History Of Oil Industry In Louisiana

If my Cajun gron-grandpere, Emile Evariste Navarre was still alive, no doubt he'd have some very strong opinions about how everyone in the world now is in danger of being lost in the world of les feux-folets, given this BP oil spill disaster. He was a simple but profound man, deeply connected to nature and the L'ouisiane that he loved so much. He'd have a valid point, for few know the history of oil in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico to grasp the complexities of this current oil spill crisis.

For those of you who aren't Cajun, and don't know what a feux-folet is according to Cajun legends. Emile's feux-folets were at one time evil men who had become possessed by the Devil. They had a mission on earth to find other people and also turn them into feux-folets. To the Cajun believers, they were Devil lights, whose sole role in life was to tricher -- trick you.

One could see proof of them in the swamps and bayous at night. Without notice, suddenly they'd appear, almost like a guiding light, beckoning you to follow. They looked like balls of fire drifting up from the ground. They bounced off fence posts, sometimes lingering to play with the airy arms of Spanish moss hanging in the trees. Occasionally, they would even hurtle right at you. The story goes, if you were foolish enough to follow one, you could be sure it would purposely lose you in the swamp. Then, you would never be able to get to your destination.

As a child, my mother, Ginn Navarre, would sit on Emile's knees as he commanded her to look closely at his Arizona version of them. He would gently cup her head in his hands, pointing her attention to the distant lights beyond the porch.

"Ga! Ga! - Look! Look! They are starting to dance around! Ga la bas! - Look there! See how they jump up in the air, zigzager . . . . zigzager . . . . Zigzagging all over the place!"

All the time, he was bounding her in a crazy jig on his knee.

"Yes, mon chere ti chou - my dear one, the feux-folet is after us all. However, you can turn the feux-folet away if you pray, because Dieu - God is stronger than Diable - the Devil," he would sternly caution.

Remembering those warnings, I can only smile in my limited memory of him, and be sad at the same time at the irony. For the scientific fact of those feux-folets certainly do seem to be aided by the work of the Devil, maybe a lot of Devils of the human form, some of the very ones in charge of this oil spill and those hiding behind their oil slicked coat-tails who allowed them.

Down in Louisiana, oil is older than any of the land above it, both off shore and on shore. The reason is that the oil under the salt marshes is merely another layer of the same organic materials that make up the very marshes. Those materials end up compressed under ground in high-pressure layers that sooner or later liquefy.

As plant materials are buried and compressed and begin to decay and oxidize, the substance left behind forms particles of clay that are later buried by layers of sand that washes in from the Gulf of Mexico and sand that washes down the Mississippi River. Along with the marsh grass or seabed, or even soils deposited by the annual flood runoff down the Mississippi. From this beginning, if they are sufficiently pure, the weight of the upper layers compress the clay particles into solid peat.

Funny thing about peat, it will ultimately become hard brown coal, which, pressed even harder, could turn into diamonds. So one way of thinking about the biggest oil victim of all -- the salt marshes -- are really diamonds in the rough.

Now, the lighter oil and methane gas particles that can be squeezed out of this solid carbonaceous mass, are always seeking escape into the surrounding sands. However, they can't rise through the clay layers, unless a natural geological formation or a man-made oil well punctures through into this hot, black underground sea.

What a lot of people don't realize is that there are salt domes, huge massive underground salt pimples, sometimes forming natural outcroppings along this same landscape of salt marshes. Maybe some lucky Americans are aware that the Five Islands (including Tabasco making Avery Island) rise out of Louisiana's coastal marshes -- but most don't even if it is their liquid "mouths on fire" of choice.

As the more lightweight salt is pushed upwards through these underground layers, vast quantities of surrounding oil and gas are collected beneath, as if the salt dome were an enormous plug. Now, down farther inland begins the coteau formations, where a slight fold in the underground strata occasionally allows escarpment. Escarpment is a drop of anywhere from ten to fifty feet from the higher salt marsh prairie, that once again allows the underground sea of oil or gas to seep to the surface.

That escarpment, is the methane gasses escaping into the atmosphere, that are the scientific basis for what old-timer's in Louisiana fashioned into "feux folets". Some early Acadian settlers would go off into the swamp marshes and bayous, in search of the source of the feux-folets and unwittingly become lost or tasty meals for alligators -- never to be seen again -- hence the stuff legends and myths are made of -- a new reality that the people of the time had no logical explanation for. We humans are like that, what we do not understand and cannot get any answers for, we make up a story in our minds to explain the unexplainable.

Back in 1812, for an entire three months, one Louisiana island, with this natural gas seepage had the bad luck of being hit with a bolt of lighting in a thunder-storm. Those living in Louisiana at the time, would never forget those three wondrous months while they waited for it to burn itself out.

Part of this BP oil spill disaster that worries me personally, is that no one thus far, is mentioning that as this oil spill settles upon the shores, that combination reality of extreme summer heat and lightening -- will no doubt be potentially lighting that world in pollution fires upon salt marshes that many cannot begin to fathom.

It was actually French engineers drilling for water in Pointe Coupee Parish clear back in 1823, that kept opening up wells of methane gas by mistake that set in motion the oil industry in Louisiana. Back in the early days, oil and methane gas were merely something of a nuisance -- but nothing of what was yet to come.

It was outsiders, now jokingly referred to by Cajuns in the early oil industry as, "Takes-Us from Texas" brought in Louisiana's first oil field in 1901 in Acadia Parish. The joke is actually a little Cajun sick humor, as for Cajuns, the oil and it's incredible wealth has always been literally stolen from them -- from out on the prairie, down on the bayou, and even offshore in the Gulf of Mexico by these outsiders known as "oiligarchs."

Oil and those who have made their fortunes are like relatives you are stuck with because their money is something you (and all your other relatives) are unfortunately dependant upon because for many of family members, these are the only jobs available. There is deep meaning in the old bumper stickers "Oil Feeds My Family."

Back when the oiligarchs from takes us, first started pumping the stuff out of the ground, the oil produced in Louisiana initially totaled over fourteen billion barrels. In visual terms, that is enough oil to cover every square inch of earth nine inches thick.

While you are picturing this not-so-pretty picture, picture something else -- a battle for being the sole survivor in a war between heroes and villains, with big corporate players not too unlike the persona of Russell Hantz on the reality show, Survivor. It's real life villains in the oil industry in Louisiana that give some past key players a slippery black eye that will never go away, no matter how hard their friends try to use a white wash dispersant on oil history.

Before The Pre-BP Villians Let's Look At Pre-BP Spills

If you don't live in Louisiana, or aren't old enough to remember, back in 1964 Hurricane Hilda blew twenty-seven oil rigs up, spreading lethal oil slicks of Louisiana's richest coastal fishing grounds and spewing millions of tons of wasted fuel thousands of feet into the smoke-darkened sky.

Then, there was the Shell Oil Gulf disaster, where for one hundred and thirty-seven days there was a blazing inferno at Bay Marchand Platform B, in 1972. That one involved the destruction of eleven wells.

What I find interesting is that these and other lesser oil disasters in this region are hard to track down online and pushed into the background of history. I guess if you don't talk about it, it never happened.

Of course, then, there are the oil industry scandals in Louisiana that all began long ago with a company called Win Or Lose.

Next -- Winners or Losers of Win or Lose