal, marine, and natural resource policy . 

These scientists, in cooperation with those from the Minerals 

Management Service, designed an entire five year social science 

research agenda for the Minerals Management Service in the Gulf 

(Gramling and Laska 1993) . One of the highly recommended 

projects was an issue analysis for the Gulf of Mexico . The 

workshop report (Gramling and Laska 1993 :D8) noted : 

If the research program and individual initiatives 

developed at the Socioeconomic Research Agenda Workshop 

are going to be truly effective in enhancing the 

research and policy initiatives of MMS they must be 

timely and grounded in the perception and realities of 

stakeholders throughout the Gulf of Mexico region . For 

this reason, an essential complementary study to the 

The report was never officially made public . However, 

Congresswoman Barbara Boxer obtained a copy and released it to the 

press in June of 1990 . 

12 
preparation of this research agenda is an issues 

analysis which consults with the stakeholders . This 

research will serve to reinforce some initiatives and 

redirect others, and may also result in the 

identification of additional study requirements . 

The current report details the result of that issue analysis 

for the central (Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama) Gulf of 

Mexico . As can be seen from the synopsis presented in this 

Chapter, offshore oil and gas development in the United States 

has had a long and turbulent history . While the technological 

advances made in offshore exploration and development have now 

become accepted practice throughout the world, the issues 

associated with these activities have never been adequately 

explored even in the United States . 

13 
CHAPTER III : METHODOLOGY 

FRAMEWORK 

The issue analysis recommended by the MMS sponsored workshop 

(Gramling and Laska 1993 :128) consisted of five major components . 

These components form the basic thrust of the present research 

and are outlined below : 

l . A review of existing information on key stakeholder 

groups and their concerns . This will involve both a 

literature review and key informant interviews ; 

2 . The selection of sample communities . Developed out 

of the previous component, this will use a stratified 

sampling technique to identify communities to be 

studied . These will be selected on the basis of such 

things as proximity to OCS activity, nature of 

activity, and size of community ; 

3 . The identification of key informants in each of the . 

selected communities . These informants will be 

identified through means of a "snowballing" technique ; 

4 . Key informant interviews . These interviews will 

solicit opinions from the informants with respect to 

their concerns related to OCS activity ; 

5 . Analysis and reporting . 

DEFINING STAKEHOLDERS 

The concept of stakeholder has undergone considerable 

modification from its original meaning to the way it is currently 

used in the social sciences . As the word originated in the 

English language it was used to designate an individual who 

literally held stakes, but had no direct interest in them . 

Webster's Third International Unabridged Dictionary defined 

stakeholder as : 

l : a person entrusted with the stakes of two or more 

persons betting against one another and charged with 

the duty of delivering the stakes to the winner 2 : a 

person entrusted with the custody of property or money 

that is the subject of litigation or contention between 

rival claimants in which the holder claims no right or 

property interest 

By the mid 1980s, however, the concept was being used in 

management literature to mean almost the opposite of this 

15 
original definition, referring to individuals or groups that did 

have a stake in a particular activity or issue . The definition 

of stakeholders that is perhaps most widely quoted was originally 

put forth by Freeman (1984 :iv) as "groups or individuals who 

affect or are affected by organizational performance ." A more 

action oriented definition was offered by MacMillian and Jones 

(1986) as "an individual, a collection of people, or an 

organization whose support is essential or whose opposition must 

be negated if a major strategic change is to be successfully 

implemented" (Starik 1995 :208) . Thus, there are several elements 

in the definition of stakeholders that we will use for analysis 

in this research : 

1 . Stakeholders have a stake as opposed to the traditional 

definition of holding a stake . 

2 . Stakeholders may be individuals, a collection of people, 

or an organization . 

3 . Stakeholders may affect an organization or activity' 

and/or be affected by an organization or activity . 

4 . Stakeholders may have to be taken into account in order 

to bring about significant change in an organization or 

activity . 

5 . In general, stakeholders are defined by their 

relationship to an organization or activity rather than 

being geographically defined . However, if a particular 

enterprise is geographically distributed and the activity in 

question affects those engaging in that enterprise then it 

is reasonable to assume that the distributions of particular 

stakeholders might be concentrated in certain geographic 

regions . 

REVIEW OF EXISTING INFORMATION ON KEY STAKEHOLDER GROUPS 

A variety of informal conversations with agency personnel, 

coastal policy makers, individuals in the oil and gas industry, 

other coastal users, and our collective experience with coastal 

issues initially led us to develop a rather detailed outline of 

stakeholders in the central Gulf of Mexico (see Appendix A) . As 

we began to plan the actual fieldwork, however, it became evident 

that using the outline as a strict guide for data collection was 

not a workable idea . As a check list the outline was too complex 

to be used as a guide to allow us to get referrals from those we 

9 Although the management literature focuses on organizations, 

we are broadening the definition to include activities, recognizing 

that most activities that stakeholders would react to are carried 

on by organizations . 

16 
interviewed (i .e ., to snowball) . It was also our feeling that 

many of the categories would not produce unique perspectives . We 

agreed to use the outline as a general guide, but we were 

primarily interested in making sure that our respondents were 

representative of the following : the offshore oil and gas 

industry ; the offshore support sector ; other direct and indirect 

coastal users ; stakeholders that benefited from economic growth 

in general ; concerned citizen groups ; and public and governmental 

organizations . 

THE SELECTION OF SAMPLE COMMUNITIES 

Selection of the sample communities was done in May of 1993 

in conjunction with MMS representatives . We examined census data 

at the county and community level, but in the end relied most 

heavily on our combined knowledge of coastal communities in 

Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama . Initially we selected four 

Louisiana communities . Cameron, Morgan City and Grand Isle were 

selected for their location on the coast, and their primarily 

blue collar association with the offshore oil sector (see 

Gramling and Brabant 1984 ; 1986 ; Gramling and Freudenburg 1990) . 

Grand Isle was also selected for its concentration of other 

direct and indirect coastal users, primarily concentrated around 

shrimping and tourism . Lafayette was selected for its white 

collar association with the offshore oil sector, having long been 

a regional center for offshore activity (see Gramling and Brabant 

1984 ; 1986 ; Freudenburg and Gramling 1994) . We selected 

Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula in Mississippi because they 

represented the overwhelming majority of the coastal Mississippi 

population, and a wide diversity of coastal uses and occupations . 

In Alabama we selected Mobile because it was a major port city, 

Dauphin Island for its other coastal users, and Gulf Shores and 

Fairhope primarily for their coastal tourism and retirement 

sites . 

Because the key informants constituted a previously 

unidentified and thus unknown population, a technique known as 

snowballing was utilized . This technique is specifically 

appropriate to field research (Babbie 1992) . Snowball sampling 

(cf . Richardson 1988) is a method through which the researcher 

develops an ever-increasing set of sample observations . One 

respondent in the sample under study is asked to recommend others 

for interviewing, and each of the subsequently interviewed 

participants is asked for further recommendations (Babbie 1992) . 

This is the only feasible type of sampling procedure which will 

fit the requirements of the project to : 1) identify various 

stakeholder groups through a referral process and, 2) retain 

flexibility in the field to identify and sample stakeholder 

groups as they are "discovered" through the sampling process . 

This technique, however, tends to interact with the geographic 

distribution of respondents in two ways . First, since economic, 

social and kinship ties bridge communities, the referral 

procedure is not community specific . One respondent may 

17 
recommend that it is important to talk to someone in an adjacent 

community . This led us to other communities that were not on the 

initial list . In the case of Grand Isle, since both offshore oil 

and gas activities and shrimping spread up Bayou Lafourche, we 

were forced to interview individuals from a variety of Bayou 

Lafourche communities (Cheniere Caminada, Cut Off, Galliano, 

Golden Meadow, and Leeville) . This was common in all of the 

areas as respondents from Gulf Shores referred us to individuals 

in Orange Beach and Lafayette respondents referred us to New 

Iberia and Abbeville . It became obvious that in order both to 

assure anonymity" and also to obtain enough interviews from the 

referring community, that "community" would have to be defined 

loosely and the data that came from the community and from 

referrals to nearby communities would have to be grouped for 

analysis . 

A second way in which the sampling procedure interacted with 

geographic distribution has to do with the manner in which a 

determination of completeness is accomplished in a snowball 

sample . Snowball sampling proceeds until no new categories 

emerge (Glaser and Strauss 1967) . That is, once the researcher 

hears the same information repeated again and again (in this 

case, issues over and over with no new issues emerging), the 

sampling is considered to be complete . Because the issues 

associated with OCS activities were complex and numerous and 

varied across locales, sampling was very extensive in some 

communities, and less than anticipated in others . In short, we 

sacrificed geographic coverage to get depth . The end result was 

that we grouped the data for analysis into five categories . The 

first category (hereafter referred to as coastal Louisiana) 

contains data primarily from Grand Isle but also containing 

interviews from Cut Off, Galliano, Golden Meadow, Leeville, 

Cameron, and Morgan City . The distinguishing characteristic of 

these interviews is that they were built on referrals from direct 

or indirect coastal users in Louisiana . These range from 

shipyard managers to shrimpers . The second group consists of 

Lafayette and vicinity, primarily Lafayette but with interviews 

from New Iberia, Abbeville, Broussard, Breaux Bridge, and St . 

Martinville . These interviews focus on the managerial aspects of 

the offshore industry, as well as the secondary support industry . 

They also contain interviews from a number of individuals in 

positions that were affected by the general economic climate 

associated with the growth and decline of the offshore sector . 

The third group consists of respondents from coastal Mississippi . 

The majority of these interviews are from Biloxi, but include 

respondents ranging from Pass Christian to Pascagoula . The 

fourth grouped set of respondents are from Mobile County . The 

respondents are primarily from Mobile, Bayou LaBatre and Dauphin 

to For example, we have one respondent in a coastal community 

that is the only respondent from that community and who has a 

business that is the only business of that type in the community . 

18 
Island . Finally, the respondents from Baldwin County, Alabama, 

are also grouped . The focus here was on tourism at Gulf 

Shores/Orange Beach and Fairhope, but a few interviews which 

resulted from following up referrals ranged as far away as Fort 

Morgan and Bay Minette . 

DATA COLLECTION 

Because of the accessibility of Grand Isle, Louisiana, and 

because the community was a relatively small one, arguably 

allowing one of the more efficient snowball sampling settings, 

Grand Isle was chosen as the first site for data collection . 

Five investigators traveled to Grand Isle in June of 1993 . Our 

strategy was to saturate the island, and to meet over lunch and 

at the end of each day to discuss our findings and fine tune our 

inquiries . Grand Isle is a small community . We knew that 

"newcomers" asking questions would elicit interest and potential 

informants would have time to think through their responses . 

Timing and speed were critical in order to reduce contamination 

of information . We used a modified ethnographic technique to 

accomplish this . 

l . One of the investigators was very familiar with Grand 

Isle and had been going there since the late 1960s . On the 

evening before the actual data gathering, we drove around 

the area with this investigator pointing out important 

landmarks and the general layout of the Island . This helped 

other investigators to avoid becoming lost, having to ask 

directions, and as a result becoming even more visible . 

2 . We began at exactly the same time so that respondents 

from key areas had no time to compare notes . 

3 . One interviewer went immediately to "authority" figures 

in the community (e .g ., mayor and police chief) . These 

individuals were then able to answer questions about the 

research and became "part of" the endeavor . 

This procedure was followed generally throughout the 

project, particularly in the smaller, relatively discrete 

communities such as Grand Isle, Louisiana and Fairhope, Alabama . 

If an informant gave permission, each interview was recorded ; if 

the informant would not allow recording, the investigator 

recorded field notes immediately following the interview . We 

quickly learned two things that characterized the remainder of 

our interviews across the central Gulf . First, almost no one had 

an overall picture of either the federal leasing program or the 

subsequent offshore development . Very few people had even heard 

of Minerals Management Service and very few had any knowledge 

about how offshore tracts were leased or developed . As a result 

19 
it made little sense to attempt to get our respondents to 

evaluate the overall leasing or development strategy . 

The second major finding was that the dominant commercial 

fishery (shrimping) had recently been in considerable turmoil 

over the National Marine Fisheries (NMFS) requirement that trawls 

over 35' in width must have a turtle excluder device (TED) 

incorporated in each net . In general, once it became known that 

we were collecting data for a federal agency, it became almost 

impossible to keep the conversation from drifting to the TEDs 

controversy . Other than the almost universally mentioned problem 

with debris snagging nets, this preoccupation with TEDs certainly 

tested our ability to assess the issues associated with offshore 

development for this stakeholder group . 

In coastal Mississippi another factor similar to the TEDs 

controversy in Grand Isle, but even more pervasive, made it 

difficult to focus the interviews on OCS activities . During the 

period we were in coastal Mississippi (July 1993) there were 

seven gambling boats in operation, seven more under construction 

locally, and several additional operations that had announced 

plans to build . The local economy was buzzing, motel rooms were 

difficult to find, and local optimism over the economic potential 

of gambling was high . TEDs were the important issue in coastal 

Louisiana ; the gambling boats were the important issue in coastal 

Mississippi . In both locales, offshore oil and gas exploration 

and production paled by comparison . 

Data collection continued in the Lafayette, Biloxi, Mobile 

County, and Baldwin County throughout July and August of 1993 . 

In Baldwin County we used the same technique as on Grand Isle . 

That is, investigators mere present at the same place for a week 

and were able to discuss their findings at least once a day . A 

total of 131 interviews were conducted ; 36 in coastal Louisiana, 

24 in the Lafayette vicinity, 10 in Mississippi, 19 in Mobile 

County, and 43 in Baldwin County . Interviews ranged in length 

from less than a minute (a busy beach front store owner on a 

Saturday morning ; a police chief on the way to answer an alarm) 

to almost two hours (a retired coastal resident who had lived on 

the coast for his entire life) . There was only one refusal for 

an interview, a gas station owner/operator on Grand Isle . 

Interviews were conducted in offices, in bars, on docks, under 

trees, and in a kitchen while the housewife prepared dinner . 

Interviews were conducted in all coastal counties in Louisiana, 

Mississippi, and Alabama with the exception of Plaquemines and 

St . Bernard Parishes . 

Appendix B provides a description of all of the respondents 

listed by region . The appendix also indicates the number of 

words in each transcribed interview . The number of words was 

20 
considered a better indicator of the "length" of the interview 

than the time it took to record the interview ." 

METHODOLOGICAL NOTE 

The technique developed and used at Grand Isle and Baldwin 

County is worth noting for future reference . The whole point 

behind snowball sampling is to fully develop a typology of the 

phenomenon under investigation, in this case issues associated 

with OCS development . The data collection is complete when the 

same categories, or issues, arise over and over, and no new 

categories are being encountered . The technique we used 

facilitated both the development of categories and the 

determination of closure . The medical equivalent of this is the 

concept of staffing, where a variety of experts examine the 

patient (s) regularly and share information in order to arrive at 

a more accurate diagnosis . Our discussions each afternoon after 

we left the field enabled us to more quickly and accurately 

diagnose the situation and arrive at a finite set of issues . 

Likewise, our discussions facilitated closure . Because each 

investigator knew what issues had arisen, he/she did not have to 

encounter each issue to be comfortable that it was on the record . 

By the end of the fourth day at Grand Isle we could not 

collectively come up with any new issues . This constant updating 

process allows an individual investigator to follow up leads 

within a particular stakeholder group, where a unique set of 

issues may emerge, without worrying that other issues associated 

with other stakeholder groups will be missed ." While we 

designed the process deliberately, and believe that it worked 

well, we are not aware of this strategy set forth as a calculated 

research design anywhere in the sociological literature . 

11 Random selection of one minute tape segments across a sample 

of interviews found that the number of words varied from less than 

40 to over 200 . 

lz For example, one investigator concentrated almost 

exclusively on commercial fishers while another concentrated on 

coastal tourism oriented businesses . 

21 
CHAPTER IV : DATA ANALYSIS 

DELINEATION OF THE ISSUES 

The tapes of the interview were transcribed during the fall 

of 1993 and spring of 1994 . The expected problem of inaudible 

words or phrases was encountered (e .g ., one interview was 

conducted from a dock with an interviewee on a small boat) . This 

problem accounted for only a small fraction of the interviews, 

and we do not believe affected the results . The interviews were 

transcribed using WordPerfect 5 .1 . In order to delineate the 

issues, each investigator read the interviews he or she had 

conducted and made notes of the issues that had emerged . These 

lists were combined into a more generic outline and then each 

investigator reviewed the outline for completeness . Several 

issues were mentioned only once by our respondents . For example, 

one informant noted that the early growth of the offshore sector 

on Grand Isle and the subsequent in-migration provided greater 

genetic diversity for a previously isolated human population . 

Table 1 presents the outline of the issues . 

DATA ANALYSIS 

Once all of the transcriptions were completed, the 

individual WordPerfect files were combined into five large 

regional files corresponding to the five locations discussed 

above (Lafayette vicinity, coastal Louisiana, coastal 

Mississippi, Mobile County and Baldwin County) . Although we had 

originally intended to use a software program that allowed 

Boolean searches ("and," "if," and "not" statements) for 

combinations of words to locate the issues in the transcribed 

interviews, two considerations (one technical and one conceptual) 

made this impossible . Technically, the software that we had 

purchased had a bug in it" that for all practical purpose made 

it impossible to analyze documents over about 15 pages in length . 

This made it completely useless for searches through the five 

large documents we had created . Many of the individual 

interviews were longer than 15 pages meaning that they would have 

had to be broken up for analysis purposes and recombined for 

counting of issues . In addition, the macro writing ability of 

the software, and hence its ability to mark the occurrence of 

issues in a way that they could be electronically counted, was 

primitive . 

13 The software company informed us of this well after the 

current research was underway . 

23 
Table 1 

Outline of Issues 

I . Positive Economic Impacts 

A. Jobs 

B . Growth of the support sector 

C . General economic spinoffs 

D . The U.S . needs oil 

II . Negative Economic Impacts 

A . Discourages tourism 

B . Lowers coastal property values 

C . An accident offshore (oil spill) would have a 

catastrophic impact on the summer tourist season 

D . The cyclical nature of oil makes it difficult to 

plan 

E . Debris on the bottom interferes with other users 

(shrimpers) 

F . Commuters who work offshore take jobs from the area 

G . The cost of living rises during rapid growth 

H . Displaces other economic activities 

III . Positive Environmental Impacts 

A . Rigs as reefs (both as they stand and as MMS's rigs 

to reefs program) 

IV . Negativ e Environmental Impacts 

B . Offshore pollution 

C . Onshore pollution 

D . Damage to wetlands 

E . General environmental concerns 

V . Aestheti cs 

A . Offshore rigs as visual pollution (out of Place) 

B . Noise (offshore rigs and vessels) 

C . Marine trash (on beaches) 

VI . Social 

A . Boom and bust impacts 

B . Overadaptation and alteration of human capital 

C . Impacts on family (7 and 7 scheduling) 

VII . Policy 

A. Too many regulations 

B . We must have careful, enforced regulations 

C . Not carefully enough regulated, or cannot be 

regulated 

D . Offshore development was not properly planned 

E . Offshore safety important 

VIII . Navigation 

A . Offshore rigs and vessels are navigation hazards 

B . Offshore rigs and vessels are navigation aids 

IX . Others 

A . Oil companies not getting fair publicity 

B . In-migration improved genetic diversity 

C . Career opportunities, upward mobility 

D . Psychological impacts of rigs being out there affects 

people 

24 
Conceptually an even greater problem arose . The array of 

issues was much more complicated than anticipated and each issue 

was expressed in a number of different combinations of words and 

phrases . Even one of the more straightforward issues such as the 

generation of jobs was expressed a number of ways (e .g ., jobs, 

employment, putting people to work, putting bread on the table, 

providing for families) . Thus, the many ways of saying that OCS 

activities provided jobs limited the usefulness of searching for 

words or combinations of words . 

Given this, we decided that the best way to assess the 

occurrence of the issues across the regions was to simply mark 

the issues as they arose and count them . This was simplified by 

using WordPerfect's macro and indexing features . A macro was 

created for each of the issues that would insert a word or phrase 

characteristic of the issue and then mark the phrase for 

inclusion in an index . The principal investigator, only, read 

all of the interviews, one regional file at a time, marking the 

issues on screen . After completing the file, an index was 

generated, providing a count of the occurrence of each issue in 

each of the five regions . An issue was marked and counted at the 

point at which it emerged in a discussion, not by any one word or 

phrase that referred to the issue . For example, a particular 

issue might be mentioned several times as interviewer and 

respondent exchanged questions and answers focused on a 

particular activity, event, or series of activities or events . 

These series of questions and answers exploring an issue would be 

marked once for that issue . Only if the issue emerged again as 

part of a new event or series of events (i .e ., was reiterated in 

the transcript) would the issue be marked again in that 

interview . Since many of the respondents were focused on a 

particular issue that was important to them, this happened fairly 

frequently . These "multiple marked" issues (i .e ., the same issue 

was marked more than once in an interview) accounted for 

approximately one fourth (25 .50) of all issues marked . These 

percentages were not uniform across the regions surveyed, ranging 

from over one third (33 .6%) in the Lafayette vicinity, to less 

than one fifth (19 .0%) in Baldwin County ." Several high 

visibility issues accounted for a disproportionate number of 

those that were multiple marked . These were, too many 

regulations on the oil industry in the Lafayette vicinity, 

economic spinoffs in the coastal Louisiana sample, and trash on 

the bottom in the Mississippi and Mobile County (Bayou LaBatre) 

samples . This latter issue was a common one with coastal 

shrimpers . 

On the other hand, more that one issue might emerge in one 

exchange and each of these would be marked, but then not marked 

again unless they emerged out of exploration of new territory . 

14 The other regions were Mobile County 30 .50, Coastal 

Mississippi 30 .30, and Coastal Louisiana 21 .8x . 

25 
For example, the following exchange was marked as "cyclical 

economy," "economic spinoffs," and "boom/bust impacts" : 

My husband was transferred here in 1961 . He was with 

an oil company and they opened an office in Lafayette . 

He was let go in 1968 or 1969 . I don't know . For 

those first few years up until maybe early seventies 

everything was kind of on a level . When we moved here 

in 1961 it was [with] Magnolia Mobile Oil and several 

of the big companies were moving out of Lafayette and 

we thought we should buy a house here because it looked 

like everything was moving out . Fortunately, we did 

because with the pendulum swing we watched the 

companies come in and we watched the companies go out . 

They were going out then and they came back in big 

time . Probably about the early seventies is when we 

saw the boom and we saw housing go up fourteen percent 

a year . It was incredible the way we were seeing 

things ; it was nuts . Of course it continued through 

the late seventies and early eighties . They were 

writing articles in the national magazine about 

Lafayette and the kids and their rolex watches and 

taking helicopters to get hamburgers . It was total 

insanity . That was not the way it was but indeed the 

feeling was that there is no tomorrow . This is going 

to be it and people were spending money like water . It 

was not good for the family . We were seeing many 

divorces, the evils that money can do if you allow 

money to do that to you . We were seeing that . If I 

had known how much fun I was having I would have 

enjoyed it more . I did not know how bad it was going 

to be ; I thought that this was going to be it . But it 

was not good, really . There was entirely too much and 

then starting about eighty-one we started seeing it 

start backwards . And there was a bumper sticker at 

that time that said "Stay alive until eight-five ." 

Believe [me], it took longer than that to stay alive . 

Had I known how deep it was going to get and how long 

it was going to last I probably would have done 

something different . I am not sure what it would have 

been . But it was, it has been a real struggle . I 

think those in real estate and those in the building 

industry deserve a star in their crown for making it . 

It is very good again . It is good on a more rational 

level . We are seeing suitability and maybe a steady 

go, but not close to what it was back in the late 

seventies . It was insanity then . So we are not really 

seeing that . We had seen in the eighties most of the 

oil companies leave . The Tenneco, the Mobil, the 

beautiful buildings on Ambassador Caffery have been 

sitting empty . Now we are seeing a coming back again . 

There is a big rumor that has been going on for awhile 

26 
that Exxon is going to be coming here from New Orleans . 

I guess they ask why? They say the number one reason 

is gambling ; they want out of New Orleans . So whether 

it is true or not we do not know . Usually, we find 

that when there is this much rumor, there is usually 

truth . They are denying it now but they are always 

denying it until they are going to tell their employees 

what they are doing . But I do know that they are 

looking in Lafayette . So once again we are seeing an 

'in swing .' Conoco had a big move into Lafayette last 

year . So it is wonderful . I am enjoying this 

thoroughly after having [to] struggle so much during 

the eighties . 

One caveat is appropriate at this point . Although the 

issues are counted and analyzed, the establishing of frequencies 

is not a strength of the snowball sampling technique that was 

used for data collection . What the snowball approach does best 

is provide the researcher with a good idea of the spectrum of 

responses that exists in the study population . Thus, the 

frequency of responses to a particular issue should be seen as an 

indicator of the number of times that the researchers encountered 

an issue, and not necessarily representative of the percentage of 

the population that would raise that issue . Particularly 

instructive with this type of data are the extremes, where a 

particular issue emerges much more commonly in some of the sample 

regions than in others, or where an issue occurs much less 

commonly, or was not encountered, in some regions when compared 

to the others . 

IDENTIFICATION OF ISSUES 

Table 2 compares the occurrence of issues across the five 

regions . Because there were different total numbers of issues 

mentioned in the regions, and different numbers of interviews 

conducted in the regions, meaningful comparisons cannot be made 

comparing the incidence of issues across regions with the raw 

numbers . Table 3 presents the issues across regions standardized 

by presenting each issue as a percentage of all issues in that 

region . By percentaging across issues we can compare directly 

across regions . We can also directly compare the total incidence 

of an issue, summed across regions, to other issues . This can be 

done because we are summing across regions and only examining the 

totals which standardizes for the greater or lessor number of 

issues within an individual region . Thus to examine the relative 

importance of an issue we can look at the totals in Table 2 . To 

see how those issues are distributed we must use the percentage 

distributions in Table 3 . These will be discussed across the 

broad categories of issues, the major headings in Table 2 : 

Outline of Issues, and within these categories across individual 

issues . 

27 
Table 2 

Frequency Distribution of Issues Across Regions 

Lafay C LA C MS Mobile Baldwin Total 

Economic (+) Jobs 8 23 7 2 4 44 

Support sector 5 3 1 9 

Spinoffs 17 31 2 4 5 59 

Need oil 7 2 3 12 24 

136 

Economic (-) Tourism 3 9 12 

Property values 2 1 3 

Accident 3 1 13 17 

Cyclical 15 25 1 41 

Trash on bottom 1 7 8 15 2 33 

Migration $ & jobs 3 4 7 

Displaces other 1 1 2 4 

117 

Environmental (+) Rigs as reefs 3 4 6 4 26 43 

Environmental (-) Offshore pollution 2 4 4 5 11 26 

Onshore pollution 4 1 3 2 10 

Damage to wetlands 5 2 1 8 

General 2 4 1 5 15 27 

71 

Aesthetics Visual 7 3 23 33 

Noise 2 3 3 8 

Marine trash 3 2 3 8 

49 

Social Boomtown 2 8 1 11 

Overadaptation 9 6 3 18 

29 

Policy Regs (-) Too many regs . 28 15 43 

Policy Regs (+) Careful regs . 2 2 2 6 18 30 

Need more regs . 3 3 

33 

Policy other Planning 11 1 12 

Safety 6 6 

18 

Navigation Hazards 1 1 4 3 9 

Aids 2 1 1 4 

13 

Other Cost of living 1 1 

Family impacts 1 1 

Oil cos . publicity 1 1 

Genetic diversity 1 1 

Career opp. 1 1 

5 

Totals 118 155 57 74 156 557 

Legend 

Lafay = Lafayette Parish, Louisiana 

C LA = Coastal Louisiana 

C MS = Coastal Mississippi 

Mobile = Mobile County, Alabama 

Baldwin = Baldwin County, Alabama 

28 
Table 3 

Percentage Distribution of Issues Across Each Region 

Economic + Jobs 

Support sector 

Spinoffs 

Need oil 

Economic - Tourism 

Property values 

Accident 

Cyclical 

Trash on bottom 

Migration $ & jobs 

Displaces other 

Environmental + Rigs as reefs 

Environmental - Offshore pollution 

onshore pollution 

Damage to wetlands 

General 

Aesthetics Visual 

Noise 

Marine trash 

Social Boomtown 

Overadaptation 

Policy Too many regs . 

Careful regs . 

Need more regs . 

Planning 

Safety 

Navigation Hazards 

Aids 

Other Cost of living 

Family impacts 

oil cos . publicity 

Improve genetic pool 

Career opportunities 

Total 

Lafay C LA C MS Mobile Bladw 

6 .8 15 .0 12 .3 2 .7 2 .6 

4 .2 2 .0 1 .8 0 .0 0 .0 

14 .4 20 .3 3 .5 5 .4 3 .2 

5 .9 1 .3 0 .0 4 .1 7 .7 

0 .0 0 .0 5 .3 0 .0 5 .8 

0 .0 0 .0 3 .5 0 .0 0 .6 

0 .0 0 .0 5 .3 1 .4 8 .4 

12 .7 16 .3 1 .8 0 .0 0 .0 

0 .8 4 .6 14 .0 20 .3 1 .3 

0 .0 2 .0 0 .0 5 .4 0 .0 

0 .0 0 .7 1 .8 2 .7 0 .0 

2 .5 2 .6 10 .5 5 .4 16 .8 

1 .7 2 .6 7 .0 6 .8 7 .1 

0 .0 2 .6 1 .8 4 .1 1 .3 

0 .0 3 .3 0 .0 2 .7 0 .6 

1 .7 2 .6 1 .8 6 .8 9 .7 

0 .0 0 .0 12 .3 4 .1 14 .8 

0 .0 0 .0 3 .5 4 .1 1 .9 

0 .0 0 .0 5 .3 2 .7 1 .9 

1 .7 5 .2 0 .0 1 .4 0 .0 

7 .6 3 .9 0 .0 4 .1 0 .0 

23 .7 9 .8 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 

1 .7 1 .3 3 .5 8 .1 11 .6 

0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 1 .9 

9 .3 0 .7 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 

5 .1 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 

0 .0 0 .7 1 .8 5 .4 1 .9 

0 .0 0 .0 3 .5 1 .4 0 .6 

0 .0 0 .7 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 

0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 1 .4 0 .0 

0 .0 0 .7 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 

0 .7 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 

0 .7 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 

100 .0 100 .0 100 .0 100 .0 100 .0 

Legend : 

Lafay = Lafayette Parish, Louisiana 

C LA = Coastal Louisiana 

C MS = Coastal Mississippi 

Mobile = Mobile County, Alabama 

Baldw = Baldwin County, Alabama 

29 
Positive Economic Impacts 

Jobs and Economic Spinoffs 

Positive economic benefits were by far the most frequent 

category of issues that emerged . Of the 558 coded issues, 136 or 

almost a quarter (24 .5%) were positive economic benefits (Table 

2) . If we examine the distribution of the individual issues 

(jobs, development of the support sector, general economic 

spinoffs and the U .S . needs oil) across regions (Table 3) the 

reason for this finding is readily apparent . Respondents in 

Lafayette and coastal Louisiana are responsible for the bulk of 

the positive economic impact statements . In fact, 22 .30 of all 

issues that emerged in the Lafayette vicinity and 39% of the 

issues in the coastal Louisiana sample fell into the category of 

positive economic impacts, with jobs and general economic 

spinoffs leading the way . This finding is quite understandable 

given that jobs and economic spinoffs were created in abundance 

in coastal Louisiana during the 1950s through the 1970s and early 

1980s (see Gramling and Brabant 1986 ; Gramling and Freudenburg 

1990) . Jobs and economic spinoffs were particularly important 

for Grand Isle, a small, relatively isolated, rural community . 

As one respondent put it : 

It [Grand Isle] had Exxon and Conoco both and then it 

gradually built itself up . And when that happened, 

then we had some of our residents, the young boys, 

started--went to school on the Island and they were 

able--when they graduated, they were able to go to work 

for the oil company . And started their life . Now we 

have people that are retired that used to work for the 

oil company, that, if it wouldn't have been for them, 

either you had to become a fisherman or you had to move 

off the Island . 

A store owner on the island, when asked what percentage of his 

business was directly dependent upon on the offshore sector, 

spoke eloquently about the spinoffs : 

Forty, 50 percent . I would say 40 percent, you know . 

If it wasn't for the boat companies and such in the 

winter months when the tourists are not down here, this 

store could not function with $650,000 .00 worth of 

inventory at cost in it . You know, there's no way I 

could sell, even with the interest rate at three 

percent . I could do a lot better with my money in the 

bank and collecting three percent than I could 

depending on just the few Island people that are on the 

Island here . We're down to probably less than 1500 

residents here on the Island now and we're talking 

30 
about seagulls, cats and dogs and maybe a chicken or 

two throwed in there on that count . You know, when I 

first moved here in '76, I would imagine that there was 

probably close to, you know, 2500, 3000 people I would 

think living here then . I know there was more . You 

know, you got a lot more buildings on the Island now 

than -- oh, you know, they probably got twice maybe 

even three times more buildings on the Island but 

that's all camp owners and, you know, weekenders and 

summertime people, not -- not, they're not that many of 

them down here in the wintertime . If it wasn't for 

them old boats and, you know, the, you know, the -- I 

can't say the rigs, you know, the rigs are all governed 

by caterers and stuff but we do business with one of 

our -- with one of the caterers that supplies, does a 

lot of rig business out here . So that kind of 

scratches straight back to my back . 

In Lafayette as well, general recognition of the importance of 

the spinoffs from the growth in the offshore sector was very 

evident . One local contractor who had formerly been an oilfield 

contractor was asked whether he would like to see the boom times 

come back . He answered : 

Yes I would . I definitely would! I probably wouldn't 

get into oil business . Preferred it would just help the 

economy . If the oil business is doing good, the 

construction business is doing good . More people move 

into the area, more buildings are being built, highways 

are getting [built], money is going to the government 

and highways are being repaired and right now while 

things are slow, they don't have the money to build ; 

highways are in bad shape . 

At least one positive economic impact (jobs) was regularly 

mentioned in Mississippi also . Here, however, rather than 

speaking from experience, much of the interest was speculative . 

As one Mississippi coastal businessman commented : 

I have not heard any negatives about what goes on in 

Louisiana, as far as the industry . In fact, I would 

like to see more of it in Mississippi . Personally, I 

think there are good jobs and [it] adds more diversity 

to our community . 

Need for Oil 

Another concentration of comments about positive economic issues 

were found in Baldwin County . Here the need for oil was noted 

fairly often, most frequently in connection with the area's 

tourism industry . As one local businessman noted : 

31 
Oh, sure . The biggest way, the majority of tourism, is 

by automobile and the price of gasoline greatly effects 

the tourism industry . I can remember, back in the 

70's, when the gas lines were there and the prices were 

high, tourism was greatly affected that year . So, in 

that regard, you know, oil and gas has a very strong 

effect on tourism, and tourism is usually one of the 

major industries in coastal towns . So, anything we 

can do to help keep the price of gas and oil to the 

consumer down, is going to have a ripple effect on the 

economy, to dry up spending in other areas, and to keel 

people employed . 

Growth of the Support Sector 

Finally the growth of the support sector which supplied and 

serviced the primary offshore sector was also noted, primarily in 

the Lafayette vicinity . As one local attorney noted : 

This was multiplying over and over . I mean there were 

so many boats being built that is just one segment and 

we can multiply that times all of the other drilling 

rigs and various other rental tool equipment . 

Everything that you can think of that helps promote the 

oil industry was available but only in extraordinary 

and unconscionable prices for the industry . 

An independent oil man pointed out the tremendous specialization 

that a growing support sector allowed : 

In the seventies there were nine full time independent 

consulting paleontologists . These are the guys that 

are so specialized that all they do is look through a 

microscope at fossils to help identify this . The 

cuttings come out of the well bore when you cannot tell 

where you are from a stratigraphic point of view [or] 

any other way . . .you can rely to some extent on analysis 

of the fossils that are found within the cutting . That 

is an incredible narrow specialty that there were nine 

guys making a handsome living doing that independently 

as consulting micro-paleontologists . 

32 
Negative Economic Impacts 

The Cyclical Nature of Oil and Gas Development 

Negative economic impacts primarily fell into three 

categories . First, the cyclical nature of oil and gas 

development was very evident from the interviews in the Lafayette 

vicinity and the coastal Louisiana samples, areas that had 

experienced the boom and bust associated with offshore 

development . Some of the more poignant stories told revolved 

around this issue . A Lafayette resident responded to the effects 

of the cycle : 

It affected me profoundly and it affected everyone I 

knew profoundly . I was heavily invested in real 

estate, I had foreclosures . I was involved in a major 

national law firm with offices in five states that had 

heavy borrowing in that most principal partners had oil 

and gas investments that took bankruptcy and it caused 

everybody else in the firm even if they had a smaller 

position to have to file bankruptcy so it impacted me 

personally very much and everybody I knew in any 

profession, health care professionals, anybody who had 

any investments felt it . I said the only people that 

didn't feel it, and I don't think this is true, were 

those who had absolutely nothing and they came to 

Lafayette in the early eighties and so they hadn't 

gotten on any notes because they couldn't afford to 

invest in anything, so someone who had nothing maybe 

did O .K . But I don't even believe that because I saw 

the ripple effect . If you are good for your bills but 

somebody else doesn't pay you it has a ripple effect . 

A coastal Louisiana resident indicated that the effects are still 

being felt . 

On the oil and gas end of it, I think your common--we 

workers here--is [sic] feeling a lot of pressure . The 

oil companies are rearranging their business right now 

and they're talking about the situation, you might say, 

because they don't know whether or not you'll be 

working next week or not . There's a lot of pressure on 

the personnel and their families right now because of 

that, you know . 

As this respondent noted, one of the background factors that 

emerged was that the cycles in the industry were not just due to 

the price of oil, but were also partly due to the fact that some 

of the majors (oil and gas companies) were changing the way they 

did business . A number of the interviews, especially in the 

Lafayette vicinity, noted the artificially inflated economy of 

the late 1970s . As one respondent commented : 

33 
I had been to functions where the party favors would be 

Sony TVs or watches that cost a thousand or so dollars . 

I had been on weekends where two or three private jets 

would be chartered and ten couples would be taken away 

at a cost of what maybe, I don't even know, $50,000, 

$60,000 for a weekend . This is something you don't go 

around saying . "Oh those starving people, this is just 

crazy ." I think this [is a] complete air of 

artificiality and its never going to end . I cannot 

believe people are so stupid . It causes them to loose 

touch with reality . 

With the bust however, a number of our respondents indicated that 

the majors began to rethink their strategies and change their 

ways of doing business . A long time Lafayette resident and 

former owner of an oilfield equipment company put it best : 

So these guys were set up and doing $900,000 a month 

but they were spending a half a million a month to run 

the business and a great deal of this was PR work and 

wining and dining . . .I know of incidents of [how] 

certain major oil companies did business, like they 

were going to get a 15,000 foot string of 2 inch pipe 

to do a job with . They had a certain guy that had a 

company that rented that and that is the only guy that 

they would do business with . This guy would take them 

on vacations, buy them cowboy boots and booze, and they 

would stay with him all the time . If they called for 

that pipe and that guy didn't have it, they still 

stayed with him and he would sub-rent it from somebody 

else and then if that person didn't have it he would 

sub-rent it from somebody else . Everybody had a lock 

on certain people that they were doing business with 

and it would cost them a fortune to have that lock, but 

they were getting all the business . And I know of 

incidents where ,lets just pick a name, a major oil 

company would have a string of 2-inch pipe on the job 

and the actual owner of that pipe would be 5 companies 

down the line . In other words you would have the major 

oil company and they would be renting from company A 

who didn't have the pipe and sub-rented from company B 

who didn't have the pipe and sub-rented from C who 

didn't have the pipe and sub-rented from D . D is all 

the way down the line . I will give you an example . 

They were renting pipe out then for say $ .25 per 

foot/day . So that is what you would charge this major 

oil company to rent that pipe . When I was running the 

company we were fighting like cats and dogs to get $ .08 

a day . Most of the time we would get $ .05 or $ .06 . We 

really thought we had hit gold when we got $ .07 . . .So 

the cost of doing business is way down , there is no 

more of this courting them to get the jobs, in fact, 

34 
the major oil companies all have pretty much a rule 

that they will not give all their business to one 

company . So they will get three or four and they will 

rotate jobs . That whole concept of courting them has 

changed completely . To where they would give all their 

business to one and you could not get in one then and 

you would have to sub-rent to them and now the major 

oil companies will absolutely not give all their 

business to one . As a matter of fact, they also have a 

deal where let's say a company does and this is another 

major change now in the post-oil bust . And that is 

that you don't just have a casing company and a hammer 

company and a company does tubing and a company that 

does torque and a company that has specialty rental 

tools . You have companies that have it all and they 

are going more and more to that, so these major oil 

companies at the present let's say that give the casing 

job to a company A so they won't give the hammer job to 

them and then they would give it to somebody else . 

Those engineers have to be sure that they don't get 

caught playing favorites . And another big change in 

oil companies now since the bust is over and we are 

going back into a good time, that company, that major 

oil company will come in at anytime and say that they 

want to audit your books and want to see your 

salesman's expense report, want to see how much money 

he is spending on their engineers . Because if he is 

spending too much they are going to cut you off, they 

stop you from giving . They just won't tolerate it 

anymore . 

Debris on the Bottom 

A very different negative economic impact that emerged in 

the interviews was debris on the bottom interfering with shrimp 

trawling . This was one of the common complaints of shrimpers . 

A lot of debris . A lot of--a lot of the problem is 

from contractors, I believe, my personal belief . I 

think a lot of the problems is from contractors that 

are on the job contracting with the oil company and 

they'll finish a job and have stuff on the deck of 

these barges and it's not secured down good and the 

weather gets a little bad and they lose it . So we find 

too much scattered stuff, scattered over too many 

areas, you know, pipe . We catch five-inch flow lines 

and they might [be] 200-300 foot long and you get hold 

of one of them and you got to--if you manage to get it 

up, you've got to get as much rope on it as you can, 

tie it off on the stern of the boat and try to drag it 

to the nearest rig . Well, I know that stuff ain't--the 

oil company's just not abandoning that stuff, I don't 

35 
think . I think it's just stuff that's being lost . You 

catching all kind of stuff, welding machines--one time 

I caught a complete rack of CO-2 bottles where there's 

about fifteen CO-2 bottles on a rack, you know, I 

caught the whole rack of them . I've caught garbage 

bins that come off of the rig where the trash had been 

burned in them and it was the whole garbage bin . It'd 

be as big as this area right here, full of trash . 

Interestingly, trash on the bottom was more commonly mentioned 

among shrimpers in Mobile County (Bayou LaBatre) than in coastal 

Louisiana and Mississippi . In retrospect this is possibly due to 

the fact that the State of Alabama has an artificial reef program 

that allows the dumping of automobiles and other debris south of 

the mouth of Mobile Bay . While these are supposedly restricted 

to certain designated areas, the local shrimpers claim that 

dumping outside of those areas occurs frequently . As one 

shrimper acknowledged : 

Well, I hate to just say the oil field, because like I 

said, you've got sports fishermen out there dumping 

sail boats, airplanes . Anything they can get their 

hands on for fishing reefs . Like I say, those sports 

fishermen, they'll go out there and dump stuff . And, 

they won't even tell nobody . They'll go out there at 

night and do this, you know . 

In addition, large tankers anchor off Mobile Bay to lighter 

[unload from a larger tanker to a smaller one] on to smaller 

vessels . The anchors dig in and create furrows and large lumps 

of mud, both of which can damage nets . The following interview 

with two Alabama shrimpers highlights both problems : 

A.1 . That's what I'm telling you . They don't abide by 

the law . I mean, half the stuff they take out there 

wouldn't pass anyway, because you're not suppose to 

have any fuel in the tanks, and they're suppose to be 

clean . No motors . None of that junk . They've dumped 

cars out there with the gas tanks still in them, and 

all, you know . They've caught all kind of junk out 

there . Airplanes, you know . 

Q . That mud, when those tankers anchor, when they drag 

up that mud . What kind of mud, what is that? What 

does that do to the net? 

A .l . Yes . It bogs up . The net will bog up . 

A .2 . When you hit that hole [the net is] like a big 

old dredge, or something . It just scoops that mud up . 

And, that net can only hold so much pressure, so that 

mud just lays it right open . 

36 
Offshore Accidents and Tourism 

In addition to the cyclical nature of the economy, and 

debris on the bottom, the possibility of an offshore accident, 

particularly one that would affect the tourist industry, emerged 

as an issue in Baldwin County . As one Baldwin County businessman 

noted, not only is the county heavily dependent on tourism, but 

there is a very limited season, which makes them more vulnerable 

in the case of an accident . 

Secondly, the concerns of spill overs or an accident 

occurring . Because the whole livelihood for this area 

is the beach . We don't have one factory down here . 

You know, we don't have any industry here, whatsoever . 

We are not high-tech . All tourism, in fact, for the 

city of Orange Beach, about 86% of the revenues for the 

city are generated by the vacationers, the tourist, and 

all that . And only 14% is generated by the advalorem 

tax . So, that's a substantial amount, and I wouldn't 

be that surprised if Gulf Shores isn't the same . But, 

if 86% of their funding coming from the tourism, that 

should there be an accident, should there be a spill, 

should there be that . It would have a devastating 

effect on the businesses themselves, and the economy of 

the entire city . To me, an offshore spill or an 

accident of any type would be just as devastating as if 

a hurricane came through from a business standpoint . 

Not necessarily the rebuilding but from a business 

stand point . But, when you're looking at it from a 

business man, you're looking at someone's restaurant . 

You're looking at--the people down here have to make 

their money between, within a four month period . 

Q . What four months would that be? 

A . That would be basically, June, July, August, and 

September . Say from May 15th to September 13th . Well, 

it sounds kind of like, June to July, and August, 

Memorial Day to Labor Day . 

Other Negative Economic Impacts 

Also mentioned as negative impacts were the potential 

decline in property values, migration of money and jobs away from 

local residents, increases in the cost of living affecting those 

on fixed incomes and the displacement of other economic 

activities by those associated with offshore development . The 

most commonly mentioned of these was the migration of money and 

jobs out of the area, and this was most common in the Mobile 

County sample . As one Chamber of Commerce representative put it : 

37 
I don't mean to sound critical I just think it's an 

opportunity missed that shouldn't be missed . And 

there's somebody in there that ought to say well if 

anything can be purchased locally that we're not 

purchasing locally we need to take a hard look at that 

I'm not saying purchase it locally I'm saying give that 

real consideration purely for myself it's motive that 

you're going [to] get so many more people . Very few 

people in this community have any idea of the magnitude 

of that thing out there . And I guess that's by design 

I don't guess they want too much said about it but it's 

unbelievable . And all the platform pipeline that 

[had] been put in and the workers going out [and] back . 

Of course that comes in the middle of the night in a 

big barge from Louisiana . That's all put down out there 

and so these people don't know anything about it . 

The potential for affecting property values was brought out 

in the Mississippi and Baldwin County samples and was primarily 

associated with tourism . The president of a Gulf dependent 

business was quite explicit about what he saw as potential 

impacts : 

Socioeconomic impact from oil and gas activity 

introduced in this area would be a tragedy . I really 

think that it would totally ruin the tourism industry 

down here . You could forget . . . 

Q . What would happen? 

A . What would happen is, I think our tourists would go 

to west Florida . I think that's what would happen . I 

think people would come here strictly maybe to go to 

the casinos, but they wouldn't come here to sit on the 

beach . A lot of the property values by residents that 

live on the beach, of course, would be affected . A lot 

of the hotels with the views of the waters would be 

affected by it . 

Positive Environmental Impacts 

In all of the samples, but particularly in Baldwin County 

where a large charter boat fishery has developed, fishing around 

the rigs emerged as a positive environmental issue . The rigs as 

reefs for fishing (primarily while they are standing) received 

everything from lukewarm endorsement like a restaurant owner who 

said, "We've been out in our boat a couple of times, and tied on 

to a couple of them and fished . They do bring in some fish," to 

vigorous endorsement . As one charter boat captain explained to 

an investigator's query : 

38 
Q . Is that an issue in this area? I mean, people talk 

about that a lot about offshore drilling? 

A . That round table over there talks about it quite 

often, because that's where all the charter boats come 

here every morning . 

Q . I'd like to get in a conversation with those guys . 

A . You can come here and talk to them guy's, and 

they'll damn sure tell you straight out the way it is . 

Q . What time do they get here about? 

A . It varies . Usually, the mornings that they are all 

here, it's usually mornings when it's rough . You can't 

go fishing . And, they're all here seven or eight 

o'clock in the morning . Sit down, and you'll have 20 

charter boat captains in here . And, you bring up that 

issue right there, and golly, you'll have a whole bunch 

of people at one time . They'll let you know their 

feelings real, real quick on that issue . I mean, they, 

but hey, I'm not a tourist, I'm not the one--I don't 

come down from northern half and look at an oil rig or 

whatever . But, it's this issue right here is kind of 

like--it's just an issue . You're going to have ; you're 

going to have both sides of the fences . And, well, we 

are dealing with 70 charter boat captains down here 

versus 7,000 tourists down here . And, I think we get 

buried because of-we're looking to help it and we're 

looking out for our benefit . But, you can go out to 

any one of these oil rigs, any one of our five or six 

oil rigs off of Mobile right now . The fishing is just 

fabulous . 

Q . Yes . 

A . The states spends these thousands and thousands and 

thousands of dollars to put reefs out here in our Gulf . 

And, heck, this could be, this is a way that they have 

somebody else pay for the reef and it's the best dang 

reef you can get . 

Another captain in another interview was just as adamant : 

As far as I'm concerned, the more rigs they stick in 

that Gulf out there, the better off we are . Louisiana, 

they have a bunch of oil rigs . They have never really 

had any problems . Our big industry over here is 

fishing, and right now a lot of the fishing that we're 

doing, we're having to go to Louisiana . An oil rig is 

the very best possible fishing reef you can get . 

39 
Interestingly, fewer comments than might be expected on the 

enhanced fishing around rigs came from the Lafayette vicinity and 

coastal Louisiana . It is quite possible that the offshore rigs 

as fishing spots are so taken for granted in Louisiana that they 

are rarely perceived as an issue . 

Negative Environmental Impacts 

Offshore Pollution 

The issue of offshore pollution, usually various types of 

discharges or dumping, was evident in all of the samples outside 

of Louisiana . These ranged from relatively minor concerns 

mention by one small beach front shop owner in Baldwin County : 

You know, there's always a chance of something 

happening--polluting our coast . We've got some 

beautiful beaches right now . You know, white sandy 

beaches . And, I wouldn't, and I've never been to 

Texas, but I just hear of these type of things have 

made the beaches in Texas not as pretty as they 

probably were . 

to major opposition from another : 

See, we've worked offshore . We know what is thrown 

overboard . We know it . I've seen them throw Tide [a 

laundry detergent] into the diesel tanks on the boats, 

and make it look like soapy water, if there is any 

water in the tank . I've seen them do this . You know, 

hundreds of gallons of diesel oil just dumped . I've 

seen them toss everything you can think of over the 

side-totally . If there were some way of policing it . 

Yes, I'd say there is no way it could hurt anything . I 

really don't think it hurts anything . We worked on a 

job in New Jersey for XXX Oil, and we know what a BOP 

is . Are you familiar with the . . . 

Q . Yes . 

A . A BOP is what they call a . . . A large hydraulic 

unit that sits on the ocean floor . And, should 

anything happen, this thing hydraulically crunches up 

the dual pipe lines . It effectively closes it, and 

shears it, and it all falls . Whatever is in-between 

falls to the ocean floor . Which, that is not bad, but 

I don't think there is much chance of oil or gas 

escaping into the Gulf or into the sea water . . . All 

the trash that goes with the work force, and the people 

on the rigs--and, it's not policed . Believed me, I 

know for a fact . Nine years offshore . I worked two 

years off the coast of New Jersey, off the coast of 

40 
Cape May, New Jersey . XXX oil was probably one of the 

better ones . I worked XXX rigs ; and, they were one of 

the worst . XXX and XXX, they'll throw anything . They 

don't care . You know, I've seen them drain the 

generators, and dump the oil right into the water . So, 

I'm against it . 

Onshore Pollution 

Onshore pollution was the biggest concern in coastal 

Louisiana, and several respondents noted that the past record was 

not a good one, but that recently things seemed better . A 

shipyard superintendent recalled to one interviewer : 

Everybody is cutting out the fat and getting -- trying 

to do things the right way . Whereas when industry --

when sales were up and things were flowing, you could 

pump oil into this bayou and I've seen it . Pump oil 

into this bayou and nobody gave a damn . Right now, if 

you -- if something over -- the rain like today, one of 

our biggest concerns is with this rain . If we had any 

oil on the ground it probably flowed into the bayou . 

Man, we're looking at some serious fines . 

A local businessman reinforced this impression : 

When we first -- well, years ago we used to walk the 

beach, we would have to come in and have a can of 

gasoline or oil because our feet were covered with tar 

and up to our ankles . I mean the whole beach was 

covered all the time . But now, the beach is absolutely 

beautiful . We don't have the tar and the oil and all 

that but also Louisiana is in a terrible shape . 

Damage to Wetlands 

Coastal Louisiana was also the area where the most concern 

over damage to the coastal marsh was evidenced . At least part of 

this is quite possibly because Louisiana has almost 400 of the 

coastal wetlands in the continental United States and quite 

simply has extensive coastal wetlands to damage . However, a 

number of coastal residents spoke nostalgically about the loss of 

the coastal marsh, and one resident of Grand Isle who was born on 

the island and had lived there for 72 years left little doubt 

that wetland loss and oil activities, at least the early ones, 

were connected : 

I have a high esteem for the oil companies, but they 

did to the best of my knowledge, by their cutting into 

the marshlands, building pipelines, they have destroyed 

us . Not only the intrusion of salt water into the 

marshes but it killed the vegetation that the wildlife 

41 
needed . It caused a terrific erosion . I can show you 

some spots back there . Did quite a bit of fishing . 

Some places back there where they came through islands 

with the pipeline canal and they dammed it at both ends 

to prevent erosion . Well, somehow or another with 

storms and they broke on each side of the dam and they 

made cuts and eroded . They had to come take the dams 

out . It was hazardous to navigation . The Island is 

gone . 

General Environmental Concerns 

Environmental concerns that did not specifically fit into 

the other three categories were labeled as general environmental 

concerns . Often the informants expressed that the effects of a 

proposed action were unknown, and that the prudent thing to do in 

such a case is not to go forward . One attorney who was present 

during an interview of a public official put it this way : 

We have many unknowns . The Gulf is a big place and it 

is getting polluted . We don't want to run the risks of 

the unknowns . . .especially around the mouth of the bay . 

We have shrimping and a lot of sports fishing in the 

bay and around the coastal waters not just around the 

rigs . So there are a lot of unknowns to the pollution . 

The map from Mobile Bay is unlike any anywhere along 

the gulf coast . It is not like Louisiana and the 

Mississippi River . All we have is the one mouth for 

that ecosystem, there is a big spawning area there . 

Most of these species start running September and they 

will run your red fish and speckled trout . But another 

species like that will go outside the bay and spawn . 

Aesthetics 

Visual 

The primary aesthetic concern was visual, and the primary 

area of concern was Baldwin County . This issue proved to be a 

broad one ranging from impacts on tourism : 

It did not take long for people to return after 

Hurricane Frederick . It does not take people long to 

get over floods . People have short term memories . But 

a rig is something that stands here year after year . 

If it came this year and it was gone in 1994 it did its 

job and came and left . That is a short term impact and 

people don't see the rig when they come back . It is 

gone they forget about but if a rig stays there and 

stays there the effect is continual and the effect is 

going to be continual . 

42 
to personal dislike : 

I don't like it . I don't like it at all . It just 

takes away from the prettiness . You know, I mean, 

right now you can go down to Fort Morgan, and sit 

there, there's a Marina down there, all the way on the 

end . And, we always went there to eat . And, look out 

there and you could see Dauphin Island, you know, and 

it was pretty . And, now you look out there and you see 

these rigs . 

to warnings : 

They don't live here . Most of them are just rented, or 

just in and out . And, they don't want anything sitting 

out there distracting the view or even the possibility 

of a spill . Just wait . They are going to hit your ass 

with both barrels if you start that shit . 

and philosophical musing : 

Q : As an [identifying title], why is an oil rig ugly? 

A : I think because it's in the middle of a natural 

phenomenon like water or wetland . 

Q : It doesn't belong there? 

A : No, and it's an anomaly, and its a fairly stark 

anomaly ; there are no soft edges to an oil rig . 

Noise 

While noise was mentioned far less than visual impacts, the 

director of a coastal foundation noted that noise reinforced the 

presence of a rig and also in his mind potentially affected 

tourism . 

It is right there you can hear it at night . Everything 

else is, it doesn't lend it self to a resort type 

situation . The aesthetics of it I think were the main 

problem . . .I think you have to look at area by area . In 

that situation I don't think they needed a well a mile 

or whatever offshore . It would not have done them any 

good for the tourism . So I think in that case that was 

not good . 

43 
Marine Trash 

Also mentioned far less than the visual aesthetic issue was 

that of marine trash, which was most evident in the Mississippi 

sample, and not an issue with any of our Louisiana respondents . 

One coastal tourism oriented business person was quite adamant 

concerning this issue while describing the annual "beachsweep ." 

This is volunteers who volunteer to clean up the 

beaches and the island . XXX usually sends out a crew . 

XXX usually sends men out to the island, and they 

donate money . And all of that is good, I mean they 

should, but the figures show that there is an awful lot 

of marine debris coming off the boats that are out 

there . And we ask people to participate in the 

boater's and fisherman's pledge, and I say this to my 

groups . Especially my high school groups that are 

coming out to Ship Island . I ask them to be aware and 

not throw trash and everything like that off . We do 

our best to bring it to people's attention that there 

should not be anything thrown off the beaches . They are 

able to pile up tons and tons of trash, in spite of the 

fact that we have beach cleaning machines there all the 

time . Each year on this thing, they bring in tons and 

tons of trash, both from the island and from the local 

beaches, and then from the bays and along in there . I 

personally have worked in the Bay of St . Louis . Just 

on one little bit of land, and I can't tell you how 

much trash, particularly styrofoam . I guess they think 

they can throw styrofoam cups and it won't matter . But 

the styrofoam, it lasts forever . Plastic is getting 

better, because it is becoming more biodegradable . I 

think they are working on plastics . We do find 

plastics are beginning to deteriorate more so than they 

used to, but you still have an awful lot of them . And 

you have so much styrofoam . And you have so many 

things that effect the fish, like wads of fishing 

lines, things like that, all of which are a danger to 

our sea life . 

Social Impacts 

Overadaptation 

The most common issue to emerge as a social impact was that 

associated with how individuals adapt to economic booms . In a 

number of the interviews, particularly in the Lafayette vicinity 

and coastal Louisiana samples, the issue of adapting perhaps too 

finely to a set of economic activities associated with the 

offshore sector was voiced . This issue, one that Gramling and 

Freudenburg (1992) call overadaptation, manifested itself in a 

variety of ways . 

44 
l . As individuals changed occupations and/or went into 

highly specialized occupations : 

I remember the time where, a couple of years before, 

where young men in high school, 18 or 19 years old, 

would leave high school and go to work offshore, 

because they could make considerable money, you know, 

more money than the people--the teachers were making at 

that time . And, consequently, we lost a lot of 

teachers, and a lot of people from the educational 

system, who went to work within the oil system . 

So with an impact assistance program we also need to 

look into training programs because when you have the 

boom-bust cycle what happens to the welders and 

everybody with these highly specialized jobs and you 

cannot use them for other industries in the area . The 

unemployment rate remains high . 

2 . As businesses made economic decisions : 

And there is a lot of companies that didn't see it 

coming and went out there and purchased a lot of 

materials and when they looked again the bottom had 

dropped out and they had more debt that they wanted to 

have at that point in time . So they had to file 

bankruptcy . 

3 . As banks increased the supply of money : 

The banks are supplying . . .with oil field equipment and 

went from one hundred cent on a dollar to maybe two and 

three cent on a dollar . Drilling rigs, some that have 

never drilled one foot of hole . You could not give 

them away . You could not get [or] give them to someone 

to haul them to a location to store . So the banks' 

security even the public bank in Dallas who had a lot 

of security in the form of reserves in producing oil 

wells . The loan made based on thirty dollar a barrel 

of oil now is ten dollars a barrel . 

A guy with a third grade education had a friend that 

worked let's say for Texaco could make a deal with a 

purchasing agent to make an airplane available to him, 

cowboy boots, a gun, a rifle, hunting trips, you name 

it . They take it out of the gifts to keep the boat 

work . So a 30 day guy could go into a bank . . .borrow 

three million dollars to build a supply boat . Somebody 

in some company is telling the bank no problem we will 

keep the boat [working] . . .the bank had a contract and 

so forth . They were on their own binge trying to make 

45 
13 or 14 percent on their money . They would let the 

guy that really did not know anything about operating a 

boat in a business sense that is . . . physically 

operate . . .buy the supply boat . This was multiplying 

over and over . I mean there were so many boats being 

built . That is just one segment and we can multiply 

that times all of the other drilling rigs and various 

other rental tool equipment . 

The issue that emerges is that individuals, corporations, 

and financial institutions made decisions that, almost certainly, 

appeared rational and adaptive under a particular set of economic 

conditions . Once those conditions changed, however, the skills, 

supplies, equipment and contracts were no longer as beneficial as 

they were originally . In some cases they became liabilities . 

Boomtown Impacts 

A number of individuals, primarily in the coastal Louisiana 

sample, commented on the boom/bust cycle associated with offshore 

development . Several of these specifically noted the increased 

crime rates associated with boom development, and the impacts on 

local infrastructure that has long been noted in the boom 

literature . 

A Grand Isle Businessman noted : 

Well, you know -- you know, like I told you I've been 

here, you know, 17 years and I've seen it change, you 

know, immensely here on the Island, you know, with the 

oil business, the ups and downs in it, you know . I got 

here when, you know, they couldn't hire enough people 

to get out there in the -- you know, it was riffraff 

and all that, you know, you know, the '82 slump and 

everything . I think they cleaned a lot of excess, you 

know, all these contractors and such, they got all 

their stuff together and basically, you know, you got a 

lot higher quality of what I see in the store here 

coming in the store, shopping with me is the cooks and 

the boat captains and such and they're -- I think 

they're a higher quality now . 

A Lafayette resident commented on both trends : 

The grade school population went up, as high school 

flattened out, because there's young people on their 

way up coming through from two to six years--maybe ten . 

We had three times as many unmarried males . 

Q . How old were they? 

46 
A . Eighteen to fifty-five . They came down here to 

hide on the offshore rigs, these criminal, psychos, 

dope, marital problems, and such things as that . 

While a coastal port director was primarily aware of the impacts 

on coastal infrastructure : 

. . .a great example that I like to use is, in the mid80s, we -- oil and gas -- offshore oil and gas uses a 

tremendous amount of freshwater, okay, which is 

unavailable except for the Parish water supply . So 

actually during peak drilling in the early -- in --

let's see, when -- back, we had a little spread again 

back in about '89-'90 . We were using at Port Fouchon, 

25 percent of the water usage of the entire Parish . 

You know, this is a tremendous population that nobody 

sees but they are a user of goods and services that 

need to be provided to them . So they were using 25 

percent of the water for the entire Parish for drilling 

purposes and we were barging water down because the 

water district could not supply the quantities needed 

with the water system, so they, when they added, 

invested and made considerable improvements and sold 

bonds and done things to improve their water systems 

with plans to recoup their investment and then the oil 

companies leave the Gulf, okay, and then there's water 

for everybody, too much water, you know . 

Q . Too much . 

A . It felt like it did like today, it's raining on you . 

So it's very difficult on coastal communities to be 

expected to provide these services and no guarantee, 

you know . They just leave it to the new frontier and 

Russia and Nigeria or wherever because there are less 

environmental regulations and they can make more 

profits and then you're stuck here holding the bag for 

the services that you hoped they would be utilizing . 

So that has had an impact, that type of infrastructure 

impact . Another one is, you know, is our highways and 

roads . They -- oil and gas by nature of this area, 

everything travels by truck and by road . You know, we 

don't have rails, don't have any air -- airport that's 

capable and not that it would be utilized for that 

material but things travel by truck and it's a 

tremendous -- these roads here were built in, you know, 

they originally were built for my mom and somebody's 

else mom to go visit on Sunday afternoons with a horse 

and buggy, not for 18-wheelers of pipe, okay? And we -

- the foundations here are certainly -- not that 

necessary to carry this weight, then our roads fall 

apart and they're built right on the edges of the 

47 
bayou, as you noticed, and so we have a tremendous 

problem with our highway system caused by the port, you 

know, oil and gas are the major contributors in that . 

And, hopefully -- this port is very active in spending 

a considerable effort in trying to make -- call the 

realization of the need by the Federal Highway 

Administration and others to look at these areas and 

it's been identified that Port Fouchon services and 

this is identified not by the Port, by the Corps of 

Engineers identified the port as servicing 58 percent 

of all of the oil and gas activity in this services in 

the central Gulf of Mexico which is significant . And 

here we are driving on a road on the edge of Bayou 

Lafourche to service 58 percent of this, you know, 

which brings in billions of dollars to the federal 

government and we're on a shoe string road and that's 

just ridiculous and I just can't believe -- and not 

only that, that this road handles -- just this area 

south of Golden Meadow there's only one road, no other 

road . There's only one highway . Here you have two and 

then there's a four lane partially constructed from 

here on to Golden Meadow, but south of Golden Meadow 

there's only one highway, okay, and that one highway 

handles 58 percent of all the offshore oil service 

activity . It handles 20 percent of the nation's 

seafood -- excuse me, of the State's seafood 

production, it's been used in this area . This is the 

only highway between the State's two most productive 

estuary systems, the Barataria system and the 

Terrebonne system . You have an oil spill or some catastrophe where you need quick reaction, this is the only 

highway to get there, you know, hurricane evacuations, 

you know, it's the only highway . How important can --

does a highway have to be before it gets upgraded to 

have a four lane or an alternate access, you know . I 

think somehow we've -- and we're working it trying to 

cause a realization with these facts and make people --

and we're moving to improve the highway system but oil 

and gas is a major player in it and is part of it . 

Policy 

Offshore Regulations 

The issues associated with offshore regulations provided the 

clearest delineation between the samples . In the Lafayette 

vicinity sample "too many regulations on the oil companies" was 

the single most often mentioned issue, comprising almost a 

quarter (23 .7x) of the issues mentioned . This was also a 

significant portion (9 .9%) of the issues in the coastal Louisiana 

sample . Not one single person in the remaining three samples 

brought this up as an issue . In contrast, the policy issue that 

48 
emerged in the other three samples was that there needed to be 

careful regulation of the offshore activities, a position that 

was notably rare in Louisiana . In Louisiana the regulations were 

frequently blamed for driving the major oil companies out of the 

Gulf 

But now your major companies have moved overseas and 

I'm seeing constant . . .they have to move . And that is 

the environment they are creating, what they think may 

be a good clean environment . But it aggravated the 

cost of drilling a well to the point where the natives 

won't tolerate it anymore, not that they are mad at the 

environmentalists . They just can't economically pay 

the price to drill a well when you have to pay these 

environmental costs to clean up the mess or protect 

from contaminating the area that they are drilling . 

I believe it was one of the presidents of one of the 

major oil companies who approximately a year and half 

ago basically said at the meeting of the American 

Petroleum Institute we are not wanted here anymore, 

therefore we are leaving . They have, all the majors 

have just reduced budgets and shifted their emphasis 

overseas . They see it easier to do business in Russia 

and places as hostile as that than it is in the United 

States . So we are basically told, I personally did not 

like that statement . We [are] told more and more that 

as business people whether it is oil and gas or other 

business people that we are not wanted here . You tell 

us that by increased regulations and increased taxes 

and these things . 

In contrast, particularly in Baldwin County, the careful 

administration of appropriate regulations is frequently mentioned 

as a necessary condition if offshore activities are to continue . 

I am rather concerned with the coastline Gulf Shores 

and Dauphin Island area and [to] make sure that they 

are not being polluted . As long as you have enough 

control and safeguards I don't have a problem with 

them . 

I think we need to use our resources within our 

country, but I think we need to ensure that there are 

safeguards that are in place . I think they need to be, 

perhaps, and I am not an expert in this field, so, off 

the cuff, as a layman, you know, looking at it, 

regulations as to how close to land, drill sites, and 

gas lines that type of thing should be laid . There's, 

I am the first person in the world to say don't tax, 

but, perhaps taxing those rigs, and the money being 

dedicated into some type of escrow fund to use in 

49 
cleanups if something should happen, but, I mean I'm 

certainly not an expert in that so I wouldn't know . 

Planning 

Lack of planning or "improper planning" was one of the 

broadest issues, and criticisms of everything from state policy, 

to MMS's leasing and inspection policy, to the way the major oil 

companies have treated communities, emerged . Often the assertion 

that an activity was not properly planned meant that the 

respondent disagreed with the policy, and hence the 

implementation of that policy . Comments directed at MMS were 

aimed primarily at the leasing policy or the bonding policy . 

Several individuals commented directly on these issues : 

I think MMS would be significantly ahead to reduce the 

front end bids on that thing and take a higher or some 

type of adjustable royalty where maybe a company could 

pay a lesser royalty until it has recovered the cost of 

drilling and then maybe they get something in the range 

of thirty-five or forty percent rather than the eighth 

or the quarter that they get now . 

We know that [the] federal government has a lot of 

concern about are these people going to be properly 

financially sound and technically confident? Will they 

be around when abandonment time comes? The bonding 

issue is getting a lot of discussion . We certainly 

understand federal agencies concern about that . Our 

concern, from the majors point of view, steps are often 

taken in anticipation of problems with a small segment 

of the industry and they put [a] broad brush approach 

on that hits everyone . It assumes that everyone is 

going to be equally guilty and it is often not the most 

cost effective way to go about . There are better 

mechanisms out there . 

Safety 

While offshore safety did emerge as an issue, it was only 

noted in the Lafayette sample, and primarily by individuals whose 

jobs were associated with safety issues . 

Navigation 

Navigation issues were confined almost entirely to the 

Mississippi and Mobile and Baldwin county samples, with both 

potential navigation hazards and aids being noted . In fact, in 

Baldwin county two long time sailors came down on opposite sides 

of the issue : 

50 
One aspect that I run into in my own sailing is that, I 

feel there is some interference with navigation with 

having the structures out there, but then that has to 

be traded off with, well I guess we need the oil and 

gas . 

It seems like they're doing a good job . I mean all 

these oil rigs everything . It's a good place to fish . 

When these crazy sailors get out there there's 

somewhere to tie up and somebody to help them and go 

get them . 

Other Issues 

Five other issues were mentioned by only one respondent . 

These are : 

1 . Cost of living . One coastal Louisiana resident noted 

that during the boom the rise in the cost of living affected 

the purchasing power of those on fixed incomes, primarily 

retired persons . 

2 . Family impacts . A Mobile County resident commented on 

the potential impacts on families of the concentrated work 

scheduling associated with offshore employment . 

3 . Genetic diversity . One long time resident of Grand Isle 

speculated that the in-migration to Grand Isle as oil and 

gas were first being discovered in the coastal marshes 

provided much needed genetic diversity to a previously 

isolated population . 

4 . Career opportunities/upward social mobility . A Morgan 

City resident noted specifically that the infiltration of 

the oil industry into the coastal Louisiana economy provided 

a means for upward social mobility that did not exist 

before . 

5 . Oil companies received bad publicity . One coastal 

Louisiana resident thought that the oil companies had 

received bad publicity, primarily concerning pollution . 

DISTRIBUTION OF MAJOR ISSUES 

If we discontinue further analysis on the issue of whether 

or not the offshore development was properly planned (this was a 

broad issue important in only one sample, and often aimed at a 

particular policy with which the respondent disagreed), safety 

(again an issue in only one sample), whether or not rigs are 

navigation aids or hazards (a minimal issue in all samples), and 

the five issues that only emerged in one interview, then we can 

collapse the categories into the main remaining issues : positive 

51 
economic impacts, negative economic impacts, positive 

environmental impacts (rigs as reefs) negative environmental 

impacts, aesthetics, social impacts, overregulation, and the need 

for careful regulation . Table 4 presents the major issue 

categories, and Figure 1 graphs their distribution . There are 

four obvious aspects of the distribution of issues across the 

samples . First, in the Lafayette and coastal Louisiana sample 

the issues associated with positive economic benefits far 

outweigh any other issues, while positive economic benefits are 

much less in evidence in the other samples . Second, negative 

economic issues outweigh positive ones outside of Louisiana . 

Third, issues of aesthetics arise only outside of the two 

Louisiana samples . Where they do arise as issues they are as 

prevalent as positive economic issues . Fourth, with respect to 

regulations, an almost polar opposite in the frequency of whether 

or not offshore activity is over-regulated or needs careful 

regulation occurs between the two Louisiana samples and the 

remaining three samples . In the Louisiana sample there is little 

mention of the need for regulations, and in the remaining three 

samples there are no mentions of over-regulation . 

52 
Table 4 

Percentage Distribution Main Issues" 

Lafay C LA C MS Mobile Baldwin 

Economic (+) 31 .4 39 .1 17 .5 12 .2 13 .5 

Economic (-) 13 .6 24 .5 31 .6 29 .7 16 .1 

Environmental (+)2 .5 2 .6 10 .5 5 .4 16 .8 

Environmental (-)3 .4 11 .3 10 .5 20 .3 18 .7 

Aesthetics 0 .0 0 .0 21 .1 10 .8 18 .7 

Social 9 .3 9 .3 0 .0 6 .8 0 .0 

Too many regs . 23 .7 9 .9 0 .0 0 .0 0 .0 

Need regs . 1 .7 1 .3 3 .5 8 .1 13 .5 

Total 85 .6 98 .0 94 .7 93 .2 97 .4 

Legend : 

Lafay = Lafayette Parish, Louisiana 

C LA = Coastal Louisiana 

C MS = Coastal Mississippi 

Mobile = Mobile County, Alabama 

Baldwin = Baldwin County, Alabama 

is This is an extremely limited database in terms of the type 

of statistical analysis that can be performed . First, we are 

dealing with nominal data necessitating non-parametric statistics . 

Second, there are only five cases (the samples) . Third, many of 

the cells (even when collapsed contain fewer than five responses, 

which precludes the use of Chi Square . Finally, the five cases do 

not have the same count in either their number of interviews or in 

the total count of issues . There was no statistical test we could 

find where we could test for statistical significance for 

differences between samples without violating at lease one of the 

assumptions of the statistic . There is obviously conceptually 

significant differences in the distribution of at least some of the 

issues . 

53 
40 1 Percentage Distribution of Issues 

35 

30 

25 

IP 

m 

+. 

~ 20 

U 

L 

15 

10 

5 

0 

I Economic- I EnvironmentalEconomic+ Rigs/Reefs Aesthetics 

Legend 

Layayette 

Coastal LA 

Coastal MS 

Mobile Co 

0 Baldwin Co 

Social I Need Regs. 

Excess Regs. 

Figure 1 . Major Issues Across the Region 
CHAPTER V : CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 

THE ISSUES 

The identification of issues related to OCS oil and gas 

exploration and production and the distribution of these issues 

across geographical areas present a number of implications for 

future research or policy making . Before discussing these 

implications, however, an interesting void in the cognitive 

schema of individuals across the samples needs to be considered . 

This void, perhaps the most pervasive finding of this research, 

was evidenced again and again in our inability to get our 

informants to evaluate OCS activities in general and MMS 

specifically . The only individuals who know what MMS is, what 

MMS does, and how OCS activities are undertaken are those in 

businesses directly connected with the OCS leasing and 

development process . These individuals are almost universally in 

the Lafayette vicinity sample and are limited to those who have a 

direct financial stake in OCS activities . The implication of 

this is that the issues that arise with respect to OCS 

activities, both in favor or opposed, have little connection to 

the general public's knowledge of those activities . The further 

implication is that in order to connect these issues to policy 

making or further research, the assumptions behind them must be 

made explicit . That is, people's positions on the issues, 

selection of those that are important to them, and the general 

overall impression concerning OCS activities, with few 

exceptions, are based on assumptions about the nature and 

consequences of OCS activities, not knowledge about the 

activities . These assumptions may or may not be based on past 

experience . When assumptions are based on past experience, 

people making those assumptions believe that what happened in the 

past will happen again . The importance of this point will become 

more evident as some of the other implications are discussed 

below . 

Economic Implications 

Perhaps the most fundamental implication of our findings is 

that OCS activities are widely believed to be connected to positive 

economic benefits . The noted economic benefits of OCS activities 

in the past and the assumed benefits that would accrue from OCS 

activities in the future was an issue that was present in all the 

samples . These benefits were connected either to the generation of 

jobs, general economic spinoffs, or because oil was necessary for 

modern industrial society . It was quite clear, in the two 

Louisiana samples, that the assumption that increased OCS activity 

would result in the generation of jobs and general economic 

spinoffs was based on past experience . Often informants expressed 

their desire for future benefits in terms of things being like they 

55 
used to be . However, a number of our informants brought this 

assumption into question, pointing out that the major players in 

the offshore industry had changed the way they did business . They 

pointed out that jobs were almost universally bid out now, that the 

majors switched jobs between companies, and that "meaner and 

leaner" was the prevailing philosophy in the industry . 

In the Mississippi, Mobile County, and Baldwin County samples 

it was evident that the assumption that jobs and economic spinoffs 

would flow from OCS activities was not based on experience but on 

a traditional logic that held that industrial activity in general 

brought jobs . Given the flexible structure of the offshore 

industry and support sector that allows them to operate out of 

virtually any port, the entrenchment of the industry in southern 

Louisiana, and the flexibility of the concentrated work scheduling 

offshore that allows individuals from Louisiana to work all over 

the world (Gramling and Brabant 1986 ; Gramling 1989 ; Gramling and 

Freudenburg 1990), the accuracy of this conventional wisdom remains 

to be seen . In short, whether coastal Louisiana's economy in the 

1970s is a good model for predicting what might happen with 

increased future OCS activities in an area, including coastal 

Louisiana, is unknown . 

The assumption that oil is necessary for the modern industrial 

society was also noted in all but the Mississippi sample, Even 

some of the strongest opponents of OCS activity in Baldwin County 

noted that the tourism that drove the economy of the county was 

dependent primarily upon individuals who traveled to the area in 

their own automobiles thereby using gasoline and other petroleum 

products in the process . 

A second major economic implication of the findings is that 

just as positive economic benefits are widely believed to be 

associated with OCS activities, so too are negative economic 

impacts widely believed to be associated with OCS activities . 

These fall into three basic categories, two of which are user 

conflicts . Perhaps the broadest user conflict is between the 

"amenity" utilization of the coast and coastal waters (i .e ., for 

recreation, tourism and retirement sites) and the "consumptive" use 

of the coast and coastal waters (i . e . , for offshore oil and gas 

production) . Louisiana's economy has a long history of offshore 

oil and gas development while Mississippi and Alabama have more 

recently, but with increasing emphasis, focused on tourism . 

Whether or not one activity precludes the other is not clear (see 

Gramling and Freudenburg 1994) . What is clear is that a number of 

those individuals most closely associated with coastal tourism in 

Mississippi and Alabama believe that coastal tourism would be, or 

potentially could be, negatively impacted by offshore oil or gas 

activity . 

The primary potentially negative impacts noted by our 

informants centered around the apprehension that some type of 

offshore accident could foul the beaches and that the tourists 

would find the presence of offshore rigs offensive . The latter of 

these rests on an assumption that is untested, although certainly 

a number of individuals told us that they found the rigs offensive . 

56 
For some, this is related solely to aesthetic considerations voiced 

by a number of informants outside of Louisiana . The word 

"viewshed," for example, was used by several informants who were 

associated with coastal tourism to refer to a concept of an ocean 

view unhampered by the sight of oil rigs . 

The fear of fouled beaches rests on the assumption that one 

could happen . Such an event is less likely given the probability 

that the nearshore petroleum resources off Alabama are natural gas . 

However, there are always some fluids associated with the recovery 

of gas, and an increase of large vessel traffic and increased 

probability of some type of diesel spill due to a collision is 

possible . In short while the probability of such an event is quite 

small, it cannot be completely ruled out and the chance that the 

beaches could be fouled, even a remote chance, is a concern for 

individuals in Alabama and Mississippi . 

The other user conflict that emerged from conversations with 

our informants is the question of debris on the bottom interfering 

with trawling activities . The assumption here is that OCS 

activities result in some of the debris that shrimpers maintain 

that they encounter . It appears that there are a number of sources 

of debris or obstacles on the bottom (including the Alabama reef 

program and anchor scars from tankers) . It should also be 

understood that these other sources of debris do not result in 

reimbursement for damaged or lost nets . This lack of reimbursement 

potential from other sources provides shrimpers with an incentive 

to blame offshore oil and gas activities for damages . 

Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to assume, that at least some of 

the debris encountered by shrimpers is due to activity associated 

with OCS activities . 

Among those interviewed in Louisiana, the primary negative 

economic impact was associated with the cyclical nature of offshore 

development . This was linked with the boomtown impacts, and 

overadaptation at the individual and corporate level . As a result 

of what they perceived to be the unpredictable nature of offshore 

development, some of our Louisiana informants stated that they 

would not become directly involved with offshore activities should 

they increase in the future . The assumption here is that the 

extent of offshore activities either cannot or will not be 

controlled (see Gramling and Brabant 1986 ; Gramling and Freudenburg 

1990) . 

Environmental Implications 

From a positive perspective, offshore rigs are perceived 

almost universally as good places to fish . This issue was most 

evident among party boat captains and commercial fishermen in the 

Baldwin County sample, but it was evident in all the samples . The 

assumption here was a simple one and in many cases was based on 

past experience, that there were more fish around the reefs because 

the reefs provided structure . The biological question of whether 

the rigs produce fish, or simply attract them, did not arise . 

57 
Just as the positive environmental impacts of OCS activities 

were present in all of our samples, so too were the perceptions 

that OCS activities could have, or do have, negative environmental 

impacts . These were most common in Baldwin County and least common 

in the Lafayette vicinity sample . As a general category this was 

the third most common issue noted . Perceived environmental impacts 

(or the probability of impacts) ranged from pollution on and 

offshore, to damage to the coastal wetlands, to general unspecified 

negative environmental impacts . 

The obvious assumption here is that the various activities 

associated with OCS development can and do have impacts on the 

physical environment and that the impact is negative . This issue 

was second most common in the coastal Louisiana sample where people 

have the most direct and longest experience with OCS activities . 

Although this "concern" is fairly common, the way in which the 

impact is perceived varies . Some of our informants see 

environmental damage as an acceptable trade off for the positive 

economic impacts . With respect to damage to the wetlands, however, 

respondents felt that at least some of the damage was due to 

earlier inland oil and gas activities . 

Aesthetic Implications 

Although one woman in coastal Louisiana noted that she liked 

to look out at night and see the rig lights because they meant 

people were working, no other positive aesthetic considerations 

emerged out of our interviews . The aesthetics of OCS activities 

provided one of the most clear cut divisions between the Louisiana 

samples and the other samples . With the above exception, there was 

no mention of aesthetic issues in either of the Louisiana samples . 

All of the aesthetic issues were mentioned in the other samples . 

While noise and marine trash were mentioned, "seeing the rigs" 

emerged as the primary form of negative aesthetic impact . Whether 

it was called visual pollution, damage to the viewshed, or 

something else, a number of our informants outside of Louisiana 

stated that they found the presence of the rigs aesthetically 

offensive . These evaluations ranged from ugly to inappropriate . 

The assumption here is obvious enough that it hardly needs to be 

stated . Perhaps the old adage that beauty (or lack thereof) is in 

the eye of the beholder is appropriate . 

Social Implications 

The boomtown impacts of OCS development in the 1960s and 1970s 

are well documented (Stallings et al . 1977 ; Gramling 1980 ; Gramling 

and Brabant 1984 ; 1986 ; Gramling and Freudenburg 1990 ; 1992 ; 

Brabant 1993a ; 1993b ; Freudenburg and Gramling 1994) and these were 

noted by informants primarily in the Lafayette vicinity and coastal 

Louisiana samples . The assumption here is that OCS development did 

have a variety of impacts associated with rapid community growth, 

and the available evidence supports this perspective . 

58 
Overadaptation emerged as an issue more frequently than did 

the boomtown impacts . Whether it was individuals who adapted by 

acquiring esoteric skills, companies that filled too small a niche, 

or financial institutions that overspecialized, a number of our 

informants had personal experiences or told stories about others 

that revealed a "fine tuned" activity in response to some aspect of 

OCS activity . This activity later became obsolete as the price of 

oil fell in the 1980s . 

When individuals related personal experience, failure was 

usually attributed to a lack of farsightedness (e .g ., "I thought it 

would go on forever") . Greed, however, was the most common 

explanation given for the foibles of others when relating examples 

of overadaptation . In both instances, the assumption that economic 

success leads to a more narrow focus on the activity related to 

that success . This narrowing of focus, in turn, results in loss of 

flexibility and the closing of options . This suggests that the 

social impacts of OCS development are particularly amenable to 

mitigation by policy alternatives since the rate of OCS leasing, 

and hence the potential for development is directly controlled by 

MMS and not by individuals . 

Policy Implications 

The policy implications of the findings provide the other very 

clear cut division between the Louisiana samples and the 

Mississippi and Alabama samples . In Louisiana our informants told 

us that OCS activities were too heavily regulated, and that this 

regulation was driving the major oil companies overseas . In 

Mississippi and Alabama our informants told us that OCS activities 

needed to be carefully regulated, and in a number of cases careful 

regulation was advanced as a prerequisite for offshore development . 

These perspectives rest on two very different sets of assumptions : 

1) that regulations are so burdensome that the world's largest 

corporations cannot do business, and 2) that without careful 

regulation these corporations cannot be trusted . This belief that 

the regulations are actually driving the majors out of the Gulf is 

apparently a commonly held belief in Louisiana for it appeared 

again and again among the Louisiana samples . Whether the 

regulations are actually driving the major oil companies out of the 

Gulf or not, it was widely believed that they are and this was 

related to us again and again across both the Louisiana samples . 

It was never mentioned by any of our respondents outside of 

Louisiana . Likewise, whether or not careful regulation is 

necessary to prevent problems, this is widely believed outside of 

Louisiana, and rarely mentioned in the two Louisiana samples . 

59 
THE STAKEHOLDERS 

Although this research was primarily designed to assess the 

issues associated with offshore, and to the extent possible OCS oil 

and gas activities, and the methods and analysis were focused 

accordingly, several stakeholder groups and characteristics of 

stakeholder groups became apparent as a result of the research . In 

terms of characteristics of stakeholders our original definition is 

instructive . As the reader will remember the original definition 

contained five elements : 

1 . Stakeholders have a stake as opposed to the traditional 

definition of holding a stake . 

2 . Stakeholders may be individuals, a collection of people, or 

an organization . 

3 . Stakeholders may affect an organization or activity" 

and/or be affected by an organization or activity . 

4 . Stakeholders may have to be taken into account in order to 

bring about significant change in an organization or activity . 

S . In general stakeholders are defined by their relationship 

to an organization or activity rather than being 

geographically defined . However, if a particular enterprise 

is geographically distributed and the activity in question 

affects those engaging in that enterprise then it is 

reasonable to assume that the distributions of particular 

stakeholders might be concentrated in certain geographic 

regions . 

Of those that had a stake in offshore activities, and thus met our 

first criteria, they overwhelming fell into the category of "a 

collection of people" under our second category . That is, there 

did not appear to be any individuals that were by themselves 

powerful enough to affect offshore activities, or be uniquely 

affected by offshore activities . Neither were there any 

organizations that were focused on affecting offshore activities or 

that were uniquely affected by offshore activities . There were a 

number of individuals who perceived that they had been, or 

potentially could be, affected by offshore activities (discussed 

below) . 

Looking at the third element of our definition, almost 

unanimously our informants saw offshore activities as affecting 

them . Virtually no one indicated that they had affected offshore 

16 Although the management literature focuses on organizations, 

we are broadening the definition to include activities, recognizing 

that most activities that stakeholders would react to are carried 

on by organizations . 

60 
activities, or felt that they could potentially affect offshore 

activities . Whether or not these stakeholders would have to be 

taken into account in order to bring about significant change (# 

4), is a question for the future, although some fairly significant 

modification of offshore practices did occur before development in 

Mobile Bay was allowed to proceed . 

Finally, looking at the fifth element, some of our 

stakeholders (such as those who benefitted from past offshore 

activity and those engaged in coastal tourism) were concentrated 

geographically, while others (such as shrimpers) were not . 

Direct Benefactors 

The first and perhaps most easily identified stakeholder group 

is composed of those individuals who benefited economically, or 

believe they would benefit economically, either directly from 

offshore activities or spinoffs associated with those activities . 

These individuals tend to be concentrated in the Lafayette vicinity 

and coastal Louisiana where offshore activities have historically 

been concentrated, although informants who felt that they would 

benefit from increased activity offshore were found in all of the 

other regions . In terms of issues, jobs and economic spinoffs were 

the major issues for this group, along with a belief that the 

current regulatory structure of OCS development was onerous and 

constituted an undue burden on the oil companies . The other major 

issue that characterized this group of people was that many of them 

saw offshore development as potentially cyclical and problematic 

for sustained economic growth . In spite of that most of them would 

like to see a reemergence of offshore development . 

Coastal Tourism 

In contrast, those who saw their economic future as being 

directly or indirectly associated with coastal tourism felt most 

threatened by offshore development . Members of this group were 

most likely to emphasize the aesthetic value of the coast, the 

potential for an offshore accident or offshore pollution, and the 

need for careful regulations if offshore development was to go 

forth . These first two groups were the most mutually exclusive . 

Environmental Concerns 

The third recognizable group was comprised of individuals who 

expressed concerns about the environment associated with offshore 

activities . This was not a mutually exclusive group, and many 

individuals who saw their futures either in offshore activities or 

in coastal tourism also expressed concerns about the past or 

potential future impacts of coastal and offshore activities on the 

environment . While this group was less represented in our 

Lafayette vicinity sample, they were spread across the other 

samples . Because this group was not mutually exclusive (i .e ., 

individuals who felt that they had a stake in the environment might 

61 
also have a stake in future offshore activity or in coastal 

tourism) it is probably worth adding a sixth element to our 

definition concerning stakeholders . 

6 . An individual may be a member of more than one stakeholder 

group with regards to a specific organization or activity . 

With this element we are recognizing that stakeholders may 

constitute a complex mix of interests rather than having clear cut 

competing stakes . 

Single Issue Groups 

There were two groups whose orientation toward offshore 

activities were primarily focused on a single issue . The first was 

offshore fishermen who saw the rigs as reefs . The strongest 

interest here was from charter boat captains who were universally 

in favor of offshore platforms to serve as artificial reefs . The 

second was coastal shrimpers who were most notable for their 

concern about trash on the bottom . Both of these groups were 

spread across the survey area, although the most concern about 

bottom trash was evidenced among Bayou LaBatre shrimpers and the 

most interest in rigs as reefs was evident among the Baldwin County 

charter boat captains . 

SUMMARY 

Using a snowball sampling frame 131 residents of coastal 

Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were interviewed and the 

transcribed interviews were analyzed to assess the issues 

associated with offshore oil and gas activities in the central Gulf 

of Mexico . Neither the issues that emerged, nor the stakeholder 

groups that were associated with those issues were uniform across 

the central Gulf . Several general trends can be seen although 

exceptions to these are also evident . In general, in Louisiana, 

where offshore activities have been ongoing for almost five 

decades, respondents generally focused on the issues of jobs and 

economic spinoffs and felt that the current offshore regulatory 

structure was burdensome and too restrictive . In contrast in 

Mississippi and Alabama, where coastal tourism was more important, 

the issues of potential aesthetic and environmental impacts were 

more evident, and respondents overwhelmingly agreed that careful 

regulation of the offshore industry was necessary if offshore 

development was to go forward . A fair amount of environmental 

concern associated with a number of specific issues was evident in 

all the sample areas except the Lafayette vicinity sample, and both 

individuals who expressed support for and opposition to offshore 

development expressed environmental concerns . This led to the 

conclusion that, at least in this case, stakeholders could not be 

characterized by neat mutually exclusive sets of issues, but had 

more complex mixes of stakes associated with the potential impacts 

of offshore development . Two groups (offshore fishermen, including 

62 
commercial fishermen and shrimpers) focused on single issues (rigs 

as reefs and trash on the bottom respectively), and these groups 

were spread geographically across the survey regions . 

63 
REFERENCES 

Babbie, E . 1992 . The Practice of Social Research . Belmont, CA : 

Wadsworth . 

Brabant, S . 1993a . "The Impact of a Boom/Bust Economy on Poverty." 

Pp . 161-194 in Shirley Laska, Vern Baxter, Ruth Seydlitz, 

Ralph Thayer, Sarah Brabant, and Craig Forsyth, Impact of 

Offshore Oil Exploration and Production on the Social 

Institutions of Coastal Louisiana . New Orleans : Minerals 

Management Service . 

Brabant, S . 1993b . "From Boom To Bust : Community Response To Basic 

Human Need ." Pp . 195-208 in Shirley Laska, Vern Baxter, Ruth 

Seydlitz, Ralph Thayer, Sarah Brabant, and Craig Forsyth, 

Impact of offshore oil Exploration and Production on the 

Social Institutions of Coastal Louisiana . New Orleans : 

Minerals Management Service . 

Clark, J . A . 1963 . The Chronological History of the Petroleum and 

Natural Gas Industries . Houston : Clark Book Co . 

Davis, D . W . and J . L . Place . 1983 . The Oil and Gas Industry of 

Coastal Louisiana and Its Effect on Land Use and Socioeconomic 

Patterns . Reston, VA : U .S . Department of the Interior/U .S . 

Geological Survey (Open File Report 83-118) . 

Farrow, R . S . 1990 . Managing the Outer Continental Shelf Lands : 

Oceans of Controversy. New York : Taylor and Francis . 

Freeman, R . E . 1984 . Strategic Management : A Stakeholder Approach . 

Boston : Pitman . 

Freudenburg, William R . and Robert Gramling . 1993 . "Socioenvironmental Factors and Development Policy : Understanding 

Opposition and Support for Offshore Oil ." Sociological Forum 

8 :341-364 . 

Freudenburg, W . R . and R . Gramling . 1994 . Oil in Troubled Waters : 

Perceptions, Politics, and the Battle Over Offshore Drilling . 

New York : SUNY Press . 

Glaser, B . G . and A . L . Strauss . 1967 . The Discovery of Grounded 

Theory : Strategies for Qualitative Research . Chicago : Aldine . 

Gould, G . J ., R . M . Karpas, and D . L . Siltor 1991 . OCS National 

Compendium . Herndon, VA : Minerals Management Service . 

65 
Gramling, R . (ed) . 1980 . East St . Mary Parish, Economic Growth and 

Stabilization Strategies . Baton Rouge : Louisiana Department 

of Natural Resources . 

Gramling, R . 1983 . "A Social History of Lafayette Parish ." Pp . 

8-52 in David Manuel (ed.), Energy and Economic Growth in 

Lafayette, LA : 1965-1980 . Lafayette, LA : The University of 

Southwestern Louisiana . 

Gramling, R . 1989 . "Concentrated Work Scheduling : Enabling and 

Constraining Aspects ." Sociological Perspectives 32 :47-64 . 

Gramling, R. and S . Brabant (eds .) . 1984 . The Role of Outer 

Continental Shelf Activities in the Growth and Modification of 

Louisiana's Coastal Zone . Lafayette, LA : U .S . Department of 

Commerce/Louisiana Department of Natural Resources . 

Gramling, R . and S . Brabant . 1986 . "Boom Towns and Offshore 

Energy Impact Assessment : The Development of a Comprehensive 

Model ." Sociological Perspectives 29 :177-201 . 

Gramling, R . and W . R . Freudenburg . 1990 . "A Closer Look at 

'Local Control' : Communities, Commodities, and the Collapse of 

the Coast . Rural Sociology 55(4) :541-58 . 

Gramling, R . and W . R . Freudenburg . 1992 . "Opportunity-Threat, 

Development, and Adaptation : Toward A Comprehensive Framework 

for Social Impact Assessment . Rural Sociology 57 : 216-234 . 

Gramling, R . and W . R . Freudenburg . 1994 . "Crude, Coppertone, and 

the Coast : Socio-Environmental Factors in the Emergence and 

Constraint of Economic Development Opportunities ." Presented 

at the annual meeting of the American Sociological 

Association, Los Angeles . 

Gramling, R . and S . Laska . 1993 . A Social Science Research Agenda 

for the Minerals Management Service in the Gulf of Mexico . OCS 

Study MMS 93-0017 . New Orleans : U .S . Department of the 

Interior/Minerals Management Service . 

Howe, R . J . 1966a . "Evolution of Offshore Mobile Drilling Units : 

Part I ." Offshore, March : 68-92 . 

Howe, R . J . 1966b . "Evolution of Offshore Mobile Drilling Units : 

Part II ." Offshore, April : 76-92 . 

Howe, R . J . 1966c . "Evolution of Offshore Mobile Drilling Units : 

Part III ." Offshore, May : 102-120 . 

Kaplan, E . R . 1982 . "California : Threatening the Golden Shore ." Pp . 

3-28 in Joan Goldstein (ed .) , The Politics of Offshore Oil . 

New York : Praeger . 

66 
Lankford, R . L . 1971 . "Marine Drilling" Pp . 1358-1444 in J . E . 

Brantly (ed .), History of Oil Well Drilling . Houston : Gulf 

Publishing Co . 

Logan, R . J . and C . Smith . 1948 . "Continental Shelf Activity 

Intensified ." World Oil, July :37-39 . 

Manners, I . R . 1982 . North Sea Oil and Environmental Planning : The 

United Kingdom Experience . Austin : University of Texas Press . 

MacMillan, I . C . and P . E . Jones . 1986 . Strategy Formulation : Power 

and Policics . St . Paul : West Publishing Co . 

National Research Council . 1989 . The Adequacy of Environmental 

Information for Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Decisions : 

Florida and California . Washington, D .C . : National Academy 

Press, National Academy of Sciences . 

National Research Council . 1992 . Assessment of the U .S . Outer 

Continental Shelf Environmental Studies Program : III Social 

and Economic Studies . Washington, D .C . : National Academy 

Press, National Academy of Sciences . 

National Research Council . 1993 . Assessment of the U .S . Outer 

Continental Shelf Environmental Studies Program : IV . Lessons 

and Opportunities . Washington, D .C . : National Academy Press, 

National Academy of Sciences . 

Nicholson, G . M . 1941 . "Houseboat Provides Many Comforts at Marine 

Location ." The Oil Weekly, September 15 : 30 . 

Offshore Staff . 1966 . "Shell Drilling In Record Water Depth Off 

Louisiana ." Offshore, August : 46 . 

Oil Weekly Staff . 1946 . "Modern Floating Hotel for Marine Rig 

Crews ." The Oil Weekly, August 26 : 44-45 . 

Richardson, L . 1988 . "Secrecy and Status : The Social 

Construction of Forbidden Relationships ." American 

Sociological Review 53(2) :209-219 . 

Shrewsbury, R . D . 1945 . "Deep Sea Drilling ." The Oil Weekly 

September 10 : 33-45 . 

Stallings, E .F ., T .F . Reilly, R . Gramling and D .P . Manuel 

(editors) . 1977 . Outer Continental Shelf Impacts : Morgan 

City, Louisiana . Washington, D .C . : Government Printing 

Office . 

Starik, M . 1995 . "Should Trees Have Managerial Standing? Toward A 

Stakeholder Status for Non-Human Nature ." Journal of Business 

Ethics 14 :207-214 . 

67 
Sterrett, E . 1941 . "25-Mile Under-Water Span in Seafaring Pipe 

Line ." The Oil Weekly, October 20 : 33-38 . 

Tucker, A . J . 1946a . "Underwater Drilling For Any Depth ." The Oil 

Weekly, August 12 : 60-66 . 

Tucker, A . J . 1946b . "Bollard Method : For Shallow Water Drilling ." 

The Oil Weekly, September 16 : 98-104 . 

Williams, N . 1934 . "Practicability of Drilling Unit on Barges 

Definitely Established in Lake Barre, Louisiana Tests ." Oil 

and Gas Journal, May 31 : 47 . 

Wilson, E . 1982 . "MAGCRC : A Classic Model for State/Federal 

Communication and Cooperation ." Pp . 72-90 in Joan Goldstein 

(ed .), The Politics of Offshore Oil . New York : Praeger . 

68 
APPENDIX A 

Initial Stakeholder Outline 

I . Offshore Owner/Operators 

A . Large oil corporations (Exxon, Connoco, Gulf, etc .) 

A . Independents 

II . Offshore Operators 

A . Drilling Companies 

B . Transportation Companies 

l . vessels 

2 . helicopters 

B . Offshore surveys 

III . Environmental (environmental organizations) 

IV . Offshore Supply 

A . Mud companies (Baroid, etc .) 

B . Tubing (drill pipe and casing) 

C . Catering 

C . Crews 

E . Training 

V . Manufacturing 

A . Metal Fabrication (rigs LA) 

B . Ship and boat building (LA and MS) 

VI . Support 

A . Rental tools 

B . Legal Services (contracting) 

C . Financial (banks, CPAs, etc .) 

D . Insurance 

VII . Alternative Direct Coastal Users 

A . Commercial fishing 

B . Beach orientated recreation (Gulf 

Island) 

C . Recreational boating (Fairhope) 

D . Recreational fishing (Grand Isle, 

Fairhope) 

E . Real Estate (Gulf Shores) 

F . Shipping 

Shores, Dauphin 

Dauphin Island, 

VIII . Alternative Indirect Coastal Users 

A . Specialty shops, antique shops (Gulf Shores) 

B . Coastal tourism infrastructure, bars, casinos, etc . 

(Gulf Shores, Gulf Port) . 

69 
IX . Those Affected by General Economic Activity (mostly LA), 

variations within this category, race, sex, etc . 

A . Wholesale 

B . Welding Supply 

C . Beer distributors 

D . Retail 

E . Various stores, etc . 

F . Service 

G . Real Estate 

H . Education 

I . Medical 

J . Training 

K . Legal (personal injury) 

X . Public and Governmental Organizations 

A . Administrators and Politicians 

B . Social Control 

C . Social Service 

XI . Non-Governmental Organizations 

A . Arts 

B . Unions 

XII . Media 

70 
APPENDIX B 

Descriptions of Respondents" 

Baldwin County 

l . administrator higher education 4,658 

2 . another barber and customer 1,454 

3 . barber in a coastal community 1,484 

4 . beach front novelty shop owner 587 

5 . beach front shop owner 896 

6 . bicycle shop owner 393 

7 . boat rental owner 393 

8 . chamber of commerce representative 3,981 

9 . chamber of commerce executive, coastal community 3,810 

10 . chamber of commerce representative 2,117 

11 . charter boat captain and a fisherman 1,742 

12 . charter boat captains and fishermen 2,572 

13 . charter boat captain 2,473 

14 . chief of police 157 

15 . coastal business man 4,192 

16 . coastal planner 3,623 

17 . commodore of a yacht club in a coastal community 1,579 

18 . couple who own a small beach front business 1,027 

19 . director, coastal foundation 2,517 

20 . editor, newspaper 1,419 

21 . engineer for a paper mill 795 

22 . field notes 194 

23 . financial support social worker 1,515 

24 . general manager 708 

25 . general manager 1,317 

26 . local official coastal community 3,502 

27 . local beach community business owner 904 

28 . marine repair shop owner 892 

29 . marine repair yard owner 303 

30 . president chamber of commerce coastal community 1,428 

31 . public official accompanied by a lawyer 2,201 

32 . public official 1,174 

33 . real estate agent 2,171 

34 . real estate agent 1,260 

35 . reporter, coastal newspaper 91 

36 . restaurant owner 290 

1' The number following the description of the respondent 

refers to the number of words in the transcript of the interview . 

The number of words was felt to be a better measure of the amount 

of content of the interview than the length of time the interview 

took to record . Comparison of different interviews and segments of 

interviews reveled that number of words per minute ranged from 

slightly over 100 to over 200 . 

71 
37 . restaurant owners 570 

38 . retired coastal resident 247 

39 . sail boat rental stall owner 685 

40 . semi-retired charter boat captain 1,007 

41 . small shop owner on the beach 412 

42 . small business owner gulf side 118 

43 . state official 2,219 

Mobile County 

1 . coastal biologist 2,926 

2 . economic development type, Mobile county 564 

3 . individual with long time association with shipping 3,089 

4 . local marine oriented business man 1,946 

5 . local attorney 889 

6 . local official 645 

7 . member Alabama state oil and gas board 125 

8 . net shop owner, and manager of a shrimp fleet 4,363 

9 . owners of a boat repair shop, Bayou LaBatre 3,300 

10 . president, environmental organization, and state wildlife 

official 8,154 , 

11 . official with Mobile bar pilot's association 66 

12 . professional with federal agency 2,180 

13 . repair shop owner and two shrimpers bayou LaBatre 654 

14 . retired merchant seamen's association of Mobile official 66 

15 . school principal 96 

16 . several shrimpers in Alabama 3,145 

17 . shrimper 1,152 

18 . snapper fisherman 263 

19 . state official, marine management 3,571 

Coastal Mississippi 

1 . manager Gulf dependent business 4,033 

2 . president, Gulf dependent business 7,156 

3 . local official, port commission 3,924 

4 . local business man 1,529 

5 . local seafood dealer 3,376 

6 . two government coastal resource management types 7,304 

7 . former local official and current Biloxi business man 2,287 

8 . two local coastal oriented businessmen 2,453 

9 . shrimper Biloxi 11,404 

10 . casino manager 2,963 

Coastal Louisiana 

1 . busines 

2 . coastal 

3 . coastal 

4 . coastal 

5 . federal 

6 . federal 

sman coas 

shrimper 

business 

shrimper 

employee 

employee 

tal community 2,944 

3,604 

man 1,157 

5,452 

1,769 

3,572 

72 
7 . four shrimpers 520 

8 . gas station owner 134 

9 . coast guard medic 4,727 

10 . local businessman 5,080 

11 . local minister 3,634 

12 . local resident who engages in shrimp maraculture 4,956 

13 . local resident 3,429 

14 . local official 4,170 

15 . local priest 1,594 

16 . local businessman 1,666 

17 . local businessman 3,115 

18 . local geologist 4,262 

19 . coastal businessman 3,290 

20 . coastal automobile dealer 2,157 

21 . observation town hall meeting 1,262 

22 . offshore worker 1,666 

23 . oilfield equipment and construction business man 3,983 

24 . port official 5,095 

25 . retired barber 6,125 

26 . retired Conoco worker 12,801 

27 . shipyard superintendent 7,740 

28 . shrimp dock owner 1,248 

29 . social service provider 2,703 

30 . store owner 3,940 

31 . three locals at shrimp dock 250 

32 . three local oil field businessmen 4,068 

33 . two retired coastal residents 2,564 

34 . two local businessmen 2,863 

35 . two shrimpers 286 

36 . two shrimpers 253 

Lafayette Vicinity 

1 . attorney who frequently works with oil companies 332 

2 . director community correctional center 2,419 

3 . former oil field rental company owner 1,670 

4 . geologist 5,432 

5 . independent oil man 4,280 

6 . independent oil man 7,019 

7 . law enforcement official 1,292 

8 . local attorney 2,115 

9 . local business man and lawyer 11,220 

10 . local attorney with oilfield connections 5,372 

11 . local real estate agent 2,092 

12 . oil company safety supervisor 4,578 

13 . owner of a health club 6,358 

14 . owner offshore catering 2,132 

15 . owners of an oil field service company 6,624 

16 . president oil field service company 2,632 

17 . president exploration company 3,508 

18 . public official 1,725 

19 . region manager, oil company 6,428 

73 
20 . sales manager, properties 2,818 

21 . state official involved in coastal management 2,186 

22 . telephone interview former owner of oilfield service 432 

23 . vice president energy corporation phone interview 1,722 

74 
S~, NT OpT,y The Department of the Interior Mission QPQ ~'y 

a `' p As the Nation ' s principal conservation agency, the Department of the Interior has responsibility for 

a most of our nationally owned public lands and natural resources. This includes fostering sound use 

of our land and water resources; protecting our fish, wildlife, and biological diversity; preserving the 

4 9 

environmental and cultural values of our national parks and historical places; and providing for the 

ACH 9 ~ enjoyment of life through outdoor recreation . The Department assesses our energy and mineral 

resources and works to ensure that their development is in the best interests of all our people by 

encouraging stewardship and citizen participation in their care. The Department also has a major 

responsibility for American Indian reservation communities and for people who live in island territories 

under U.S. administration . 

The Minerals Management Service Mission 

As a bureau of the Department of the Interior, the Minerals Management Service's (MMS) primary 

responsibilities are to manage the mineral resources located on the Nation's Outer Continental Shelf 

(OCS), collect revenue from the Federal OCS and onshore Federal and Indian lands, and distribute 

those revenues . 

Moreover, in working to meet its responsibilities, the Offshore Minerals Management Program 

administers the OCS competitive leasing program and oversees the safe and environmentally sound 

exploration and production of our Nation's offshore natural gas, oil and other mineral resources. The 

MMS Royalty Management Program meets its responsibilities by ensuring the efficient, timely and 

accurate collection and disbursement of revenue from mineral leasing and production due to Indian 

tribes and allottees, States and the U.S. Treasury . 

The MMS strives to fulfill its responsibilities through the general guiding principles of: (1) being 

responsive to the public's concerns and interests by maintaining a dialogue with all potentially affected 

parties and (2) carrying out its programs with an emphasis on working to enhance the quality of life for 

all Americans by lending MMS assistance and expertise to economic development and environmental 

protection.