Too Big to Pay? Oil and Gas Development in Coastal Louisiana

• Author: Oliver Houck
• Pages: 246-249

246 Best of the Books: Ref‌lections on Recent Literature

Too Big to Pay?

Oil and Gas Development

in Coastal Louisiana

By Oliver Houck

American Ener gy, Imperiled Coas t: Oil and Gas D evelopment in

Louisiana’s Wetlands, by Ja son Theriot. Louisiana State U niversity

Press. 271 pages.

From the May/ June 2015 i ssue of The Enviro nmental Forum.

In 1901 a wildcatter named W. Scott Hey-

wood struck oil near Beaumont, Texas,

and changed the Gulf Coast South for-

ever. e geyser shot 185 feet in the air and

raged for seven days. It made for impressive

photographs. Ambitions ared.

at same year a group of Pennsylvania oil-

men teamed up with Heywood for a try in

Louisiana, targeting the rice plantation of one

Jules Clement, who knew there was petroleum

around. He could strike a match and watch

the ground go up in ames. Nonetheless,

fearing his rice crop might be poisoned and

his cattle at risk, he refused the dea l and pad-

locked his gates.

e consortium upped the oer. Money

ultimately prevailed, t he well went in, struck oil, and was soon producing

several thousand ba rrels a day. In between it ran out of control for eight

hours and covered Clement’s rice elds with a la ke of oil and sand. An apt

metaphor for what was to come.

Jason eriot’s book American Energy, Imperiled Coast: Oil and Gas Devel-

opment in Louisiana’s Wetlands is a story of what happened next, some eighty

years of a wi ld ride that has not yet ended, and which breathes t he dichoto-

mous experience of Clement’s farm from every pore. eriot is well placed to