History of the Industry

A night watchman at an ice plant in Shreveport accidentally discovered natural gas emanating from a well drilled in search of artesian water when he struck a match. Gas from the well was piped to the plant to provide illumination--the first use in the state of the fuel that today heats the vast majority of Louisiana homes and places of business.

The Louisiana Legislature passed the first state oil and gas conservation law.

The new refinery in Baton Rouge (which is the Exxon refinery of today) went on stream. Today it is, in terms of capacity, among the largest oil refineries on the North American continent. This is also the year in which construction began on Louisiana’s first long-distance oil pipeline, which by 1910 was transporting crude oil from Caddo Parish to the Baton Rouge refinery.

A major discovery occurred in Northwest Louisiana when the Bull Bayou Field was brought in.

The prolific Haynesville Gas Field was discovered.

The Lake St. John Field on the eastern border of Louisiana was discovered.

The Main Pass Field came in near the mouth of the Mississippi River.

The South Pass Field in the Gulf of Mexico was discovered.

Severance taxes on oil and gas rose above the $100 million mark in Louisiana for the first time.

Louisiana’s natural gas reserves dropped for the first time since gas was discovered in significant quantities in the state.

Gerald R. Ford became the first President of the United States to visit an offshore oil platform when he came to Louisiana on April 23. His comment: “We just have to get more and more of these.”

Oil and gas severance taxes in Louisiana hit an all-time record $971,677,140.

Bullwinkle, the world’s tallest man-made offshore structure, was launched May 21, 1988 by Shell Offshore, Inc. Bullwinkle carried a $500 million price tag and is located approximately 150 miles south of New Orleans.

The Marine Spill Response Corporation was established by the petroleum industry as an oil spill response corporation. The group was created following the March 24, 1989 oil tanker spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. MSRC also announced in that same year that one of its five regional response centers would be located in Lake Charles.

The search for oil goes further offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Shell Oil made a deepwater discovery in about 3,100 feet of water, about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans. BP Exploration held an interest in the project. A short time later a second deepwater discovery was announced by Exxon and its project partner Conoco.

Oklahoma adopts a natural gas proration statute. Louisiana holds public hearings on the issue, but does not adopt any statute or regulations

The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association conducts the first of its kind study regarding the economic impacts of the offshore oil and gas industry. The study Impacts showed that the offshore industry has a positive economic impact on the state of more than $3 billion each year.

After more than a decade of depressed prices and activity, the oil and gas industry began to see a rebound. New drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico spurred on by the development of new technology and the overall worldwide demand for oil gave a new push to Louisiana oil and gas production.

Louisiana prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of offshore oil and gas exploration and production. The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association celebrates its 75th anniversary as a trade association and pays tribute to the industry’s “Remarkable Past and its Exciting Future.”

A new round of mergers began. BP purchased Amoco, Kerr-McGee purchased Oryx. Exxon and Mobil agreed to a merger that formed the largest company in the United States. Other companies combined downstream operations. New rounds of employee layoffs and consolidations also began.

Chevron and Texaco agreed to merge and become ChevronTexaco, with the name later reverting back to Chevron.

Hurricane Katrina cut a destructive path through the Gulf of Mexico and came ashore causing catastrophic damage in Louisiana the Gulf Coast. Katrina turned out to be the most destructive natural disaster in United States history. The hurricane curtailed almost all oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico and south Louisiana. Many gas processing plants were damaged while several refineries were flooded with the damage to the state infrastructure hindering repairs.

Marathon approved a major expansion of its Garyville, LA refinery. The expansion will add 180,000 barrels of capacity and cost more than $3 billion. The Garyville refinery was the last refinery built in the United States more than 30 years earlier.

For the first time, crude oil price broke $100 per barrel and gasoline prices broke $4.00 per gallon.

An explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig working on the Macondo exploration well for BP in the Gulf of Mexico leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days before the well was closed and sealed. Shortly after the event, a six-month moratorium on all deep-water offshore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf was declared by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, forever changing the landscape of the industry for Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.

The Colonial Pipeline products pipeline delivers its first shipment of fuel from the gulf coast to the east coast.