Bondi
BATON ROUGE – Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has written a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi asking the Department of Justice to dismiss lawsuits it calls “harmful” and “contrary to President Trump’s Unleashing American Energy” executive order.
Murrill
In the two-page letter, Murrill says lawsuits related to insurance coverage under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 should be dismissed, noting the DOJ filed the lawsuits in question during the waning days of the Biden administration and “have directly harmed the Louisiana energy industry.”
“Under the terms of the Executive Order, it is the policy of President Trump and the United States ‘to encourage energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters, including on the Outer Continental Shelf, in order to meet the needs of our citizens and solidify the United States as a global energy leader long into the future,’” Murrill wrote in the September 24 letter. “The Executive Order directs agencies to promptly notify the Attorney General of any actions in court relevant and inconsistent with this order.
“This Executive Order further directs the Attorney General to take appropriate action to address such inconsistencies. The actions of the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in filing lawsuits during the waning days of the Biden Administration against insurance underwriters is precisely the type of action DOJ should immediately dismiss.”
Murrill says Louisiana “is proudly at the epicenter of America's offshore oil and gas industry.”
“In our backyard, the offshore oil and gas sector supports more than 100,000 jobs and thousands of Louisiana businesses,” she wrote. “Our country has been producing oil offshore in federal waters since the 1940s and production from the Gulf has been steadily increasing over the past 30 years.
“In fact, this region has been producing more than one million barrels of oil per day since 1997 and hit its highest level of production on record of 2.044 million barrels per day in August 2019. Production today is at nearly 1.8 million barrels per day and, with many new, high-tech projects coming online, we expect production to climb considerably over the next few years.”
Murrill says the “novel position” taken by the DOJ is “fundamentally contrary to well-settled insurance law and reverses decades of accepted, lawful interpretation and application of insurance policy coverage.”
“As a result of this unsupported and completely novel interpretation of the law and the insurance policies, the insurance market has predictably responded by refusing to issue policies to cover Oil Spill Financial Responsibility (OSFR) or by making the required insurance prohibitively expensive for the offshore oil and gas industry,” Murrill wrote. “The inability to obtain OSFR certification would force operators out of compliance with the OPA 90, potentially halting operation in the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, resulting in job losses in Louisiana, energy market disruptions, and increased liability for the federal government. …
“Louisiana continues to play a leadership role in driving the country forward with the infrastructure and investment to grow energy production. … We respectfully request that the DOJ dismiss the lawsuits in question.”
