Despite oil woes, Louisiana wants rig ban lifted

BURAS, Louisiana (Reuters) - Anger at BP Plc is intense in southern Louisiana as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill keeps fisherman from making their living, but many feel a six-month ban on all deep water oil drilling is going too far.

The governor, local politicians and many fishermen, shrimpers and oystermen say the Obama administration's moratorium will do more harm than good in communities where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf, and across the state.

"It's not only hurting us, it's hurting people who work on those jobs," shrimper Anthony Bourgeois, who has often found extra work in the oil patch, said in Venice, Louisiana.

"This puts us out of work and it's going to put them out of work. You can't blame all oil companies for what one did."

Caller after caller to radio talk shows blast the ban. The Louisiana state government, fearing a big economic loss, set up an online petition that now has more than 86,000 signatures.

The heated opposition may be counterintuitive, given the ecological damage that oil from BP's blown-out well is causing to miles of coast and prime fishing areas, and the fact that much of the fishing west of the Mississippi has been idled.

But many families in the fourth-largest oil producing U.S. state rely on income from both sources.

"Our fishing and oil industries are tied at the hip. We've coexisted for going on 50 years," said Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, a staunch critic of the moratorium.

Fear is widespread here that the ban will prompt companies to use force majeure provisions in their contracts to move their rigs to other parts of the world, taking jobs with them.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar imposed the measure last month, saying it was necessary to insure that the 33 deep water rigs in the region were safe and there would be no repeat of the massive BP oil spill, which is now in its eighth week.

Most of the Gulf of Mexico deep water drilling industry is serviced and supplied from Louisiana ports like Port Fourchon and Venice, the same ones the fishing industry uses.

BLEAK PICTURE

Louisiana paints a bleak picture, predicting 6,000 people could lose jobs in the early weeks of the ban and 10,000 jobs could be lost within a few months. If rigs leave the region, job losses could jump to 20,000 in 18 months, it said.

The impact goes beyond the up to 140 people aboard a rig at any one time, extending to supply boats, vessel rentals, caterers and restaurants, said Governor Bobby Jindal.

"Nobody in Louisiana wants to see another explosion or another loss of life. We don't want to see another drop of oil in the Gulf or come onto our shoreline," Jindal said last week. "But we also want the president to listen to the experts at the Department of the Interior that he consulted in the first place."

Eight of 15 members of an expert panel that advised the federal government on rig safety did not support the moratorium, he noted.

"New policies, procedures, strike forces, whatever, they need to inspect those rigs out there. That needs to happen now. But to have a knee-jerk reaction -- I believe the president is out of character," Smith said. "Normally he's composed and I think he's getting caught up in the emotion of this and he's making a call that's going to really, really hurt us."